Electric Cow EC-909

Here we have a tour of some vintage freeware for the Atari STE/TT/Falcon courtesy of ako. Electric Cow EC-909 is almost Rebirth for the Atari, offering a 909 and 303 for some acid infused explorations - the video also has a free sample pack if your Atari is still up in the attic. The full manual is still online and you can read more on the Electric Cow Website. Great stuff, I also recall something called MSSIAH on the C64 which did similar (see the end) - here's more on the Electric Cow 909. 

EC-909 is an analogue drum machine and bass line generator. It features 16 sounds taken directly from the classic Roland TR-909 drum machine, and a bassline generator for squidgy TB-303-style riffs. Up to ten drum and ten bass patterns can be programmed, then arranged in the song sequencer enabling you to build a whole tracks' worth of drum and bass. Alternatively, once you've created your loops, they can be either exported as a sample to use in your direct-to-disk recording software, or sent, via MIDI, to an external sampler. You can even save a MIDI file template of your patterns.

In issue 27 of Basique, EC-909 was reviewed... "Best of all, straight out of the box, it comes with a utility to incorporate your own samples. This really makes it an open-ended rhythm engine rather than just a current fad, drum machine. It's a serious drum machine, too. Not only does it support real-time MIDI play of the pads, but you can also export the pattern to an AIFF file, or indeed MIDI sample dump it to your sampler."

Here's a statement on the EC freeware software...  

All of Electronic Cow's music software is now freeware. Click on the links below to download the programs. In response to repeated enquiries we've added an electronic (HTML-formatted) version of the manuals on each of the product pages. There are also a limited supply of properly printed and boxed manuals for EC-909, Squash it! and Scribble Synth (all others are sold out). If you want one, click here for more details...

We'd like to say a huge thank you to all the folk who supported the Cow Project over the past three years. It's been fun... we've never been in it for the money, but because we lost quite a lot of it and because we no longer have any more time to spare (so don't expect upgrades, bug-fixes or new software), putting out all this software for free for everyone to enjoy seemed like a sensible idea.

More from ako...

Quick look at the Electric Cow EC909 drum machine / soft synth for Atari ST/TT/ Falcon and a sample pack made from it's TR-909 sounds. It's a combined TR-909 and TB-303 emulator in one programme (a lot like Steinberg / Propellerheads's ReBirth) which is neat and features PCM samples from a TR909 for the drums (also neat) which can be edited in terms of pitch and attack. My understanding is their wares were more aimed at the falcon but will run on STEs and TTs given that this was released in 1998. EC909 can create single-bar patterns (in real time on the Falcon), and then export them as AIFF or AVR (Both 8- or 16-bit formats, mono or stereo). The program can also generate a MIDI File from your pattern. MIDI triggering for drums is also possible. The manual, which is still online, contains instructions for loading your own samples into to replace the stock 909 samples using the included CandiKit program, very cool! this lags noticeably on the STE, but still works well enough to play back the drum sounds for sampling.

Video Timestamps

00:00 - background info, compatability, bundled software

01:29 - quick look at the TB-303 emulator (surprisingly ok!)

01:54 - latency

01:59 - TR-909 drum machine overview and basic features and verisons

04:25 - All basic sounds

05:15 - tuning / pitching samples

06:03 - editing the attack of the sound

08:17 - what's in the smaple kit

09:13 - triggering via MIDI, issues with voiving, latency etc.

13:31 - 1 min sound demo using the drums sampled into ableton

And finally, the aforementioned C64 MSSIAH Sequencer...

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