I've always wanted to use my computer as a music studio. With hard drive prices at around $20 a gig, this is getting cheaper to do every day. There is now a glut of music software that does everything from analog synthesizer simulation to 24-track recording with effect chaining in real time.

But back in '90 there wasn't a lot out there. I was lucky to have an 8-bit Soundblaster. OPL synthesis and MOD's were pretty much the only two choices out there; software wavetable MIDI rendering wasn't there yet. I wanted an integrated MIDI synthesizer/multitrack recorder in software.

So I built Sonitica. It's a language similar to CSound (which I hadn't yet heard of), in that you define chains of inputs, outputs, and effects. You can hook any component to a MIDI message, so that by using sample loops and other effects you can build a synthesizer, and render a MIDI tune. You can also record .WAV files during playback, and by layering tracks build a song. It has a very Spartan interface, only command-line is supported. But the neat thing about it was that the whole effects chain was compiled into x86 assembly code at runtime (sort of a JIT) so that the whole thing would run acceptably on my now-ancient 486-33.

Now that we have Ensoniq chips in our sound cards, and software like Cubase, why do we need Sonitica ... ? Oh, well.

sonitica.zip (1094307 bytes) - .ZIP containing all Sonitica files

Instructions:

1. Unzip this file to a directory, setting the option to retain directory structure.
2. Follow the directions in the README file.