Producer: John Holston
Music and lyrics by: John Holston
14 reMixer tracks

This tune was composed in MIDI using Cakewalk Pro Audio 8.0 and Reality 1.5.3 for all the instruments. The vocal tracks were recorded onto Cakewalk Pro Audio multi tracks, mixed down to one track and edited into samples in Sound Forge 4.0. The resulting vocal samples were then imported into the Reality sound bank and mapped to the keyboard using Reality. Going back to Cakewalk the vocal samples were then “played” on the keyboard controller while the other MIDI tracks played. After the MIDI file was complete it was imported into Reality and the entire soundbank was saved as a SeerMusic file, given a discrete name, and you are now listening to it!

Gear used: Homemade computer with Pentium II-350, 64 megs RAM, Win 98, AWE64 Gold sound card, Stedman vocal mic, Behringer Autocomp compressor.

Listen: Jacob’s Letter 192k

1999.06.01 SurReal mention; Music & Sound Retailer

1999.06.05 Placement in Guitar Center, Sam Ash

1999.06.06 Reality & SurReal in JW Pepper Catalog

All MIDI Commands implemented; interactive web-based chimes and arpeggiating minisynth with real-time parametric control. Aptly termed by Rick Davies “The Best Audio Helper App You Never Heard in Your Life.”

In 1999, Seer Systems released ReMixer, a free helper app that rendered musical performances published in the SeerMusic format. Composers could create SeerMusic files with Reality, importing and creating musical elements from multiple sources. The SeerMusic files then included all of the information needed to let ReMixer recreate the performance exactly as the composer intended – track levels, synthesizer patches and parameter changes, and even effects processing were performed in real-time by ReMixer – a capability still well beyond the capabilities of any free helper app available on the Web.

Here’s a demo video from 1999 that demonstrates ReMixer stand-alone application user interface, particularly coded by Fred Malouf and David Roach. It shows how you can change the mix: level changes, mutes, solo, reverb on each track and even a global tempo and transpose setting for the entire song. Experienced electronic musicians will note that most of the tracks are being played by the software synthesizer built into ReMixer, including the lead guitar.

The Moog and Chimes demos show how Web application developers could embed synth controls in their user interfaces. Check out the way you can adjust the filter settings. This is not a simulation – these controls actually change the filter cutoff, resonance, etc. 10 years later, the SeerMusic platform is still the only one that enables this type of user experience.

Taken to 2012 processing levels, one could in principle use the system to implement a 32-channel mixing and effects board (to say nothing of a full-featured sampler) into any browser.