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>ZM ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MM MM EEEEEEE DDDDD Instructions for version 1.12 MM MM E E D D M M M M EEEE D D M M M E E D D MMM MMM EEEEEEE DDDDD - Music EDitor 21.9.1989 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MED is a music editor much like SoundTracker, but more friendly to the user. You can easily create music for example for your C programs. A song consists of blocks. There can be 50 blocks in v1.12. You can then play the blocks in any order. The best way to learn to use the program is trying. Here are some instructions: 1. Run MED from Workbench or CLI (If you run it from CLI, CD to MED-directory). 2. When the program has loaded, select "Load song" from the "Project"-menu. 3. Type /MED/Examples/Song1 and press Return or click OK!-gadget. 4. When the song has loaded, click "Play song"-gadget and listen! 5. When you are fed up with the song, click "Stop playing". If you want to try your own composing skills, choose "New song" from "Project"-menu. A small requester will appear. Click "Clear song only", so that you could use the samples in memory. You can choose a suitable sample with Shift and cursor left/right-keys. Playing happens with letter and number keys so that Q or Z is C, 2 or S is C#, W or X is D, etc. The keys are in the same order as in the piano. There are three octaves and two of them are in use at a time. You can change them with F1 and F2-keys or with "Oct"-gadget located in the upper right corner of the screen. When you want to edit, click "Edit"-gadget. Then you can place notes in this block. You can move the cursor with cursor keys, of course. You can delete a note or just leave a space with DEL-key. There are of course four audio channels. If you want to listen this block, select "Play block". "Stop playing" will stop it. When you have finally finished your first block, you can create another one. Click "New Blck"-gadget to create a new block. You can move to it by clicking "Next"-gadget of "Move to:". An easier way is Shift-cursor down. It's sometimes necessary to switch off some channels. It is possible with four "Chnls"-gadgets or numbers 1-4 of numeric keypad. "Continue block" will begin to play block from cursor. If you're playing a song, this block will begin to loop forever. "Continue song" will continue playing the song from the block pointed by the playing-sequence window. If you want to delete a block from the end of the song, you can select "Remove last block" from "Block"-menu. You can program the sequence of blocks in the song with six gadgets located on the right side of the screen. On the left side of the gadgets is a small window. There is the number of the block playing at the moment and the numbers of the previous and the next block. You can scan the playing sequence with two arrow-gadgets. With two gadgets right of the arrow-gadgets, you can move quickly to the beginning and end of the song. The changing of the playing sequence is possible with + and - gadgets. If you want to add a block to the sequence, move to the last number and click the arrow-down gadget, then click +. If you'd like to remove the last one, move to the last number, click the arrow-down gadget, then click - gadget. You can modify the shadowed number with + and - gadgets. You can use + gadget only to the highest block (You can't define block number 9, if you don't have ten blocks!). Samples: For easy loading of samples (instruments), MED reads a file named MED_paths during start-up (if it exists). This file includes the information where to find the samples and their repeat/repeat length (Presets in SoundTracker). It is easy to edit this file with some text editor e.g. MicroEMACS. MED can also load IFF-samples. You don't need repeat/rep.len.-numbers with them. The format of this file is following: *ST-01: <- First an asterisk, then the directory name Aligator <- The name of the sample. No spaces! AnalogString::3326/4970 <- If you want to specify repeat/repeat length, Asia::480/5362 type two colons, repeat number, slash, and .... repeat length. WoodBlock WowBass *Disk:samples/ <- Remember to type a slash after dir name Sample1 Sample2 MED_paths-file must be located in the current directory or the S:-directory when starting the program. There can be 30 samples in memory. You can scan them with "Previous" and "Next"-gadgets (or easier...Shift + cursor right/left). When you want to load the sample, type its name on the string gadget under "Load sample"-gadget. Then press Return or click "Load sample". The sample will load (if you haven't done any mistakes). You can alter the setting of the sample with "Change settings" of "Sample"-menu. You can set the volume of the sample, its repeat beginning offset and length. You'll also see the length of the sample in bytes. Repeat means that you can loop some portion of the sample forever. Repeat is the offset of the beginning of the loop and Repeat length is the length of the loop (in bytes). If you have loaded a sample which you don't need any more, you can remove it by selecting "Remove sample" from "Sample"-menu. "Save raw sample" will save the sample as raw data without IFF-chunks. If you don't know what it means, don't worry. Then you'll never need this option. Filter: With "Filter"-gadget (on the left side of the screen) you can switch off the low-pass-filter in A500/2000/2500-models. There will be some distortion but usually the sound improves considerably. Try it. The state of the filter will be saved with songs. Editing options: There are some options that will make editing easier. One of them is "2×space" under "Edit"-gadget. When you turn it on, there will be a double space between the notes entered. It'll help you when composing melodies etc. The rest of them are in the "Block"-menu: Cut track will copy the track where the cursor is located into the buffer and clears the track. Copy track only copies the track Paste track copies the track from the buffer to the track under cursor. Cut block copies all the four tracks to the buffer and clears the block Copy block copies the tracks into the buffer Paste block copies the buffer to the current block There are many different shortcuts. There's a list at the end of this file. Colors: This is a feature not found in most professional music packages. You can change the screen colors!!!!! They will be saved with the song. Choose "Set colors" from "Misc."-menu. A color requester will appear. It's probably familiar to you. "Reset colors" will reset the colors. Guy: This "feature" is the most unique one found in this program! Jumping guy! If you are a serious person, you can select "Don't jump" from "Guy"-submenu of "Misc."-menu and forget the whole thing! If you choose "Every 8. note", the guy I have named "Topi" will jump in every 8th note. A more interesting option is "Sample ctrl". Then you can select the samples that cause Topi to jump. When you've selected this option, search a suitable sample (usually drums) and press the small gadget on the right side of the "Load sample"-gadget. You can select as many samples as you want. Topi will jump when any of the selected samples will be played. All these options will be saved with songs. Tempo: You can choose the tempo for you song with "Set tempo" of "Project"-menu. Choose it and a requester will appear. With the proportional gadget you can choose the tempo. If it is very fast, the screen updating will slow down and it begins to "jump". Slides/note means the number of up/down-slides during one note. Choose 5 if you want to play SoundTracker songs. Otherwise select 6. Effects: MED can create several different effects: slides up and down, changing the volume, vibrato, arpeggio and changing the tempo. As you have probably noticed, there are four numbers after the note name. You can modify them in edit mode. The first number is the number of the sample. It can be in range 0-U. If it's 0, the note will be played with the same sample as the previous note. The second number is the number of the effect. It can be from 0 to F. Number Effect 0 If the last two numbers are 0, no effect, otherwise arpeggio. 1 Slide up 2 Slide down 3 Vibrato 4-B Reserved for future expansion C Change volume D,E Crescendo,diminuendo F Set tempo The last two numbers contain more information about the effect, e.g. a new tempo. Arpeggio (0) It's possible to create chords with one audio channel. It is done by changing the pitch of the note very fast (6 times/note). MED can use the pitches of three notes at a time. If both of the righthand-side numbers are 0, there'll be no effect. If not, the effect will be determined as follows: E.g. The arpeggio of the major chord is 47 (or 74), because the second note of the chord is 4 half steps from the first note and the third note is 7 half steps above the first note. G-2 E-2 C-2 G-2 E-2 C-2 (MED will play the arpeggio from up to down) \_____________________/ 1 note C-2 C#2 D-2 D#2 E-2 F-2 F#2 G-2 G#2 A-2 A#2 H-2 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B \_______________|___________/ | Major chord Slide up (1) Slides the note up 6 * (two numbers on the right side) periods. (or 5 * (2 numbers on the right side) if set in tempo-requester). Period is a pitch of the note used directly by Amiga audio hardware. Here's a table of periods for notes if samples are digitized with the same frequency as the samples included. MED uses these values. Octave Note 1 2 3 C 856 428 214 C# 808 404 202 D 762 381 190 D# 720 360 180 E 678 339 170 F 640 320 160 F# 604 302 151 G 570 285 143 G# 538 269 135 A 508 254 127 A# 480 240 120 H 453 226 113 How to use this table? For example: You want a nice slide from C-2 to G-2. C-2's period is 428 and G-2's 285. So we must slide it 143 steps up. Let's divide it by six: 143/6=23.833333... rounded to 24. If we wanted to do this slide in one note, it would be C-2 x118 because 24 is (hex)18. Because the note was slided actually 24*6=144 steps, the final note is a little untuned, but not many people can notice it. If you liked to make the slide a bit slower, you could do it for example: C-2 110C C-2 1106 --- 010C or --- 0106 --- 0106 --- 0106 Slide down (2) Just like slide up except this one slides it down. Vibrato (3) Vibrato changes the period of the note between two frequencies. The first is the normal period of the note and the other is the normal period plus the last two numbers: the bigger the number, the bigger the vibrato. E.g. C-2 1305 would change the period between 428 and 428-5=423. Volume (C) This one sets the volume of the note. The volume can be a number between 0 and 63. This is not a hex number. In fact it's a BCD-number, but you don't have to worry about it. Example: C-2 1C35 plays the note with volume 35 D-3 1000 --- 0C00 suddenly the note disappears E#1 1C10 <- begin quietly --- 0C63 <- to full volume Slide volume (cresc., dim.) (D) This effect does the crescendo/diminuendo, with formula Dxy If x > 0 crescendo 6 * x units. else diminuendo 6 * y units. Examples: C-3 1000 --- 0D02 <- diminuendo 6*2 = 12 units D#2 2000 --- 0D10 <- crescendo 6*1 = 6 units E-1 5000 --- 0D45 <- crescendo 24 units, number five is not used Effect E works like D. It is provided for SoundTracker compatibility. Set tempo (F) This command sets the tempo. It can also cause moving to the next block. This command is NOT SoundTracker-compatible. The two righthand-side numbers are the new tempo. This is a hex number. If they are 0, the song pointer will move to the next block of the sequence. Examples: C-3 8F20 <- New tempo 32 (hex 20 = dec 32) F-2 1F00 <- Move to the next block. This makes it possible to create 3/4-songs or upbeat. Here's a table for SoundTracker to MED-conversion: SoundTracker MED F07 F1B F06 F20 F05 F2F F04 F35 F03 F40 F02 F6A F01 FD4 About MED: MED is entirely written in C (Lattice 5.02). It works with all 680x0 processors and probably with all the new versions of the OS. It supports multitasking, uses hardware directly only with the filter, also loads songs made with SoundTracker and SoundFX (can't play SoundFX's effects). It loads IFF 8SVX-samples. You can click in the title bar area to get the title bar. The screen updating will stop to allow other processes to run faster. Click anywhere on MED screen to remove the title bar. You may freely distibute MED. Please don't sell it. Please copy ALL files included with MED (instructions etc.) I want to develop MED!!! Please tell me anything what you'd like to see in the next version of MED. Send all complaints, wishes, comments, bug reports etc. to: Teijo Kinnunen Oksantie 19 SF-86300 OULAINEN FINLAND Here are the keyboard shortcuts: Key Effect F1 Use octaves 1 and 2 F2 Use octaves 2 and 3 F3 Copy three effect numbers from the upper note F6 Cursor to line 0 F7 Cursor to line 16 F8 Cursor to line 32 F9 Cursor to line 48 F10 Cursor to line 63 DEL Erase this note, if the cursor on any number, zero it. Help About MED...click it to remove it Keypad 1-4 Channels 1-4 on/off Cursor up Cursor up Cursor down Cursor down! Cursor left Cursor left!! Cursor right Cursor right!!! Shift+Cursor left Previous sample Shift+Cursor right Next sample Alt+Cursor left Cursor to the previous track Alt+Cursor right Cursor to the next track Shift+Cursor up Previous block Shift+Cursor down Next block Alt+Cursor up Move to first block Alt+Cursor down Move to last block Shift+Alt+Cursor left If sample is > F, move to sample F, otherwise 0 Shift+Alt+Cursor right If sample is < F, move to sample F, otherwise U Left-Amiga+P Play song Left-Amiga+B Play block Left-Amiga+C Continue song Left-Amiga+S Stop playing Left-Amiga+F Filter off/on Left-Amiga+I Activate the gadget of the sample name Shift+Left-Amiga+I Clear and activate the gadget of the sample name Left-Amiga+J Set Topi (the guy) to jump when this sample is played And the following menu short-cuts: Right-Amiga+S Save song Right-Amiga+L Load song Right-Amiga+T Set tempo Right-Amiga+Q Quit Right-Amiga+D Cut track Right-Amiga+C Copy track Right-Amiga+V Paste track Right-Amiga+I Change settings Finally...about the string in the middle of the screen: N:01/05 B:02/03 S:1 | | | | \sample number | | | | | | | the number of the last block | | | | | the number of the current block | | | the number of blocks in the playing sequence | the number of the current block in the playing sequence