Zoë Blade's notebook

Creator

Creator V1 tech specs

Atari ST running C-LAB Creator
Atari ST running C-LAB Creator

Creator was a MIDI sequencer for the Atari 1040ST, made by German company C-LAB (specifically, by Gerhard Lengeling). The first version was released in 1987, and the last version was released in 1992. It was then replaced by Emagic's Notator Logic, a ground-up rewrite and fully fledged DAW that was eventually bought by Apple and became Logic Pro.

Most sequencers (and, later, DAWs) are based on the concept of tape, emphasising how music consists of several tracks that store sequences of notes. In contrast, Creator is based on digital step sequencers, emphasising how music can be divided into discrete patterns, each consisting of several tracks that store sequences of notes, allowing the user to switch back and forth between patterns, and loop tracks within patterns to build up polymetres. It's arguably an approach more from the point of view of an electronics engineer than a traditional musician, and it lends itself particularly well to repetitive electronic music.

This looped-pattern-based workflow seems to have largely been forgotten since the introduction of rival Cubase, which took the more traditional linear tape style approach and split it into handy clips in its arrangement screen. Eventually, these two workflows were reconciled in Ableton Live.

Notator/Creator V2.0

Creator V2.0 tech specs

Creator V2.0 was released alongside new sibling product Notator V2.0. There is no Notator V1.0.

Notator is a variaton of Creator with an additional section for displaying, tweaking, and printing out the notation on a musical stave. Given the intricacies of musical notation, this required a second programmer, Chris Adam, who had previously helped Langeling turn SuperTrack into ScoreTrack, on the Commodore 64.

Quotes

I particularly like the real-time track parameter editing on C-LAB; being able to change things like delay, velocity and transposition in real time is, I think, the main reason why C-LAB gets used so much for dance music.

— Steve Hillage, System 7, 1991[3]

I think [Creator] helps speed things up, actually. I can access stuff quicker than on my [Kawai] Q80, and I can put more information in it, also. I think Notator makes things simpler for me. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I feel like I get more done than I did working with the Q80. I think that sometimes the way I arrange things on Notator is a lot quicker. I used to find myself doing a lot of cutting and pasting with the Q80, which was a tedious process. It's a lot quicker on the Atari.

In the past when I've done stuff in the studio, I've just run it all the way through and then done my mutes on the desk when I was mixing it. But now I use Notator's arrange mode to arrange where I want certain things to come in and out on the computer. It gives me the flexibility to do that, and it saves me time 'cos sometimes I may forget that I wanted something to be muted at a certain point, so now I just do it within the arrange mode.

— Larry Heard, 1992[4]

We've also been going into a live mute situation on Creator, and recording all the mutes, 'cos that can give you a really weird structure. It can get quite messy, but it has something to offer. You might have written a hi-hat pattern which is quite continuous, and you can just drop-mute it at weird points, which gives it quite a scatty feel, so things are always different through the track.

— Garry Cobain, The Future Sound of London, 1992[5]

...the principle Creator works on is a muting system, just like a mixing desk uses, so I just get together with a whole load of loops and then decide at which points to mute or unmute them. As a DJ, it made a lot more sense to me to work that way.

— Jason Cohen, Skin Up, 1992[6]

I think I might change from C-LAB to Cubase, now. The thing I didn't like was having to go up into a menu to transpose — you know, transpose... how many?... OK... and if you didn't like it, go back up, do it all again — whereas C-LAB always had that little block on the side. But the new version of Cubase has that little block on the other side, so there's nothing to stop us, really.

— Paul Hartnoll, Orbital, 1993[7]

Cubase is much better for arranging: you can get an overall picture so much easier. They tried, with C-LAB, with that block arrangement, but I do like to be able to see an overview.

— Phil Hartnoll, Orbital, 1993[7]

By next year, they seemed to change their mind:

We've used it ever since we had a computer, which is about four years. I've always wanted to try Cubase with its arrange window, 'cos that's how you tend to visualise music — left to right and linear — but now I'm not so sure, because I know this system so well.

— Paul Hartnoll, Orbital, 1994[8]

It looks like track transposition was a dealbreaker for Orbital. Their music has a lot of parts that are always playing major thirds, so it seems likely that those consist of one track ghosting another in Creator, set to four semitones above it. This was probably much easier than playing major thirds manually, and quicker than carefully detuning a second oscillator.

Cubase is a song man's program, and we're not song people at all. A lot of the tracks we do are very loop-orientated, and Creator is designed to be used by people who like working in loops. So we started using that and it was just like using a drum machine, which we were well into — using the R-8 as a sequencer gave us our first lesson in Creator, almost.

— Sean Booth, Autechre, 1995[9]

Notable users

See also

References

  1. "C-Lab Creator" Chris Jenkins writing as John Renwick, Micro Music, Jun 1989, pp. 46—49
  2. "Creator manual" C-LAB
  3. "All Systems Go" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Oct 1991, pp. 36—42
  4. "Touching Bass" Simon Trask, Music Technology, May 1992, pp. 48—52
  5. "Past, Present and Future" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Aug 1992, pp. 61—66
  6. "C-Lab Versus Cubase" Tom Doyle, Melody Maker, Nov 1992, p. 49
  7. "The Magic Circle" Phil Ward, Music Technology, Jun 1993, pp. 56—60
  8. "Music of Spheres" Nigel Humberstone, Sound On Sound, Apr 1994
  9. "Aural Technology Redefined?" Simon Trask, Future Music, Jan 1995, pp. 51—53
  10. "Autechre: Techno-logical" Christopher Holder, Sound On Sound, Nov 1997
  11. "Autechre" Paul Tingen, Sound On Sound, Apr 2004
  12. "Lost in Trance" Phil Ward, Music Technology, Apr 1994, pp. 18—20
  13. "Mixing Lessons" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Nov 1988, pp. 40—44
  14. "What's That Noise?" Tim Goodyer, Music Technology, Aug 1990, pp. 30—34
  15. "The HEX Guide To Multimedia" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Oct 1993, pp. 36—38
  16. "Classic Tracks: Fatboy Slim 'Praise You'" Tom Doyle, Sound On Sound, Jan 2017
  17. "Future Talk" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Jan 1994, pp. 16—18
  18. "Brian Dougans" Neil Mason, Electronic Sound, Jul 2018
  19. "In the Studio With Gimmik" Headphone Commute, Jul 2022
  20. "Music Producer Teddy Riley — Pensado's Place #169" Pensado's Place, Jun 2014
  21. "Deep Vibrations" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Aug 1991, pp. 60—65
  22. "Headache music..my rig was MC-303, with AKAI S1000, an Atari 1040 running Creator which would become Logic. As far gear went this was my set up, & a Roland JV 880. I'd had a Nord Lead too but it got burned out when lightning hit our building & I couldn't afford to get it fixed." @iamclintmansell Twitter, Apr 2020
  23. "'Emerald Hill Zone'!" Masato Nakamura, Feb 2021
  24. "Waxing Lyrical" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Sep 1991, pp. 36—39
  25. "Tune In, Turn On, Chill Out" Tim Goodyer, Music Technology, Jun 1991, pp. 42—48
  26. "The Orb" Mark Prendergast, Sound On Sound, May 1993, pp. 28—34
  27. "The Rhythm Method" Simon Trask, Music Technology, Jan 1992, pp. 50—53

Reviews

Creator V1

Notator/Creator V2.0

Notator/Creator V3.0

Notator/Creator V3.1

User groups

Downloads

Software

Documentation

Atari ST: 4-Op Deluxe | Creator | Cubase | Dump-It! | M | Pro-24 | Realtime | ST MIDI sequencer timeline | ST Speech | Sweet Sixteen | Tiger Cub

C-LAB: Creator

Software MIDI sequencers: Creator | Cubase | M | Music Machine | Pro-16 | Pro-24 | Realtime | Sweet Sixteen | Tiger Cub