Do you want to travel back to 1990s music production? Were you not born yet and want to experience it in a fully immersive way? Opcode’s Josh and Nine Inch Nails have you covered.
The (1996?) “Getting Started With Vision” video has everything – those 3D graphics. That theme song. That feeling of watching OMS and Vision’s genius Blocks and sequencer implementation again. (Okay, the last one will – definitely depend on when you started with Mac music production.)
And so much Roland sound.
I feel a little bit like reciting ancient religious texts, we’ve all engaged in telling the story of MIDI on repeat since the dawn of time. “MIDI is a secret code that goes down these MIDI cables…” (Not sure what was secret about it, but maybe he was trying to make sure to let people know to send in their MIDI Manufacturers’ Association dues.)
The graphics… the graphics. (Video Toaster, I think?)
By the way, if you were not around for the era of OMS (Open Music System) but have a current Mac, load the Audio MIDI Setup. You’ll notice some similarities. Audio MIDI Setup was released, I believe, with Mac OS X Jaguar in 2002, and its development was led by ex-Opcode engineer Doug Wyatt. I can double-check that history, but you’ll see that, essentially, AMS turned into a next-generation reimagining of OMS. See also MOTU’s pre-OS X rival FreeMIDI. And… oh I had really forgotten that AppleTalk warning. Memories.
But we’re done 90s-ing yet.
Nine Inch Nails filmed this music video in 1992 for “Gave Up” and it features a kind of hilarious amount of exposure for Opcode Vision.
Show of hands how many of you also used that same Digidesign mousepad. (It was a simpler time, kids. Actually… no, it was a much more complicated time, involving a hell of a lot of reaching into your Mac chassis to fiddle with horrible hardware settings on NuBus cards to make DAE work. I want to go back to that about as much as I wanted to hear Bill Clinton this week. But Opcode was great.)
Also, it turns out they label their projects about the same way the rest of us do. I don’t think these were edited for the video.
Vision still looks brilliant, nearly 30 years later. That’s not just nostalgia talking, either: we lost some of the elegance of the first generation of sequencers. It’s worth revisiting that now, too, because while the world of the western DAW is pretty well exhausted, there’s every chance to build new systems from scratch based on other music traditions and with developers from outside the usual suspects of the USA and western Europe – see DAW, Music Production, and Colonialism, a Bibliography.
Anyway, modern software: you’re on notice. At least come up with some vaporware music and graphics for your next tutorial. You can blame me.
I realize I have been tagging things “I love the 90s” and a significant portion of the world has no idea what the hell I’m talking about. It’s this:
I am of course obligated to bring back this clip, any time I mention Opcode:
I’m sorry, what? Music tech news? Like, for today?
Look there’s a new plug-in model of a vintage compressor and some fancy polysynth is coming someday and there are some new modules. Happy?