amiga news

“MusicMaker V8” (“MMV8”) is a sample-based music editor that Thomas Winischhofer wrote between 1987 and 1993 for the Amiga. Now it’s rescued since 2017 and now in 2021 more updates have been uploaded to Aminet. This is not “just another tracker”, it’s instead based on macros that apply to one channel only. These macros can be combined freely to form a tune.

MusicMaker V8 music-editor for Amiga includes a very powerful sample editor and a sophisticated technique for providing eight channels (each capable of playing at different volume levels) on a standard Amiga. It was actually the very first program on the market back then with eight completely independent channels. Amiga applications did a lot back in the days and it is awesome that this old program is still getting love from its creator.

Now that’s dedication I love to write about and promote.

Get the latest MusicMaker V8 from Aminet

Since February 2021, MusicMaker V8 is now in development again. It seems to be a trend getting AmigaOS applications into shape and this music editor is doing that too. MusicMaker V8 is a very powerful 8 channel music editor. You can download the complete editor from Aminet:

MMV8_Complete.lha3.07mus/edit10901.5M2021-05-02MusicMaker V8 Version 3.0 (Complete) – (readme)
To install, un-archive the latest MusicMaker V8 to a temporary directory and run "Install-MM" from
Workbench.

Minimum requirements:
- 1 MB memory
- OS 1.3

Lots of sample tunes available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/uosntvqsps0p4un/MMMusic.lha?dl=1 

The version 3 of MusicMaker V8 which dates back to late 1992 and was never published as a commercial product. But now its getting love again.

Here is the latest history of MusicMaker V8 updates in 2021

Version 3.07 (2 May 2021)
- Fix SER Mode garbled replay
- Tiny fix(tm) in all replayer routines, including the developer files
  and libraries.

Version 3.06 (2 May 2021)
- Fix File requester (Was broken on 68000 since 3.02. This made the entire 
  program unuable on plain 68000 since 2018. I am speechless. The 
  reason was that IsFilesystem() needs its text argument word-aligned, 
  which it sometimes wasn't.)
- Fix SER mode (Was broken on >68000 due to bad interaction with the MIDI
  routines.) There is still a known issue with SER mode, as it sometimes
  distorts playback on the remote machine. This is under investigation.

Version 3.05: (Dec 2020)
- Fix mouse wheel support by tricking FreeWheel into thinking we are
  MUI windows. Nasty hack, but if FreeWheel is dumb enough to interfere
  with apps that support the mouse wheel natively, there is no other way.

Version 3.04: (Feb 2018)
- Three-disk-scheme dumped in favor of a single lha archive for distribution
- Improved installer script (better error handling; Eagle- and Deliplayers
  now also installed; no more MM-Startup in WBStartup; SD: and IN: assigns
  dropped; etc.)
- MM2PCM utility added to distribution (see Aminet's MMV8_2_PCM package)
- MM, Wurlitzer: Filerequester now properly supports relative paths (for
  whatever it's worth..)
- Minor cosmetic changes

Including continuing to release the main music editor. Thomas also released several players for various music players for Amiga such as Deliplayer and Eagleplayer as you can see below:

EP_MMV8.lha5.07mus/play108714KMusicMakerV8 player for EaglePlayer – (readme)
mmv8_deliplayer.lha3.07mus/play8665KMusicMakerV8 Deliplayer for DeliTracker – (readme)
MMV8_Player.lha3.07mus/play90033KMusicMaker V8 Player – (readme)
UADE_MMV8.lha5.07umus/play98614KMusicMakerV8 players for UADE – (readme)

Amazing to see the author back and that he have released is as Freeware because of his dedication. Download it and become creative. Amiga is a Survivor because of such dedicated souls.

What sort of music maker or tracker on the Amiga do you use?