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- Renaissance '92
- presents
-
- Composer 669 v1.1
- (c) 1992, Tran
-
- The first 8 channel
- digital composer/player
- for the PC.
-
-
- Disclaimer:
-
- Composer 669 is Copyright 1992 by the author Tran (a.k.a. Tomasz Pytel).
- You are free to distribute the unregistered version of this composer and its
- documentation in any maner you choose. Including uploading it to BBSs,
- distributing through a software house, or including in any commercial
- package, provided that all the files are included and nothing has been
- modified. No fee may be charged for the composer itself other than the cost
- of the media on which it is distributed and any other small misc details the
- total of which shall not exceed $5.00. (This does not include the fee for
- the commercial product if any). This software is provided AS-IS. The author
- of this software will not be liable for any damages caused in any manner by
- the use of this software. By using Composer 669 you agree to all these
- terms.
-
-
- Contents:
-
- 1-A - Introduction
- 1-B - Requirements
- 1-B-1 - Memory
-
- 2-A - General overview
- 2-B - Composer colors
- 2-C - Configuration file
- 2-D - Directories
- 2-E - Command line options
- 2-F - List of keys
-
- 3-A - Instruments
- 3-A-1 - Loading and saving them
- 3-A-2 - Instrument loops
- 3-B - The song message
- 3-C - The status bars
- 3-D - The musical keyboard
- 3-E - SBPro mixer
-
- 4-A - Patterns
- 4-A-1 - Pattern tempo
- 4-A-2 - Order list
- 4-A-3 - Pattern breaks
- 4-B - Toggling channels on/off
- 4-C - Notes
- 4-D - Special commands
- 4-E - Blocks
-
- 5-A - Playing songs
- 5-B - Tracking songs
- 5-C - Saving and loading songs
-
- 6-A - Misc
- 6-B - Renaissance
-
-
- Note: All values in the composer are in hexadecimal unless otherwise
- specified. If you do not know hexadecimal, dont worry. You will pick it up
- very quickly just by looking at the number bars in the composer.
-
-
- 1-A. Introduction.
-
- Composer 669 is an 8 channel digital music composer/player. Thats right,
- digital. It uses digital samples as instruments in music pieces and mixes
- the output in real time, 8 channels into 1 on a mono system, and 8 channels
- into 2 on a stereo system. This results in much higher quality music than
- FM, and since the music is stored as instruments and notes, it takes up much
- less space than a full track digital music piece. Things like this have
- existed before, mostly on Amiga systems, and mostly in 4 channel versions.
- But lately, the technique of real time digital mixing has found its way to
- the PC world. This is the first player for the PC that gives you 8 channels
- to work with. The quality of the music you can create with this composer is
- very good to approaching professional level.
-
-
- 1-B. Requirements.
-
- To run this composer you must have the following hardware:
- 1) A 386 or better computer.
- 2) 2 megz RAM. (1408k extended).
- 3) A VGA card.
- 4) A Sound Blaster or a Sound Blaster Pro sound card. (On an SB you will
- get mono music, on an SBPro you will get stereo).
- 5) DOS 3.0 or above.
-
- When you run this composer, you must not have any memory managers or any
- other programs that run the system in V86 mode, and you must not have DOS
- loaded high. The best configuration would be a clean system, but you can
- experiment to see what TSRs and device drivers you can have in memory.
-
- 1-B-1. Memory.
-
- This composer requires you to have at least 2 megz RAM in your system, if
- you have more it will not be used. This is done to ensure that all 699
- musics can be played on all systems. But dont worry, you will probably
- never even fill up the first half of the 1408k assigned for samples. You
- must also have 640k base memory in your system, not a k less! If the
- composer tells you that you do not have enough low memory in the system, it
- is because of 1 of 2 reasons:
- 1) You actually do not have enough free memory. (But on a 640k system,
- even with lots of TSRs, this is highly unlikely).
- 2) Your system reports that you do not have 640k. If you know you have
- 640k, then this is caused by one of 2 things:
- 1) You have your BIOS scratch RAM option set to number 2 in your
- CMOS. Run your setup program and set it to 1 if this is the case.
- 2) You have a virus in your system which locates itself in your
- Top-of-Memory. A virus would be doing this because no other type
- of program, to my knowledge, does this. A friend of mine ran the
- program and it told him he did not have enough low memory, so he
- scanned his system and found he'd been infected with the Stoned
- virus.
-
-
- Note: Before going on any further, if you have not yet ran the program, then
- read the file BUG.DOC and then run the DEMO batch file. You may have to
- clear up your bootup configuration. After seeing what you just got, return
- to this doc and read it.
-
-
- 2-A. General overview.
-
- Composer 669 lets you create and play 8 channel digital musics. Each music
- can have up to 64 instruments using a maximum of 1408k memory. The max
- size of each sample (the words instrument and sample will be used
- interchangably in this doc) is 1 meg. Each music can have up to 128
- patterns, a pattern a small chunk of music and it will be explained in more
- detail later in this doc. Each pattern is made up of 64 rows, each of which
- can contain a note to be played on each of the 8 channels. Instruments
- are loaded and saved as pure digital files, and you can also load and save
- .VOC files as instruments. The composer runs in VGA 80x50 text mode, and I
- tried to fit as much information as possible onto the screen. You will do
- almost all your editing on this screen. All the commands in the composer are
- usually available in 1 keystroke. The mixing and output is done at 12kHz.
-
-
- 2-B. Composer colors.
-
- The color setup of the composer can be changed to whatever you like. At any
- one time there are 8 color sets for you to switch among instantly, and any
- color in any of these sets can be changed to anything you like. To edit the
- composer colors, hit ALT-F10 from the main screen. A window will appear
- with the 8 color sets you have to choose from, with the currently selected
- set highlighted. If you are running the composer for the first time, you
- will have the 8 default color sets to choose from. To change the active
- color set, press up and down on the cursor keypad, the colors will be
- changed instantly to those of the set you have selected. You can change any
- color in any of the sets. Do this by using the left and right arrow keys to
- move the pointer on the right to the color you wish to change. Then you can
- change that color by using the keypad keys 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9. You can
- select the RGB values for that color. The values range from 0 (none) to
- 3F (full) value for the red, green, and blue components of the color. You
- can also change the name of the active color set by pressing SPACE or ENTER
- and then typing in a new name. Press ESC to exit color editing. But if you
- want the changes you made to remain for the next time you run the composer,
- you must save the configuration file by pressing ALT-F11.
-
-
- 2-C. Configuration file.
-
- The composer will run with or without a configuration file. You can create
- this file by pressing ALT-F11 on the main screen of the composer. This file
- will be created in whatever directory the composer is in, this may or may
- not be the same directory you are running it from. Every time the composer
- is started, it looks for this configuratin file in the directory COMPOSD.EXE
- is located in. If it does not find it, it runs with the default values for
- everything and any command line options you used (command line options will
- be explained later). If the file is found, it is loaded and used to set up
- the composer. Any command line options that you used will be checked after
- the config file is loaded so they will override any config options.
- The information the config file stores is the following:
- 1) The mixer settings for the SBPro (to be discussed later).
- 2) The song and instrument directories.
- 3) The color sets and the active set.
-
- You can delete the config file if you wish, there will be no ill effects to
- the composer other than loosing any info that was in the file.
-
-
- 2-D. Directories.
-
- The composer uses 3 basic directories. Its own base directory (usually
- \COMPOSD). A .669 song file directory (usually \COMPOSD\669). And a sample
- directory (usually \COMPOSD\INS). The base directory is always set to the
- directory the composer resides in and is used only to save the config file.
- The song directory is the directory the composer will load and save .669
- music files to. The instrument directory is the directory the composer loads
- and saves all instruments to. The song and instrument directories must be
- specified before any of their respective file types are loaded or saved.
- They can be specified in the composer by pressing F9 to enter the song
- directory, and F10 for the instrument directory. They will automatically
- be loaded from a configuration file if one exists. You can also specify
- them from the command line, if you do specify them on the command line, they
- will override the config file.
-
-
- 2-E. Command line options.
-
- There are 5 command line options you can specify, they are:
- /s - Sets the song directory to the string directly following this switch.
- /i - Sets the instrument directory.
- /f - Loads the music file directly following this switch. You must not
- specify a path name or extention, the music will be loaded from the
- song directory from the config file or the /s switch. If there is
- no config file and you did not specify the /s switch, the composer
- will look in the current directory for the file.
- /p - After the music is loaded, it will be played once and then the
- composer will quit to DOS. This is useful for playing groups of musics
- from a batch file.
- /c - Sets the color scheme to the number following this switch (0-7),
- overriding the default active color set.
-
- Example:
- COMPOSD /S\MUSIC /I\VOCS /FMUSIC1 /C4 /P
-
- This command line will set the song directory to '\MUSIC', the instrument
- directory to '\VOCS'. Then it will load the file 'MUSIC1.669' from the
- song directory and play it, when the song finishes it will quit to DOS.
- And it will do all this in color set #4 which is by default 'Swamp Green'
-
-
- 2-F. List of keys.
-
- This is a list of all the keys as would appear in the composer by pressing
- ?. It is provided only as a reference, at this point you will not know what
- they mean but you may want to refer to it as you read this doc.
-
- ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- Notes...
- ┌┘ k - key on keypad
- │ s - only on SBPro
- │ a - available when tracking music
- │───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- │Common:
- │ ? - get list of keys
- k , - increase, decrease editing voice
- k *,/ - increase, decrease editing octave
- \,= - increase, decrease editing volume
- k Home,End - increase, decrease pattern tempo
- k , - increase, decrease editing sample
- k PgUp,PgDn - increase, decrease order
- k +,- - increase, decrease pattern
- k 5 - set editing volume
- F1 - goto instrument edit
- F2 - goto pattern edit
- F3 - goto order edit
- F4 - show info
- a F5 - play whole song
- a F6 - play pattern
- a F7 - play from order
- a F8 - stop playback
- F9 - change song directory
- F10 - change instrument directory
- F11 - load new song
- F12 - save current song
- ALT F1 - clear all instruments
- ALT F2 - clear whole pattern (not all patterns, just 1)
- ALT F3 - clear whole order
- ALT F4 - edit message
- ALT F5 - track song
- ALT F6 - track pattern
- ALT F7 - track from order
- ALT F8 - clear whole song
- ALT F9 - edit song loop
- ALT F10 - edit composer colors
- ALT F11 - save configuration info
- ALT F12 - change song filename
- a ALT 1-8 - toggle channels 0-7 on and off
- ALT X - exit program
- CTRL F4 - clear message
- as CTRL A,Z - increase, decrease master volume left
- as CTRL S,X - increase, decrease master volume right
- as CTRL D,C - increase, decrease voc volume left
- as CTRL F,V - increase, decrease voc volume right
- as CTRL G,B - increase, decrease line volume left
- as CTRL H,N - increase, decrease line volume right
- as CTRL J,M - increase, decrease mic volume
-
- Z,S,X,D,C,V,G,B,H,N,J,M - play notes C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G,G#,A,A#,B
- on current voice using current octave,
- instrument, and volume
- Q,2,W,3,E,R,5,T,6,Y,7,U - play those same notes one octave higher
- ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- Edit Order:
- ,,CTRL ,CTRL ,Home,End,PgUp,PgDn - move cursor
- [ - edit order
- ] - edit tempo for pattern in order
- Ins - insert order
- Del - delete order
- ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- Edit Instrument:
- ,,CTRL ,CTRL ,Home,End,PgUp,PgDn - move cursor
- [ - edit loop begin for instrument
- ] - edit loop end for instrument
- Ins - insert blank instrument
- Del - delete an instrument
- SPACE - load new instrument
- ENTER - change instrument filename
- ALT S - save instrument as a pure digital file
- ALT V - save instrument as a VOC file
- ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- Edit Pattern:
- ,,CTRL ,CTRL ,Home,End,PgUp,PgDn - move cursor
- , - increase, decrease current voice
- .,SPACE - clear row of current channel
- [ - edit instrument
- ] - edit volume
- ENTER - set pattern break here
- BS - enter command
- SHIFT BS - delete command
- ALT BS - set commands in block
- CTRL BS - delete commands in block
- Ins - insert row
- Del - delete row
- ` - pickup instrument and volume
- ALT J - jump to pattern
- ALT B - mark beginning of block
- ALT E - mark end of block
- ALT L - mark whole channel
- ALT C - copy block to buffer
- ALT Z - clear block
- ALT O - overwrite from buffer
- ALT U - unmark block
- ALT Q - block up an octave
- ALT A - block down an octave
- ALT W - block up a semitone
- ALT S - block down a semitone
- ALT V - set volume in block
- ALT I - set instrument in block
- ALT M - copy entire pattern to another pattern
-
- Z,S,X,D,C,V,G,B,H,N,J,M - enter notes C,C#,D,D#,E,F,F#,G,G#,A,A#,B
- on current voice using current octave,
- instrument, and volume
- Q,2,W,3,E,R,5,T,6,Y,7,U - enter those same notes one octave higher
- ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- Edit Message:
- , , , - move cursor
- ESC, ENTER - leave message edit
- all other keys - enter message
- ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- Edit Colors:
- , - change active color set
- , - change selected color
- ESC - leave color edit
- SPACE, ENTER - edit name of color set
- k PgUp, Home - increase, decrease selected color red value
- k , - increase, decrease selected color green value
- k PgDn, End - increase, decrease selected color blue value
- k - set selected color red value
- k 5 - set selected color green value
- k - set selected color blue value
-
-
- 3-A. Instruments.
-
- The instruments used by this composer are digital samples. That is, the are
- real instruments digitized. Since they are digital, they sound much better
- than FM like the Adlib uses. And because they are really digital samples,
- you can use anything as an instrument, voices, sound FX, or any digital
- sample. You can have up to 64 different instruments, as long as the sum of
- their sizes does not exceed 1408k. The maximum size of a sample you can have
- is 1 megabyte, but you will probably never use instruments larger than 128k,
- and most of the time you will probably use instruments in the range of 1 -
- 5k.
-
- 3-A-1. Loading and saving instruments.
-
- Instruments are loaded and saved from the instrument edit menu. To get to
- this menu, press F1 in the composer. You can move the highlighted bar around
- with the cursor keys and PgUp, PgDn ect... (all the keys are listed in the
- help in the composer, to get the help press ? on the main screen). The
- column of numbers on the left of the instrument names are the instrument
- numbers. To load an instrument press the space bar. If you have an
- instrument directory specified and there are files in it, you will be
- presented with a file list. Choose the file you want to load. If the file
- has the extention .VOC, it will be loaded as a VOC file, that is the header
- will be stripped and only the actual digital data will be loaded. A VOC file
- will be loaded correctly if the following conditions are true:
- 1) It consists of one block.
- 2) It is not packed.
- 3) It has a standard VOC header.
-
- If you wish to digitize VOCs and load them as instruments, the guideline is
- that the sample, played at around 8740Hz, should be the middle C of the
- instrument, or whatever youre digitizing.
-
- Anything that does not have a .VOC extention will be loaded straight as a
- pure digital file. Since there is no way of distinguishing pure digital
- sample files from other files, you will be able to load any file as an
- instrument. Although any files other than digital files will probably sound
- like garbage.
-
- You can save any instrument as either a pure digital file or a .VOC file.
- But you must make sure that the instrument name is a valid DOS filename.
- Since some people like to replace instrument names with messages, you may
- have to rename the instrument first (press enter on the instrument) to a
- DOS filename. If youre saving the sample as a VOC file, any extention the
- instrument had will be replaced with .VOC. The VOC will be unpacked and the
- sampling rate will be 8740Hz (which should be the middle C of the sample).
-
- 3-A-2. Instrument loops.
-
- Sometimes you may want an instrument to keep playing over and over without
- stopping, like for instance you may want a string instrument to keep playing
- a note after it has been struck. You can do this with loops. In the
- instrument edit screen, there are 3 numbers following the instrument name.
- They are: the loop beginning, the loop end, and the length of an instrument.
- If the loop end is numerically less than the instrument length, the sample
- will loop over and over. After the instrument is played, when it reaches
- the loop end, the instrument will be reset to the loop beginning, that is
- the offset within the instrument will be set to the value of the loop begin.
- The default values for the loop beginning and loop end are 0 and FFFFF
- respectively. Since the loop end is FFFFF, no matter how large the
- instrument you load, it will always be smaller than the loop end number.
- Examine how the loop is used in the demo song.
-
-
- 3-B. The song message.
-
- In the middle upper section of the screen, there is a black rectangle. This
- is the song message area. You can enter any text you wish in this area and
- it will be saved in the 669 music file along with the music. This is just
- a little area where you can put some info like the name of the song, author,
- date of creation, ect... But you can put anyting in here including leaving
- it blank. To edit this message press ALT-F4 from the main screen. Use the
- cursor keys to move around and type in text. Pressing ENTER or ESC will
- leave the message editing. Pressing CTRL-F4 on the main screen will clear
- the message.
-
-
- 3-C. The status bars.
-
- There are 3 status bars on the screen. One at the top of the screen, one at
- the bottom, and a vertical row of values in the middle of the screen. The
- status bar at the top is the simplest. It contains the Copyright notice,
- the sound card detected in the system, and the filename of the song youre
- currently editing. The status bar at the bottom contains 6 values:
- 1) Tempo - The basic tempo of the pattern youre currently editing.
- 2) Octave - The base octave for entering and playing the notes.
- 3) Voice - The current voice selected for editing and playing on.
- 4) Pattern - The pattern youre editing, it is displayed in the largest
- part of the screen just above this status bar.
- 5) Order - The location of the cursor in the order list.
- 6) Mem - This value is in decimal and it represents the amount of
- memory taken up by the currently loaded samples.
-
- If you dont know what some of these refer to, dont worry, ill get to that
- soon.
-
- In the middle of the screen there is a group of 6 other values, they are:
- 1) Vol - The current volume selected for entering and playing notes.
- 2) Ord - This and the next 2 values are used to give you information
- when music is playing. This value is the order number in the
- order list which is currently playing.
- 2) Pat - This is the pattern that is being played.
- 3) Row - This is the row in the pattern that is currently playing.
- 4) Loop - This is the order to which the song will loop after reaching
- the end.
- 5) Inst - This is the instrument number youre currently editing and
- playing with.
-
-
- 3-D. The musical keyboard.
-
- For entering notes and playing instruments, the keyboard(computer) is
- partitioned a little like the keyboard(musical). That is, you have 2 full
- octaves on the keyboard to enter notes with. Here is a diagram:
-
- C# D# F# G# A# C# D# F# G# A#
- ┌─┬─┬─┬─┬──┬──┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬──┬──┬─┬─┬─┬──┬──┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┐
- │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
- │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
- │ │S│ │D│ │ │G│ │H│ │J│ │ │2│ │3│ │ │5│ │6│ │7│ │
- │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
- │ └┬┘ └┬┘ │ └┬┘ └┬┘ └┬┘ │ └┬┘ └┬┘ │ └┬┘ └┬┘ └┬┘ │
- │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
- │Z │ X │ C │ V │ B │ N │ M │ Q │ W │ E │ R │ T │ Y │ U│
- │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
- └──┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴──┘
- C D E F G A B C D E F G A B
-
- The lower keys represent the base octave and the upper keys play one
- octave above that. When you hit one of these keys, the appropriate note
- will be played using the instrument indicated by Inst in the middle group
- of stats. If this happens to be a null instrument, no sound will be
- generated. The note will be played on the channel indicated by Voice in the
- bottom status bar. And the octave will be the octave indicated by Octave
- in the same status bar, or 1 octave higher, depending on what key was
- pressed. The note will be played at a volume set by Vol in the middle stat
- group (a volume of 0 is silence).
-
-
- 3-E. SBPro mixer.
-
- If you have a Sound Blaser Pro, there will be a group of 7 vertical bars
- on the screen to the left of the middle stats group. These are the volumes
- of the SBPro mixer in the following order from left to right: Master volume
- left, right, Voc volume left, right, Line-In volume left, right, and mic
- volume. You can adjust these values to whatever you like using CTRL and one
- of the following keys: A,Z,S,X,D,C,F,V,G,B,H,N,J,and M. These keys are
- paired, upper and lower, to increase and decrease the volume of their
- respective channels. A and Z correspond to Master volume left, S and X to
- Master volume right, D and C to Voc volume left, ect... When you save a
- configuration file, these values are stored in it and the composer will
- set the mixer to those values whenever it is ran. These volumes only adjust
- the final output level of the music, they have absolutely nothing to do
- with the music itself.
-
- A misc note, on the SBPro the music will be in stereo, channels 1,3,5, and 7
- will be played on the left and channels 2,4,6, and 8 will be played on the
- right.
-
-
-
- 4-A. Patterns.
-
- Patterns are a basic unit of music in this composer. They are groups of 64
- notes on all 8 channels. Patterns make it easier to work on your music and
- to repeat certain parts of it in playback. The largest part of the screen is
- dedicated to editing patterns. On the lower half of the screen, you can see
- 32 rows of a pattern at a time. The numbers on the left are the row numbers
- within the pattern.
-
- 4-A-1. Pattern tempo
-
- Each pattern has its own individual basic tempo, that is a tempo that the
- notes in the pattern will be played at. This basic tempo is displayed in the
- bottom status bar for the pattern youre currently editing. It is also
- displayed in the order list for each pattern in this list. The tempo can be
- changed in the pattern itself if necessary through a special command
- (special commands will be explained later). You can increase and decrease
- the basic tempo of the pattern youre editing by pressing 7 and 1 on the
- numeric keypad. Lower values are faster, higher is slower.
-
- 4-A-2. Order list.
-
- The order list is the order in which the patterns of a music will be played.
- It is displayed in the upper right corner of the screen. There are 3 columns
- of numbers. The first column contains the order numbers, when setting the
- loop for a song, refer to this number. The second column are the actual
- pattern numbers to be played. The third column are the tempos for their
- respective patterns (the second column). You can edit the patterns and the
- tempos by moving to this section of the screen with F3, the pressing either
- [, or ] to edit the pattern number and tempo for that pattern. For example,
- if the list looks something like this:
-
- 00 00 4
- 01 02 4
- 02 01 3
- 03 01 3
- 04 03 4
- 05 04 3
- 06 ∙∙ ∙
- 07 ∙∙ ∙
-
- In playback, pattern 0 will be played first at its tempo of 4. Then pattern
- 2 at its tempo of 4, then pattern 1 will be played twice at its tempo of 3,
- then pattern 3, then finally pattern 4. After pattern 4 is played, the song
- wil loop back to order number 0 and start over. You can specify what order
- the song loop will loop to by specifying the Loop value in the middle stat
- group, you do this by pressing ALT-F9.
-
- 4-A-3. Pattern breaks.
-
- When a pattern is played, normally it is played all the way through from row
- 0 to row 3F. But you can specify where a pattern is to be played to by
- setting its break-point to something other than 3F. The break-point is
- displayed in the vertical column to the right of the row numbers of the
- pattern. A -B- in this column indicates the location of the break-point for
- the current pattern. The break point is the last row in the pattern that
- will be played before going on to the next pattern, thus if you set a break
- point at row 0, only row 0 of the pattern will be played whenever the
- pattern is played.
-
-
- 4-B. Toggling channels on/off.
-
- You can toggle the 8 channels on and off. The status of the channels is
- displayed right above the pattern edit part of the screen. Normally they are
- all On. But you can shut off any or all of the channels by pressing ALT-1
- through ALT-8, these correspond to channels 1-8. When you toggle a channel
- off, its status light will change from On to Off. Anything that is played
- on a channel that is off will not be heard, including just playing the
- instruments from the keyboard.
-
-
- 4-C. Notes
-
- Ok, now for entering the notes. If you load up the demo song, you will see
- a whole bunch of notes and numbers in the pattern edit area. These are the
- notes to be played along with other information like the instrument to use,
- the volume, and any special commands. The notes have the following format:
-
- C 200Fd1
- ├─┘├┘│├┘
- │ │ │This is the special command to apply to the note.
- │ │ │
- │ │ This is the volume at which the note will be played.
- │ │
- │ This is the instrument number to use.
- │
- This is the note to play and the octave to play it on.
-
- You enter notes by moving to the pattern edit screen with F2, then entering
- notes with the keyboard just as you would play them. When you enter a note,
- The note, octave, instrument, and volume will be entered. No special
- commands, you must specifically enter any special commands to be applied to
- the note. After you have entered a note, you may edit the instrument or
- volume to be used by pressing either [ or ] (same keys as in the order edit
- but you are no longer in the order edit, you are in the pattern edit).
- After specifying the new sample or volume number, the current editing values
- for either sample or volume will be set to the value you just entered. You
- can also change these values manually by using the keys 8, 2, 5 (on the
- keypad), =, and \. To find out exactly what these keys do check the key list
- in the composer by pressing ?. If you press ` on a note, that notes
- instrument and volume values will be copied to the current editing values.
-
- You do not have to enter a note though, you may enter only a volume, or only
- a special command, or both. If only a volume is specified then the volume
- of the output for that channel will be changed to that value. Thus you can
- set an instrument to slowly fade in by first playing it at a volume of 0,
- then gradually increasing the values like this:
-
- D#3000∙∙ (No special command was specified).
- ∙∙∙∙∙1∙∙ (In the composer the instrument and volume numbers are displayed
- ∙∙∙∙∙2∙∙ in different colors so you dont get confused).
- ∙∙∙∙∙3∙∙
- ∙∙∙∙∙4∙∙ ect...
-
- If the instrument does not loop and it finished playing before the the song
- gets to the other volumes, they will have no effect.
-
-
- 4-D. Special commands.
-
- There are six special commands you can enter. To enter a special command hit
- Backspace in the pattern edit screen, enter a letter (a-f) then a number
- (1-F). The first 5 commands alter the way the note will be played, the
- sixth, 'f', changes the tempo in the pattern and has no effect on the note
- being played. All commands except 'c' can be specified as part of a note or
- alone. If they are specified alone, their effect starts where they were
- placed, not when the note was struck. If no instrument is playing on the
- channel where the command was encountered, there will be no effect (except
- for command 'f', it always changes the tempo). The commands continue to
- affect the way the instrument is played untill another note or command
- is encountered in the pattern (an 'f' command will cancel the effects of
- any previous command, but nothing cancels the effect of the 'f' command).
- The format of the commands is c#, where c is the command and # is the
- command value which is the user defined parameter for how much the command
- will affect the instrument. The commands are:
-
- a - Portamento up - This command will cause the frequency of the note to
- increase over time, the command value indicates how fast the pitch
- will increase. (For those of you who know what this means, the port
- is linear, not logarithmic).
-
- b - Portamento down - Same as 'a' but in the other direction.
-
- c - Port to note - This is the only command that requires there to be a
- note on the same line. This commands sets the note to portamento at
- the speed defined by the command value towards the note on the line.
- The instrument value of the note is ignored, but the volume is set
- to the volume in the note on this line. When the note reaches the
- destination note, the portamento is stopped and it continues playing
- at the destination note frequency.
-
- d - Frequency adjust - This command adjusts the frequency of the note
- currently playing a little bit. This is useful for when you have 2
- notes playing at the same pitch using the same instrument, use this
- command to adjust the frequency of one of the notes to make it sound
- a little more harmonic.
-
- e - Frequency vibrato - This command sets the frequency of the note that
- is playing to vibrate. The command value specifies how much to
- vibrato the note by.
-
- Note: A command value of 0 on any of the previous commands cancels the effect
- of any previous command and sets the note to play normally.
-
- f - Set tempo - Usually you will set the tempo for the patterns through
- their basic tempo. But there are times when you may want to change
- the tempo within a pattern. Use this command to do it. The tempo will
- remain at this tempo untill another set tempo command or untill
- another pattern is reached in the order list (even the same pattern
- that is playing now).
-
-
- 4-E. Blocks.
-
- When editinig a pattern, there are times when you have to reproduce whole
- blocks of notes. Reentering all the notes would be extremely cumbersome.
- You can do this very quickly in this composer by using the block commands.
- Mark the beginning and ending rows of a block with ALT-B and ALT-E. The
- highlighted section of the info bar (the one where the patter-break resides)
- displays the location of the marked block. The actual block is only defined
- for one channel, the channel in which the cursor is located. Use ALT-L to
- mark the entire channel, this is equivalent to setting the beginning of the
- block at row 0 and the end at row 3F.
-
- You can perform several functions on a block. Pressing ALT-Q increases the
- octave of all the notes in the block, ALT-A decreases the octave. ALT-W and
- ALT-S increase and decrease the notes in the block by a semitone. You can
- set the volume of all the notes in the block to the current editing volume
- by pressing ALT-V, you can do the same to the instrument with ALT-I. You can
- set or delete a special command for all the notes in the block by pressing
- ALT-Backspace or CTRL-Backspace. Pressing ALT-Z will clear everything in the
- block, and ALT-U unmarks the block.
-
- To copy the block press ALT-C. Now you have the block saved in a buffer, you
- can do anything you want to the original data including deleting it.
- Pressing ALT-O copies the contents of the buffer to the row and channel the
- cursor is currently on. If the size (in rows) of the data in the buffer
- exceeds the size that is left between the location of the cursor and the
- end of the pattern, only that much information will be copied, but the
- contents of the buffer will remain unchanged.
-
- For example, if you wanted to copy all the contents of channel 1 in pattern
- 0 to channel 3 in pattern 5, you would do the following:
- 1) Go to pattern 0 and move the cursor to channel 0.
- 2) Hit ALT-L to mark the entire channel.
- 3) Hit ALT-C to copy the contents of the marked block to the buffer.
- 4) Go to pattern 5 and move the cursor to row 0 and channel 3.
- 5) Hit ALT-O to copy the buffer to the pattern.
-
- To copy an entire pattern to another one, press ALT-M. You will be asked
- which pattern to copy to. The contents of the pattern you are editing will
- be copied to the pattern you specify, any data that was in that pattern will
- be destroyed.
-
-
-
- 5-A. Playing songs.
-
- To play a song, press F5. This will cause the composer to start playing the
- song that is currently in memory. Technically, playback will start at order
- 0 and continue untill a blank is found in the order list, the song will then
- loop to the order specified by Loop. If the order 0 is a blank, no playback
- will be started. While the song is playing you can do anything, including
- editing the song itself, the order list, instruments, colors ect... You can
- even load and save instruments, the config file, and you can save the song.
- If you load a new song however, the playback will be stopped. You cannot
- however play the instruments, if you try, no sound will be generated.
-
- You can start playback at any order you want, provided that there is a
- pattern to play in that order. To do this, move the cursor in the order edit
- screen to the order you want to start playback on and press F7. Playback
- will start at that order. If you do not want to switch to the order edit
- screen, you can use 9 and 6 on the numeric keypad to increase and decrease
- the order. The current location of the cursor is displayed in the bottom
- status bar as Order.
-
- You can also play one pattern individually. Press F6, the pattern played
- will be the one youre currently editing. There does not have to be any valid
- pattern numbers in the order list in order for this command to work, the
- entire list can be blank. The pattern youre editing will be played over and
- over. Again, you can do anything while the pattern is playing, including
- switching to another pattern and editing it.
-
- Pressing F8 causes any playback to stop.
-
-
- 5-B. Tracking songs.
-
- If you want to watch a song as its being played, you can use the keys
- ALT-F5, ALT-F6, or ALT-F7 to start playback. These keys work just like the
- same keys without ALT except that the composer will begin to track the music
- as its being played. You will see what notes in that pattern are playing.
- You cannot do everything you can when tracking as you could when just
- playing the song. The only keys that work are ALT-1 through ALT-8, the SBPro
- mixer setting keys, and F5 - F8. Pressing any other key causes you to drop
- out of tracking mode back to regular playback. Pressing F6 during tracking
- however, works a little differently. The pattern that is currently playing
- will be the one to start playing over and over, not the one you may be
- editing.
-
- If you press any one of the tracking keys during normal playback, they will
- merely start tracking the song where it is currently playing, that is the
- song will not be restarted or anything.
-
-
- 5-C. Saving and loading songs.
-
- To save or load songs you must have a song directory specified. Press F11
- to load a song. If you have the song directory specified and if there are
- and 669 songs in that directory, you will be presented with a list of them,
- just like when loading an instrument. Select the song you want to load and
- press enter. After it is loaded you can do anything to it, edit, play, ect..
-
- To save a song, you must first specify a song filename. If you loaded a song
- this will be the filename of the song, but if you created it from scratch,
- you will have to enter a filename. Press ALT-F12 to do this, you must
- specify a valid DOS filename and no extention. After you have the filename
- set, press F12 to save the song. Saving the song can only be done in the
- registered version of the composer however. So if you do not have a
- registered version, this composer is basically only a 669 music file player
- for you since you cannot save any songs you have done.
-
- What is saved in the song filename is all the instruments, the song message,
- and any patterns that appear in the order list. This is very important
- because if you create a lot of patterns, and you dont specify them in the
- order list, they will not be saved! Technically, all the patterns below
- and including the numerically highest pattern in the order list will be
- saved. So if you specify only patterns 0 and 3 in the order list, the
- patterns that will be saved are actually 0, 1, 2, and 3.
-
- Note: Whenever entering a number or string in the composer, you can press ESC
- to abort.
-
-
- 6-A. Misc.
-
- Composer 669 was coded entirely by Tran of Renaissance. It runs in 32bit
- protected mode, using a V86 task to access only the DOS file routines.
- I could not explain all the functions of all the keys in this doc (the
- closest thing is the Key list which simply lists all the keys). You will
- have to use the composer and experiment for yourself.
-
-
- 6-B. Renaissance.
-
- Renaissance is a small group started in December of 1991. We are basically
- a music oriented group, but we do games and demos and stuff. We eventually
- intend to start a software company and do games... A game we did a while ago
- and released as freeware was a big hit here in NY, Kaeon... Like I said,
- we did that game a while ago, our skill has improved greatly since then...
- Our next major release will probably be Kaeon ][. This one should totally
- blow away the first one...
-
- We would have released this composer as freeware also, but we need the
- money. You know, to buy equipment and stuff, and basically for when we do
- start the company legally... And we feel $20 is a fair price... if you dont
- think so, dont register it, its your choice...
-
- You can reach us on one of our BBSs:
-
- The Sound Barrier (718)979-6629, sysop Daredevil
- This is our home board and main distribution site...
-
- The Master Computer (516)437-6749, sysop The Master Com
- a distribution site for our stuff...
-
- Darkfyre's Layr (212)799-5910, sysop Darkfyre
- a distribution site for our stuff...
-
- Our members are:
- Tran - Coder, some muzik and grafix.
- C.C.Catch - Great Muzik, ANSI.
- Mosaic - Muzik, some grafix.
- RadioIsotope - KILLER GRAFIX & ANSI!!!
- Daredevil - Distribution, and other misc...
- Acid Crash - Coder.
-
- Thanx go out to all those who helped out testing this thing...
-
-