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Yamaha COMPOSE 1.00. Heard of it? Me neither.

MoonShadow

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2006
Messages
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Location
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Reasonably recently, I acquired an IBM Portable (1984) from a friend of my mother's. On its hard drive (40 MB :)) I found a program called Yamaha COMPOSE. It functions, unsurprisingly, as a music composition tool; the screen consists mainly of music staves and some info at the bottom, including the text "COMPOSE Version 1.00 (c) YAMAHA 1987".

I have searched the internet for information about COMPOSE, but have found nothing. I admit that I didn't search very thoroughly, but I failed to find even a single reference. Does anyone have any info on this program?

Thanks in advance,

MoonShadow
 
Reasonably recently, I acquired an IBM Portable (1984) from a friend of my mother's. On its hard drive (40 MB :)) I found a program called Yamaha COMPOSE. It functions, unsurprisingly, as a music composition tool; the screen consists mainly of music staves and some info at the bottom, including the text "COMPOSE Version 1.00 (c) YAMAHA 1987".

I have searched the internet for information about COMPOSE, but have found nothing. I admit that I didn't search very thoroughly, but I failed to find even a single reference. Does anyone have any info on this program?

Thanks in advance,

MoonShadow
scroll down to 1987 on this page:
http://www.oldskool.org/sound/pc

is it something like that?
 
Most of the early sound cards used an Yamaha chip, also the soundblasters. Maybe it refers to the chip?
 
Random thought, but Yamaha in c:a 1984 and forward manufactured a few MSX compatible music composers, best known CX5M and CX5M-II. They offered separate, cartridge based sequencing and composing software for these computers. Possibly this program you found was an extention or port of this MSX software, for those users who upgraded from MSX to PC.
 
Sound card

Sound card

It does sound very much like I have the IBM Music Feature Card (referred to in the oldskool.org page) in my portable. It's a PITA to pull apart, though, so I won't confirm that right now. The Yamaha software seems to support a maximum of 8 simultaneous voices, and has quite a few different instruments to choose from. The card has a 9-pin D-sub port and two RCA jacks (red and white). I'm not familiar with MIDI, but this seems like fairly standard equipment for a MIDI-capable card.

I have a fairly major music assignment coming up at school, and I plan to use my IBM Portable to demonstrate synthesised music and the composition techniques thereof. Should be fun to work with :).

EDIT: BTW, does anyone want me to upload a copy of COMPOSE, or screenshots or something?
 
scroll down to 1987 on this page:
http://www.oldskool.org/sound/pc

is it something like that?

Bingo. That is exactly what it is, and it is/was for the IBM Music Feature card. Such cards are near unobtanium so look at the back of your portable and see if there are two RCA jacks and a d-shell connector -- if so, you are the lucky owner of an IBM Music Feature Card.

I have all of the bundled software and manuals for it; while I can't make copies of the manuals easily, I can certainly dupe the software for you if you think yours is incomplete.
 
It does sound very much like I have the IBM Music Feature Card (referred to in the oldskool.org page) in my portable. It's a PITA to pull apart, though, so I won't confirm that right now. The Yamaha software seems to support a maximum of 8 simultaneous voices, and has quite a few different instruments to choose from. The card has a 9-pin D-sub port and two RCA jacks (red and white). I'm not familiar with MIDI, but this seems like fairly standard equipment for a MIDI-capable card.

I have a fairly major music assignment coming up at school, and I plan to use my IBM Portable to demonstrate synthesised music and the composition techniques thereof. Should be fun to work with :).

EDIT: BTW, does anyone want me to upload a copy of COMPOSE, or screenshots or something?

Congrats on owning one!! I will image the disks for you and make them available; back in 30...
 
Unfortunately the diskettes I have seem to lack the example PLAYREC song files (which are nice and show off the card well). The only other place I know I have these files are on my XT-286, and knowing that they are not on the original distribution disks, I now have a purpose tonight in getting that machine up and running and getting everything off of that drive as quickly as possible.

Until then, grab the IBM Music Feature diskette files (I grabbed both original and user-made copies in case some were updated) from ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/misc in the Music Feature Card directory.

In fact, I think I know why I have those example files; I got my XT-286 and music feature card from a former IBM employee and those files were meant as demonstration files.
 
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