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JUNIOR MUSIC MACHINE I developed this program as a part of a process of my learning about music. Not being a musician nor knowing very much about music, I found that the machine that I had, my little PC Jr. had some tremendous capabilities not found in the other members of the PC family. These include music with as many as four voices and graphics which allow for as many as 16 colors where the PC has only one voice and 4 colors. It was a natural for a novice like myself to experiment with something that was really fun, music. After I finished the program, I wanted to share it with someone else. So, I sent it off to some publishers for evaluation. About that time, the Junior was having extremely poor sales due to the bad press and other problems so that no one in their right mind wanted to invest in a venture like publishing programs for the Junior. I got a couple of polite refusal letters and so I put it on the shelf and forgot about it in my persuit of other pleasures. It just occurred to me that although the Junior is not being manufactured any more, there must be many Junior users still out there. Why not make it available through the freeware concept and allow the users to judge for themselves if it is worth their investment in time and perhaps a modest contribution. I will let you all be the judge. I would like to make this program available to as many people as possible. Clubs and individuals are invited to copy and distribute it. Share it freely with your friends and copy as many personal disks for your own personal use as you wish. I believe that a program of this quality would easily retail for about $30 and feel justified in requesting a contribution of $10 if you find it to be useful and fun. I do this for several reasons. First, copy protection would nullify the usefulness of the program. Second, you should have the chance to evaluate the software yourself before you commit to its purchase. Third, personal computer software should be supported by those who use it. Fourth, if the response is satisfacory, I will make subsequent efforts available in the same freely distributed way. Fifth, where are good future programs for the Junior going to come from except from the public domain? Make some copies and give them to some friends because the more people that get it, the more opportunities there are for those who might support such a distribution concept. Finally, I am interested in hearing about your experiences with the program. How effective is it in learning or having fun with music? What features should it have? How can it be improved? Drop me a line with your contribution. I can not promise an answer because frankly I do not know what I am getting into. I hope that sufficient interest is generated so that I can become motivated to enhance the program further and send you the updates. I will provide you as a registered user with opportunities to obtain all enhancements that I am able to insert into the program. To become a registered user, drop a ten spot, a $10 check or money order to: Sidney D. Nolte 13858 Peyton Drive Dallas, Texas 75240 JUNIOR MUSIC MACHINE TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION........................................................2 HOW TO CREATE A PERSONAL DISK.......................................2 HOW TO GET THE PROGRAM STARTED......................................3 THE MAIN MENU.......................................................3 HELP!...............................................................3 OLD AND NEW.........................................................4 HOW TO ENTER AND PLAY MUSIC.........................................4 HOW SELECTION IS PERFORMED.........................................4 SELECT THE TIME SIGNATURE..........................................5 SELECT THE KEY.....................................................5 SELECT THE VOLUME..................................................5 SELECT THE TEMPO...................................................6 SELECT THE NOTES...................................................6 NOTE VALUES AND DOTTED NOTES.......................................6 SPECIAL EFFECTS - STACATTO AND SLUR................................7 REST...............................................................7 SELECT THE MUSICIAN................................................7 PLAY YOUR SONG.....................................................7 INSERT AND DELETE..................................................8 SAVE YOUR MUSIC ON A DISK..........................................7 page 1 INTRODUCTION Junior Music Machine introduces you to an exciting musical experience that lets you play and see music simultaneously. Take any piece of sheet music with as many as three distinct voices and enter the notes just as they are written. Not only will you see them on the PC Junior screen, but you will hear them played at any volume and speed that you choose. If you are a musical novice it will provide you with an educational experience made available in a new and exciting manner that only the computer can provide. If you are an experienced musician, use it to compose your own music or to experiment with ways to use this new multi-sensory manner of presenting music to you. The program is intended to provide an educational experience while at the same time making music fun for you no matter what your musical background may be. Just read these few pages that explain how to use Junior Music Machine and then have fun with music. Junior Music Machine will operate on an IBM PC Jr with a color display and a sound connection to the monitor. It takes advantage of the three voice sound capabilities available only on the PC Jr and will not function on any other member of the IBM PC family. The program takes advantage of the color capabilities not found on the original IBM PC, XT or other members of the IBM PC family except the Junior. HOW TO CREATE A PERSONAL DISK You will want to create your own musical compositions or enter your favorite songs from sheet music. These songs will reside on your own personal disk. Do not use the original program disk for this purpose but rather make a copy of it for each person who will create their own songs. Follow the procedure outlined in your DOS manual to format a new disk. It is sugested that you format the disk with the \S option so that the program will operate with only the single personal disk. Then type "copy A:*.* B:" to copy the contents of the original disk to the newly formatted personal disk. Write JUNIOR MUSIC MACHINE and your name on the new disk. Each session will end with your music being saved onto your disk so that you can start again exactly where you left off at the last session. page 2 HOW TO GET THE PROGRAM STARTED Insert your personal disk into the disk drive and turn on the power to the machine. After responding to the request to enter the time and date, just type JMM. The program will begin with a title screen and an introductory song. It is fun to watch the title song but of course after a while you will not want to hear it so press any key to stop the song and to get on with your session. THE MAIN MENU Any activity for a new creation or a song that has been saved on your personal disk will begin from the main menu. There are three selections available to you from the main menu, HELP, PLAY MUSIC, and STOP. HELP will give you some hints on how to enter music and is available any place in the program as well as from the main menu. PLAY MUSIC is the selection that allows playing and entering all songs. STOP allows you to return to the DOS operating system. You may wish to play or to enter several songs at any session. Each song is started from the main menu and you will always be returned to it after your activity when any one song is completed. HELP! You will soon learn what keys you will need to enter and play music. Even so, you will not want to keep reading this paper until you learn how to do it. Whenever you want help in remembering, it is right there for you to use. Several pages of help are presented until you find the one you want to use. Select the HELP option from the main menu or press the ALT key and hold it down while you press the H key. When you find what you want to see, press the ESC key to get you back to where you were before you asked for help. Not all of the things you might want to know are there, just some hints. If you do not find what you want, you will find it in this manual. After a while, you will not need either the help pages or this manual. page 3 OLD AND NEW When you select PLAY MUSIC from the main menu, you will be asked if your song is old or new. An old song is one that is saved on the disk. A new song is one you are going to create and then save. In either case, a song must have a name which will serve to form a file name when it is saved to disk after you are through with it. If you select OLD, the light on the disk will turn on which indicates that the ones that are saved will be presented to you for selection. They will be presented one at a time and you can select any one simply by pressing the ENTER key. Press the space bar to see the next one that is available to you for selection. If you select the NEW, then you will be requested to provide a name. Eight characters are provided for you to name the song in keeping with the DOS file name convention. Since most songs have more than eight characters, you will want to provide some abreviation to name your song. After you have typed the name, press ENTER to proceed. If you select the wrong option, before you have your song named, you may go back to the main menu to start over simply by pressing the ESC key. HOW TO ENTER AND PLAY MUSIC When you select OLD, your song will be retrieved from the disk just as you left it at the last session. The volume, tempo, key and time signature will be exactly the same as had been entered. You will see the beginning notes for the first musician. If you selected NEW then you will wish to describe the volume, tempo, key and time signature for your new creation. In either event, you are now in the music editor mode. You can play what is available or change any key as you desire. In case you want help, press the ALT key and while holding it down, press the H key. The help pages will be displayed one at a time to refresh your memory. HOW SELECTION IS PERFORMED The following sections explain how to select the time signature, key, volume, tempo and the notes. In all cases, the selection is performed the same way. When the selection is called for, it is done by pressing the up and the down arrow until the desired selection is shown graphically on the screen. When the proper value is displayed, it is selected by pressing the ENTER key. For example, the current note will be displayed in a color that is distinct from the other notes. Pressing the up or down arrows will place it where you desire it to be. When you get it where you want it, press ENTER to hear it and to have it entered into your composition. page 4 SELECT THE TIME SIGNATURE The most commonly used time signatures are available. If the one you need is not displayed, press the up arrow or the down arrow keys found on the lower right of the keyboard. The time signatures will be displayed one at a time until the one you wish is displayed. When you see the one you want to use, press ENTER to select it. As you enter your song, each note has a time value and the time values are used to define a measure for the song. Notes can be entered only if they do not exceed the proper count for a measure. When a full measure has been entered, a measure bar will appear indicating the start of a new one. This measure count is determined solely by the time signature selected at the beginning of the session for that song. SELECT THE KEY After you have selected the time signature, you will be asked to select the key. All of the 12 major keys are available. The current key will be displayed on the screen as well as on the musical staff. Press the up or the down arrows to present a different key. When you see the one you wish, press the ENTER key. The key you have selected will determine which notes of the scale will be selected for you. SELECT THE VOLUME The key and the time signature remain the same for the entire composition. The volume can be changed as frequently as desired. As notes are entered, the current volume value is preserved for each note. Changing the volume does not change the volume for any of the notes already saved, only the ones that will be entered. To change the volume for notes already entered, change the displayed volume number, select the note to be altered and press enter. The note and its new volume will be preserved. To change the volume at any time, press the "V" key and then press the up and down arrows to select the desired value. When the proper value is displayed, press ENTER to select the volume. The volume values will range from 0, so soft that it can not be heard to 15 which is the loudest. Of course, you also have the volume control knob on the monitor that you are using to actually determine how loud the 15 value actually is. page 5 SELECT THE TEMPO The tempo represents the speed that the music is to be played. When you enter music and find that it is played too slow or too fast to suit you, a tempo change is in order. The number displayed for the tempo value actually represents the number of quarter notes or their time equivalents that will be played in one minute. To select the tempo, simply press "T" followed by the up and down arrows until the value desired is displayed and then select the tempo by pressing ENTER. When your music is saved on the disk, so also will be your tempo, key and volume values for each voice so that it will sound exactly as it did when you played it last. SELECT THE NOTES To select what note is to be played, press the up or the down arrow to move the note correspondingly up or down the scale. A five octave range is available. As the arrow is depressed, the note will be displayed at its newly selected value and the key on the piano keyboard will be highlighted. Once the key is in the position desired, press the ENTER key to have the note entered into your composition. The note that is currently being selected, by pressing the ENTER key, will be highlighted in the color unique for the active musician. When the note is selected, you will hear exactly how it sounds. If you make a mistake, that is all right, it can be corrected by pressing the left arrow to select the note again and it can be moved to the position that you desired in the first place. Selecting the note positions on the scale is a series of up and down motions to select the notes and choosing them one by one by pressing the ENTER key. The notes made available for selection are only those that are used for the key selected. Occassionally, however, certain exceptions are called for in the musical score. If such is the case, the exception may be entered by pressing the: + (plus) to raise the note a half step, - (minus) to lower the note a half step, or n (letter n) to play a natural. NOTE VALUES AND DOTTED NOTES Music is made up of notes of various time durations. The JUNIOR MUSIC MACHINE provides for notes with values of whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note and sixteenth note. These are selected respectively with the W, H, Q, E, and S keys. If your note is a dotted note as well, press the D key. Press the D key again to cancel the dotted note in case that is not what you wanted. page 6 SPECIAL EFFECTS - STACATTO AND SLUR JUNIOR MUSIC MACHINE will play the note for most of the time interval with a short off time to allow for articulation between notes. This can be changed however by selecting the stacatto or slur. The stacatto selection will play the note for only a short time at the beginning of the time allowed for the note and the slur will play the note for the entire period of time allotted to the note. To select the stacatto property of a note press the ALT key and while holding it down, press the "S" key. To select the slur, press the CTRL key and while holding it down, press the "S" key. Like the dotted note, the stacatto and slur are self canceling, that is to say, selecting them again will cancel the selection. REST If the note to be played is to be a rest, simply press the "R" key to make the current note silent during its alloted time. Again, the rest selection is self cancelling, press "R" again to cancel the rest. SELECT THE MUSICIAN As many as three voices may be played simultaneously. This allows for the melody as well as two other musical parts. After the notes have been selected for one of the musical parts or musicians, pressing the "M" key will display the musicians in turn. All of the notes entered for that musician will be displayed and the new musician will have an alternate color for the active note and the keyboard key displayed. PLAY YOUR SONG At any time, you may hear either the entire composition with all musicians playing or you may hear only the currently selected musician. Press the "P" key to hear all music and press the ALT key and while holding it down, press the "P" key to hear only the current musician. page 7 INSERT AND DELETE Entering music, like typing is prone to errors. Fortunately it is easy to correct mistakes with JUNIOR MUSIC MACHINE. Any note may be changed, deleted, or a new one inserted. The note that has the color of the current musician is the one that will be affected by the change actions. As you have seen, pressing the left or the right arrows will position you to the desired key. To insert another just like the present one, press the insert key. It may be that the new key will be one of another note value. That is all right, simply press the up or down arrows, the note selection keys, or the stacatto, slur, or rest selection keys to make the new inserted note what you wanted it to be. To delete an unwanted key from the list, simply press the delete key and it will disappear from the current music list. It is important to know however that when notes are inserted or deleted, some of the subsequent notes may not align on a measure just as they should be. You should follow insertion and deletion by taking care that measures are preserved. SAVE YOUR MUSIC ON A DISK Your music will be saved for you any time that you press the ESC key while in the music creation mode. Just think of the ESC key as the one that takes you back to where you were before you got into the present state of the program. When you are in the help mode, ESC takes you back to where you were. When in the music edit mode, ESC takes you back to the main menu and saves your music as well. page 8