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Now is a good time to have a quick overview of how Muzys is organized :
Basically, you have 3 windows : one for your Structure activities (1), one for your Sound activities (2), and The Control Panel (3).
The Control Panel features many basic functions like Play, Record, Rewind, Forward, Tempo display, Position display, ... It also contains the 3 global Muzys menus : "System", "Tools" and "Help".
But more about The Control Panel lateron ...
First let's have a closer look at 'sounds'.
A sound is something we hear. It's as simple as that
Muzys can generate sounds by means of the built-in MuZynth, which is a top-quality, powerful 32 bit synthesizer/sampler (supporting AIFF, WAVE, MP3 and SF2 files), by means of VST Instruments, and by means of MIDI instruments."
The easiest way to add a sound to your musical Project is the Add-A-Sound function, but we'll talk about that later.
Now let's have a closer look at 'structures'.
When you play a C major on the piano keyboard as 3 separate keys thus C, E and G, you have played a sequence.
For Muzys, a Sequence is the most basic form of structure.
A Sequence is build up by individual Events, so in the example above, we had 3 Events.
In Muzys, every Sequence has its own name and loop length. Normally, the length will be set to a beat (0.1.000), a bar (1.0.000), four bars (4.0.000) etc ... When a Sequences reaches its end, it loops back to its start, and plays again.
Experimental composers will be happy to know that this length can go anywhere from a tiny tick (ex. 0.0.001) to hundreds of bars (ex. 256.2.192).
If you do not want a Sequence to be looped, but just want to play it once, then you can set its length to 'No Loop'.
Muzys keeps all the Sequences within a Project in a Sequence Pool. At different places in the system, you can use this Sequence pool to select any Sequence.
Most of the time, Sequences are made for individual sounds, or Players as Muzys calls them.
So, if, for example, you want to make a song with some percussion, a bass, a piano etc ... you may want to put different Sequences together in some structured form. That's what Muzys calls a Composition.
Every Composition is built up by individual Parts, which you can see like little building blocks which play Sequence X from position A to position B. In other words : A Part is an instance of a Sequence.
Parts can be spread out over different Tracks, for example, a track for the drums, a track for the bass and so on.
Muzys has 2 types of compositions : Loop Compositions and Song Compositions.
A Loop Composition is a simple collection of Sequences. All of its Sequences start to play together, and stop together.
So a Loop Composition can be seen as an easy way to play with your Sequences, and as fast and intuitive building block, just like those good old "patterns" on a drumbox.
A Song Composition on the other hand can be much more structured. Within a Song Composition you can make an intro, build-up, climax, break, or whatever you want.
A Project is the full collection of Patches, Waves, Compositions, Sequences together with all relevant settings that make up your current music project.
Muzys Projects can be opened and saved via the Control Panel's System menu.
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