Music Construction Set (MCS) is a music composition notation program. It was originally developed in 1984 for the Apple II, and quickly ported to other systems of the era. It was designed and developed by Will Harvey and published by Electronic Arts. Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Music Look up Music on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikisource, as part of the 1911 Encyclopedia Wikiproject, has original text related to this article: Music Wikicities has a wiki about Music: Music MusicNovatory: the science of music encyclopedia Science of Music... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Apple II was one of the most popular personal computers of the 1980s. ... In computing, a port (derived from seaport) is usually a connection through which data is sent and received. ... The home computer is a consumer-friendly word for the second generation of microcomputers (the technical term that was previously used), entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s. ... A game designer is a person who designs games. ... John Carmack is one of the most widely recognized and influential game programmers. ... Will Harvey (born ~1967) is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and game programmer who first made his mark in the video game industry when he was just fifteen and still in high school. ... Video game publishers are companies that publish video games that they have either developed internally or have had developed by a video game developer. ... Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) is a leading video game developer and publisher. ...

Though it is entertainment software, strictly speaking it is not a game, though it is often lumped together with them. It is also considered edutainment since users could learn a bit about music notation by using it. A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Edutainment is a recently coined term, a portmanteau, that expresses the union between education and entertainment in a television program, game or website. ...

Will Harvey designed and programmed the original Apple II version of the game when he was 15 and in high school. He programmed that original version in assembly language. High school, or Secondary school, is the last segment of compulsory education in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (Republic of China) (only junior high school), the United Kingdom and the United States. ... Assembly language or simply assembly is a human-readable notation for the machine language that a specific computer architecture uses. ...

Description

With MCS, the user can create musical composition using a graphical user interface, a novel concept for the era of its release. Users could drag and drop notes right onto the staff, play back their creations and print them out. The program came with a few popular songs as samples. Gui is a French form of the male name Guy. ...

Most versions of this program required the users to use a joystick to create their songs, note by note. Joystick elements: 1. ...

Limitations

Though novel, the music creation process was cumbersome due to the fairly primitive input mechanisms of early home computers. Also, the Apple II and PC had very limited native sound production capabilities. One of the first PCs from IBM - the IBM PC model 5150. ...

However, the program took advantage of advanced equipment for those who had it. For example, the DOS version allowed user to input/output data to a cassette recorder, so if the user cared to, they could send 4-voice music to their stereo. The Apple II version supported the expansion card Mockingboard for higher fidelity sound output. Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... Fitting an expansion card into a motherboard An expansion card in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an expansion slot of a computer motherboard to add additional functionality to a computer system. ... The Mockingboard was a sound card for the Apple II family of microcomputers built by Sweet Micro Systems. ...

Platforms

As a powerful and novel concept for entertainement software, MCS was lucrative for Harvey and Electronic Arts. As such, Electronic Arts quickly had it ported to other popular platforms of the era, including the PC (under DOS) and the Commodore 64. In 1987, it was ported to the Atari ST. One of the first PCs from IBM - the IBM PC model 5150. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... The Commodore 64 (C64, CBM 64) was a popular home computer of the 1980s. ... 1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Atari 520 ST The Atari ST was a home/personal computer system released by Atari in 1985. ...

The program was completely redesigned for the Amiga, but under the name Deluxe_Music_Construction_Set. It was given the more glorified name because of the advanced music and sound producing capabilities of the computer. This version had more features and better graphics than the other versions of the program. This version also allowed users to type in lyrics for their compositions, though these were striclty for the user (the program didn't attempt to "sing" the lyrics), a feat which the amiga computer is capable of. In computing, Amiga is a range of home/personal computers primarily using the Motorola 68000 processor family, whose development started in 1982, initially as a game machine. ... Deluxe Music Construction Set, the first music program for the Amiga system, created by Electronic_Arts in 1986, was the first of a line of music programs for the Amiga to make use of its 4 voice 8-bit sample playback and MIDI synthesis. ...

The title screens of all the versions included the prefix "Will Harvey's" (i.e. Will Harvey's Music Construction Set), but Harvey had little to do with any version but the original.

External links

• MobyGames' entry on MCS
• The Underdogs entry for the program