@node "New" AN INTRODUCTION TO OCTAMED SOUNDSTUDIO This is an introduction to OctaMED's main features: The manual cannot cover all the program's functions. However, if you discover anything in OctaMED that you're unsure how to use, just press the Help key for full instructions. On loading OctaMED, three windows should appear. Main Control provides access to some important functions, and Information displays useful information. The middle window is called the Tracker editor; this is where you usually create songs. [Screenshot of main screen] The best way to learn about creating an OctaMED song is to load in a demo song and examine it. To load a song, hold down the right mouse button and select Open from the Project menu (on the left-hand side of the title bar). A file requester appears; you'll encounter one often while using OctaMED. To listen to the loaded song, find the playing buttons on the left-hand side of the Main Control window. Click on the Play button beside Song. When you've had enough, click STOP or press the space bar. The Cont button continues the song from where it left off. Now let's examine the components which make up a song. THE COMPONENTS OF A SONG The instruments (Note: Shift- (for example) means hold down a Shift key and press the right arrow key.) The current instrument's details are displayed at the top of the Main Control window. 01 is its number, with it's its name and size in bytes. Select the next instrument (number 02) by pressing Shift-. Repeatedly press Shift- to view all the instruments in the song. Notice that not all instrument 'slots' (available spaces) have to be used by a song out of the possible 63, also notice that the numbering system used is unorthodox: 01 - 09, 0A - 0V, 10 - 19, 1A - 1V. 1V is the final instrument slot, the 63rd. OctaMED can use five different 'types' of instrument, and easily the most commonly used type is the sample. Samples are sounds from real-life, often created by feeding the sound into the computer from a sound source (e.g. tape recorder). All the instruments used in this song are samples. Repeatedly press Shift- until the instrument number becomes 01. Now let's try playing the instruments; this is done using the Amiga's keyboard. OctaMED arranges the keyboard into about 2½ octaves, laid out to resemble a two-tier piano keyboard. Piano keyboard layout: the notes of one octave | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |C#| |D#| | |F#| |G#| |A#| | <== Black keys (sharps) | +--+ +--+ | +--+ +--+ +--+ | | | | | | | | | | C | D | E | F | G | A | B | <== White keys (naturals) +---+----+---+---+----+---+---+ Amiga keyboard layout Lower octave Middle octave Upper half-octave | 2 3 5 6 7 | 9 0 = \ <== Black keys (sharps) | Q W E R T Y U | I O P [ ] <== White keys (naturals) | | S D G H J | L ; | <== Black keys (sharps) Z X C V B N M | , . / | <== White keys (naturals) Try playing notes with the keys listed above. For example, press the following keys in turn to play a C major scale: Z X C V B N M Q W E R T Y U I O P [ ] Use Shift- and Shift- to change the instrument that the notes are played on. The blocks A song is made up of several small pieces of music called "blocks". Blocks consist of many lines of information, and are displayed in the Tracker editor (the middle window). Only one block can be displayed at a time. All the blocks in this song contain 64 lines and 4 columns (or tracks). The lines are numbered 000 - 063 on the far left, and the tracks are numbered in small blue squares at the top of the window. Try using the and keys to scroll through the block. You can also do this by dragging the grey or white scroll bar at the far right of the Tracker editor. In the Information window, find the block status display (to the right of the B button). It will display *something* like: 6/25: Synth (part 2) In this example, block number 6 is currently being displayed in the Tracker editor; that is, it's the current block. The current block's name is Synth (part 2), and block number 25 is the last block in the song. Note that the first block's number is 0 (zero) rather than 1. Watching the changes to the block status display and the Tracker editor, try using Shift- and Shift- to select a new current block. Left Alt - / selects the first/last block. To listen to the current block, find the playing buttons on the left-hand side of the Main Control window. Click on the Play button beside Block. Use STOP or the space bar to stop the block, and Cont to continue the block. When the block has played through, it will start again. Stop the playing when you've heard enough. The block's contents So just what do all these letters, numbers and dashes displayed in the Tracker editor mean? Well, the Amiga plays music using four sound channels, each of which can play one sample at a time. The four tracks (columns) in the Tracker editor correspond to these sound channels. Music is composed by entering notes on to these tracks. A typical note might be C-2 10C32. Here's how this note is made up: octave player command type number /| | / | C - 2 1 0 C 3 2 | | \ | note instr. \| name number player command level So note C is played on instrument number 01 using octave number 2. The note also has a player command (0C32), which means 'set the note's volume to level 32'. Octave numbers and player commands will be explained later. The playing sequence To create a song, the blocks are linked together. This involves creating a list of blocks in the order in which they should be played. This list is called the playing sequence. Look carefully at the Information window, and notice that there are two buttons that seem to be called Sq. Look again and you'll see that the left-hand one is actually Sg. Click on the other one to open the Playing Sequence window. In this window you'll find a list of block numbers and their names. On the left are two columns of numbers. The left-hand column contains the playing sequence line numbers, the right-hand column the block numbers on each line. Although the line numbers are in ascending order, the block numbers can be in any order and the same number can feature more than once in the list. When the song is played (by clicking Song Play in the Main Control window), the song starts playing from playing sequence line 001. Each block in the sequence is played in turn, the block currently being played marked with a blue bar. Close the window by clicking either its close gadget (far top left) or its Exit button (bottom). HOW A SONG IS CREATED OK. We've had a look at the basic structure of a song; now let's examine how to create a song. Firstly, clear the loaded song by selecting New from the Project menu then clicking Clear All in the window that appears. Load instruments By default OctaMED has no instruments in memory; they must be loaded in. You can either select Load Instrument(s) from the Instr menu, or click the small GetFile button sandwiched between the instrument number and name in the Main Control window. Try loading in some samples (if you don't have any, most PD libraries will be happy to help). Remember to select the instrument number first using Shift- and Shift-. Use the Volumes button in the file requester to select the correct disk. You can select more than one instrument by holding down Shift and clicking on several files (then click Ok); the instruments are then loaded into successive instrument slots. Enter notes Firstly, select the instrument that you wish the note to be played on. Use Shift- and Shift- as usual. Next, position the cursor where you wish the note to be in the Tracker editor. Use , , Alt- and Alt- for this. Now switch edit mode on by clicking on the Edit check box (Main Control window). Then play the note using the keyboard The note name, octave number and instrument number is entered. Just what is this 'octave number'? Well, OctaMED arranges the Amiga's keyboard into 2½ octaves. However, OctaMED's instruments can play using more octaves than this, depending on the instrument's type. Samples, for example, can play using 3 octaves, numbered 1 - 3 (this is the octave number). So how do you play the extra octaves? Well, by default the keyboard's lower octave (Z - M) plays using octave number 1, the middle octave (Q - U) using number 2, and the upper half-octave (I - ]) using about half of 3. This can be changed by using function keys F1 - F5. Find the Oct cycle gadget in the Main Control window. The 12 refers to the lower octave and middle octave's current octave numbers, 1 and 2 respectively. Now press the F2 key. The Oct gadget is now 23. So the lower octave's number is 2 and the middle octave's 3. (The upper half-octave uses about half of octave 4, but since samples can only play using 3 octaves you can't use octave 4 with samples). Confused? Try entering a few notes, using F1 to select octaves 1 and 2 and F2 to select 2 and 3, and examine the octave number of each note. For example, how about a bass drum instrument on track number 0 every fourth line (000, 004, 008...), and maybe a hi-hat on track 1 every second line? Stick with something very simple like that to start with, and it shouldn't be long before entering notes becomes second nature. Remember to use the Block Play button in the Main Control window to play the block through. Remove notes (that is, enter a blank note: --- 0) by positioning the cursor over the offending note and pressing the Del key. Add new blocks (and change their length) By default there is just one block in the song, number 0. To add a new block, select Append from the Block menu's New submenu. Look at the block status display in the Information window and notice that the last block in the song is now number 1. Select this block by pressing Shift-, and return to the previous block using Shift-. Usually blocks are 64 lines long. (Note for musicians: this allows for 4 measures of 4/4 time; each line is one sixteenth-note.) You can change this length if you so desire by selecting Set Properties from the Block menu. Click inside the Length box in the window that appears, delete the 64 using the Del or Backspace keys, and type in the new length and press Return. The maximum length is 3200 lines. In the Block Properties window you can also name a block by typing its name into the Name box; its name appears in the block status display. Using the Tracks slider you can change the number of tracks (maximum is 64), but this is only useful when using 5 to 8-channel mode or MIDI (explained later). Open the Block List window by selecting Block List from the Block menu. This window provides a list of all blocks and their names. The blue bar highlights the block currently shown in the Tracker editor; select another block by clicking on its name or number in the list. The Append New button is the same as Append in the Block menu; Insert New inserts a new block at the current block position (same as Insert in the Block menu). The Block List can also be opened by clicking the small B button in the Information window. Holding down a Shift key while clicking this button opens Block Properties. Link the blocks together As discussed in part 1.4, to create a song blocks are linked together by creating a list of blocks in the order they should be played. This list is called the playing sequence. You can open the Playing Sequence window by selecting Playing Sequence from the Song menu. There is always at least one line in the list, and by default it's block 000. Change this number using the two arrows just below the list (note that the number can't be increased beyond the number of the last block in the song). Add a new line by using the Insert or Append buttons, in the same way as for blocks. In the Block List, the Ins to Seq and App to Seq buttons insert and append the block currently shown in the Tracker editor to the playing sequence. The display box just below the list shows the current playing sequence line number and the total number of lines in the list. This is duplicated in the Information window. When Follow is switched on, the current playing sequence line number is kept as close to the middle of the list as possible during play (try clicking Play Song with Follow on to see this effect). Save the song Select Save from the Project menu. If there is no filename in the box at the top of the Save Options window, a file requester appears to select a name. Switching Create Icon off prevents OctaMED saving an icon file with the song (for use with Workbench). Clicking repeatedly on the No Compression cycle gadget selects one of several forms of compression (or none at all), reducing the file size. Calculate Size calculates the entire song's size using the current settings (use the Packed button to calculate the song's size when compressed). Click Save to save the song. PLAYER COMMANDS So far we've ignored the 0000 appearing to the right of Tracker editor note names. Well, the four digits are collectively known as the command digits. They allow you to add special effects to the notes, and to ask OctaMED to do certain things. These effects and actions are called player commands. The command digits are divided into two pairs. The command type is the sort of effect or action, and the command level allows you to control the effect or action's intensity, depth, speed, etc. (depending on the sort of command). For example, the diagram in part 1.3 shows a note with command type 0C and level 32. Type 0C means 'set volume', so the player command sets the note's volume level to 32. A full list of player commands is given in @{" Appendix A" link "AppA" 0} Player commands are entered one digit at a time, simply by moving the cursor over to each digit (using the and keys) and pressing the correct key. You'll find that turning Advance Cursor Right on will help (select Keyboard Options from the Settings menu and click Right). Also, to enter command types such as 19, position the cursor over the right-hand command type digit and press Alt-9 (the left-hand digit is set to 1). Both the command type and command level are in hexadecimal. If you're unfamiliar with hexadecimal, please read @{" Appendix F " link "AppF" 0}. A rough understanding of hexadecimal is important for successful use of player commands. Slide creation Slides can be created automatically, without having to painstakingly enter each individual command in the slide. This is done using the Pitch, Volume and Generic Slide items in the Edit menu. To use the Pitch Slide function, firstly enter the notes that the pitch is to slide from and to. (The notes must be on the same track). Now position the cursor where the pitch slide is to begin; this will be somewhere between the two notes. Finally, select Type 1 or Type 2 from the Edit menu's Pitch Slide submenu. Try out both types; type 1 uses command type 03, type 2 uses types 01 and 02. For Volume Slide, you need to enter two 'set volume' (command type 0C) commands in the same track: one to set the starting volume level, one to set the ending level. Then position the cursor anywhere between the two commands and select Volume Slide from the Edit menu. Generic Slide works in the same way except that any command type (not just 0C) can be used. The Soundstudio's new Mix mode has an additional set of player commands. See part A.3 for more details. EDITING THE SONG Of course, part 2 is a very simplified guide to song creation. In particular, OctaMED provides a number of editing features for use in the Tracker editor that can make entering notes much easier. Cut/Copy/Paste/Swap You may recognize the terms cut, copy and paste from wordprocessors. Well, in OctaMED they are exactly the same: Cut removes notes and stores them in a copy buffer, Copy stores notes in a copy buffer without removing them, and Paste transfers the copy buffer to the Tracker editor, overwriting any existing notes. Items in the Block and Track menus allow you to cut, copy or paste whole blocks or whole tracks respectively. For example, to place a copy of track 0 in track 3: move to track 0 (using Alt- and Alt-), and select Copy from the Track menu. Now move to track 3, and select Paste from the Track menu. The Swap items swap the current block or track's contents with the copy buffer's contents. You can also cut, copy and paste a rectangular area of notes, known as a "range". A range can be as small as a single note or may include an entire block. Mark a range by moving the mouse over notes in the Tracker editor while holding down the left mouse button. The range appears in white. Moving the mouse beyond the limits of the Tracker editor continues the range in the relevant direction (for example, try moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen while holding the left mouse button). The Edit menu contains Cut, Copy and Paste Range items. Erase Range changes all the notes in the range to blank notes (--- 00000). If you mark a range by mistake, press the left mouse button again to cancel it. Make the range reappear by selecting Re-mark Range from the Edit menu. Transpose Select Transpose from the Edit menu. This window contains functions that alter the notes in a particular area of the current project. The gadgets under Affect should be selected before choosing a transpose function. They select which area of the song the transposition should affect, and the notes played by which instruments. The pitch-changing functions are Octave Up/Down and Halfstep Up/Down; these should be self- explaining. The Change Notes functions act on the Source and Destination notes. Select these notes by holding down the left mouse button on each note box in turn and pressing the appropriate key (for example, the I key selects note C-3). The Change button changes all notes in the Affect area (see above) from the source to the destination note. Swap swaps the source and destination notes. A more complicated and powerful note-changing feature is Replace Notes, new to the Soundstudio. See part 14.1 for more information. The Change Instrument functions act on the Source and Destination instruments. Select these instruments by choosing each required instrument (using Shift- and Shift-) and clicking the Source and Destination buttons. The Change button changes notes played by the source instrument to the destination instrument (in the Affect area). Swap swaps the source and destination instrument numbers of notes played by either. Delete deletes notes played by the source instrument. If you switch Instrument Slots on, the Change Instrument buttons affect the actual instruments, rather than notes played by the instruments. So click Change to move the source instrument to the destination instrument position, or Swap to swap the two instruments' positions. Delete removes the source instrument from memory; there are five ways of doing this in OctaMED! Track selection Look at the top of the Tracker editor; the blue boxes are the track selectors. They are blue when on, grey when off. Try clicking on a few to turn them off and on. You'll notice that there are two types: one displaying the track numbers, one displaying S. The track number type control whether each track is played or not played. For example, load a song and click Song Play (Main Control). Now keeping the song playing, try turning the track numbers on and off. Do you notice the notes in the related tracks being turned off and back on? This can be very useful while editing blocks. The S stands for Selected, and this type control whether each track is 'selected' or 'not selected'. They are used in editing functions such as Paste To Selected Tracks in the Edit menu and Affect Selected Tracks in the Transpose window. Programmable keys (progkeys) The progkeys allow music to be entered much more easily and quickly. You can assign notes or groups of notes, including player commands, to 10 different keys. The assigned notes can then be inserted anywhere in the Tracker editor by holding down Shift and pressing key 0-9. Select Programmable Keys from the Settings menu. The cycle gadget in this window selects whether you wish to edit the normal Shift- 0-9 definitions (default) or the Right Alt definition. The Right Alt definition consists of the command digits only, and if you enter notes with the Right Alt key held in the Tracker editor, these command digits will be inserted with the notes. Select which progkey you wish to edit (0-9) using the slider. The box containing --- 00000 is the definition of the selected progkey. Edit the progkey one digit at a time, by holding the left mouse button on each digit and entering a new note or digit using the keyboard. To make a digit transparent (shown by an x), press Return while holding the left mouse button. A digit being transparent means that when the progkey is entered in the Tracker editor, the corresponding existing digit will remain unchanged. For example, the definition xxxxx0000 would set all command digits to zero while leaving the note and instrument number unchanged. The Pick gadgets copy either the note under the cursor, the currently marked range, or the copy buffer to the current definition. Some other editing functions in brief Space (Main Control window): When on, a set number of lines are skipped when a note is entered. Select Keyboard Options from the Settings menu, and adjust the Space Value slider to set the number of lines (default is 2). Expand/Shrink (Block menu): Expand inserts empty lines between each existing line; Shrink removes lines. If the Factor box in the window contained 3, for example, clicking Expand would insert two empty lines between each note (trebling the block length), and clicking Shrink would remove every second and third line (thirding the block length). It has the effect of slowing or quickening the music. Its function should become clear with some experimenting. Highlight Options (Block menu): Here you can highlight the current block's lines in a particular order. This can mark measures and beats for you. Try clicking the 4 gadget to highlight every fourth line: In a normal 64-line block, this highlights every beat. THE SAMPLE EDITOR Making sure a sample is loaded into the current instrument slot, select Display menu from the Sample Editor (or click Edit in the Main Control window). The squiggly black line in this window is the sample's waveform, which is a graphic representation of the sample. The sample editor is used to change the whole or part of the waveform. This can involve copying sections of waveform to other places in the sample, changing the volume or pitch of the waveform, creating echo effects, and much more. The white line across the center of the waveform marks zero volume. The further away from the white line a point on the waveform is, the louder the point's volume. Volumes of points on the waveform display Display: 0032098 Buffsize: 32098 R Start: 0 R End: 0 +----------------------------------------------------+ <- full volume | | | TOP HALF OF WAVEFORM DISPLAY | <- half volume | | +---------------------white-line---------------------+ <- zero volume | | | BOTTOM HALF OF WAVEFORM DISPLAY | <- half volume | | +----------------------------------------------------+ <- full volume The number to the right of Buffsize (above the waveform in the middle) is the size of the current sample in bytes. (In the diagram above, the sample's size is 32098 bytes). Type a new number into this box to change the sample's length. Magnification Try using the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons to magnify and reduce the display. The black horizontal scroll bar just below the display shows the section of sample currently being displayed: drag it or use the and keys to change the current sample section. The Display box (top left) shows how many bytes of sample are currently displayed. You can also magnify and reduce the display using the small vertical zoom scroll bar (far right). The higher the scroll bar, the greater the magnification. Click Play Display to play the current display at the pitch shown just below the display on the right (note C-2 by default). Change this pitch by holding down the left mouse button on the pitch box and pressing a new note. When you've finished, click Show All to display the whole sample. Range operations Just as in the Tracker editor, you can mark a range by moving the mouse over the waveform while holding the left mouse button. Hold a Shift key while doing this to adjust an existing range. The byte positions of the start and end of the range are shown by Range Start and Range End (top right). Click Range Display to mark a range over the whole display. Eight range-affecting buttons are situated near the bottom of the window. Show magnifies the range to fill the whole display. Play plays the range at the current pitch. Cut and Erase both remove the portion marked by the range: Cut also copies the range to a copy buffer. Clear clears the range, Copy copies the range to a copy buffer, and Paste inserts this copy buffer at the start of the range. Reverse turns the range backwards. Some other range-affecting operations are hidden in the Edit menu. Paste (Overwrite) is like Paste except it overwrites the existing sample contents rather than inserting. Invert turns the range upside-down, Chop removes the whole sample except for the range. In the Tools menu, Calculate Range Time works out the time taken for the range to play at the current pitch. Special effects These are all found in the Effects menu, and with the exception of Change Pitch and Mix, all affect the current range. Here are the most important effects in brief: Change Volume changes the range's volume. The sliders select the starting and ending volume change, and both are percentages of the original volume. For example, setting Start to 200% and End to 50% fades downwards from double the original volume to half the original volume. Click CHANGE VOLUME to change the volume, or choose from one of four presets (Fade In, Fade Out, Halve, Double). Max increases the volume to the maximum possible without introducing distortion. (Distortion occurs when the maximum volume limits are exceeded). Mix mixes the current sample (source) with the copy buffer (destination), storing the result in the current sample. The sliders control the volumes of the two waveforms to be mixed (50% is 'normal' volume). Filter/Boost filters (reduces noise) and boosts (brightens) the range. The Averaging slider controls the strength, and try cranking Distance right up for some weird effects. Echo allows interesting echo effects to be produced. Before echoing, you usually need to add some extra space to the end of the sample: select Add Workspace from the Tools menu to do this. Mark a range over both the waveform to be echoed and the blank space that the echo is to affect. Echo Rate is the distance, in bytes, between two echoes. Number of Echoes sets the total number of echoes, usually quite low (1 - 10). Experimentation is the key to this feature. Create Chord creates chords of two to four notes from the current sample. Specify the chord's notes by pressing keys while holding the left mouse button on the pitch boxes (you can also use the eight preset buttons or the four cycle gadgets). Click Play Chord for a preview, and Create Chord to create the chord and store it in the current sample. Sample loops A sample loop means that the notes you play with the sample will be sustained until stopped. This is due to a particular part of the sample being continually repeated (or 'looped'). Try clicking the Loop check box (bottom left). The two loop pointers mark the looped section. One way to adjust them is to drag their small black triangles across the waveform. You can also use the Loop Point gadgets (bottom of window): use the cycle gadget to choose whether to affect the start or end loop pointer, then use < and > to move the pointer in steps of two bytes, or <0 and 0> to move the pointer until a zero is found. The Loop menu also helps loop positioning. Decent-sounding loops often start and end at the same value, which can often be zero (i.e. no volume). So <0 and 0> are useful in finding good loop points. Magnification allows far more accurate loop positioning, and good loops are often found by looping any repeating waveform shapes in the sample (called envelopes). OTHER FEATURES RELATING TO INSTRUMENTS Instrument Properties Select Set Properties from the Instr menu, or click Props in the Main Control window. With this important window you may alter the characteristics of the current instrument. From the top down, the slider and arrows select the current instrument in the same way as Shift-/. 1st/Last/L.U. select instrument 01/1V/the last used instrument. Flush removes the current instrument from memory. Set an instrument's default pitch by holding the left mouse button on the box and pressing the appropriate key. Pressing key F then inserts the instrument at this pitch into the Tracker editor. Useful for percussion instruments whose pitch is often constant. Loop Start and Length are the loop start and loop length in bytes. If On is switched off, the loop is temporarily disabled. Transpose raises or lowers the current instrument's pitch in halfsteps. Finetune allows you to tune instruments in small steps. Vol sets the instrument's default (usual) volume: 64 is maximum, 0 is silent. The sample list Select Sample List Editor from the Display menu. The sample list is a list of all the instruments you have in your collection (not just samples in fact), and is an easy way of organizing and loading instruments. Notice that the Sample List Editor is split into two lists - a list of your sample directories, and a list of the samples contained in those directories. There may in fact be no directories shown; this is because you haven't yet told OctaMED in which directories your samples are contained. Select a directory by clicking on its name. To add more directories, click Add Dir and select the appropriate directory in the requester that appears. Repeat for all the directories you wish to add. OctaMED will load the names of all files in the directories; if some of these files aren't instruments, click on them in the left-hand list and click Remove. To load an instrument into the current slot, click on the instrument name then click Load Inst. Alternatively, close the Sample List Editor and click SList in the Main Control window. This is a cut-down sample list editor used specifically for loading instruments. Select the appropriate directory, then simply click on the instrument name to load it. Select the current instrument using the four Prev/Next Inst/Free buttons (or Shift- and Shift- as usual). In the Save Options window, the Save Instruments check box chooses whether the song should be saved together with its instruments. If you switch it off, only the instruments' names are saved with the song; when the song is reloaded, OctaMED uses your sample list to locate and load each required instrument from your sample disks. This saves a lot of disk space. You can save an instrument to disk using Save Instrument from the Instr menu. Select its file format through the Format menu. The synthetic sound editor An simple but much less memory-consuming alternative to the sample is the synthetic sound (or "synthsound"). Synthsounds are artifically generated by OctaMED, and are designed using the synthetic sound editor (Display menu). Synthsounds are made up of one or more simple "waveforms". You can select one of the predefined waveforms from the Preset menu, or draw your own by dragging the mouse along a "waveform display" (one of the two speckled boxes). The waveforms are then linked together (although many synthsounds consist of just a single waveform), and their volume and pitch altered by creating a "synthsound script", a sequence of simple commands and values. A list of available commands can be found in the help guide. For more information, press Help, click on Instruments in the Features Guide and follow the links to synthetic sounds. The numeric keypad The numeric keypad is the small collection of 18 keys on the far right of your Amiga's keyboard (excluding A600 owners). Without alteration (using Keyboard Shortcuts from the Settings menu), the keypad is layed out as follows: Keys 1 - 9 Select instruments 1 - 9 0 Select instrument 10 / Select last used instrument . Change the first instrument digit (e.g. 05 -> 15, 15 -> 05) + or - Next or previous instrument ( or ) Decrease or increase current instrument's volume by one * Pick instrument number nearest the cursor Enter After pressing Enter, press key A - V to select the corresponding instrument MIDI FEATURES OctaMED can output notes and some player commands to external MIDI devices (such as MIDI synthesizers) by way of a MIDI interface which you should connect to your Amiga's serial port. Note: Please refer to your MIDI device's manual if you come across terms in this section that you aren't sure of. To glean more information, press Help then select MIDI from the Features Guide. A MIDI instrument in OctaMED is not strictly an instrument, but simply a few settings which result in the notes played with that instrument being sent through a MIDI interface. Therefore, MIDI instruments are not loaded into memory like other sounds. MIDI instruments can also use the full 10½-octave range. Use the Oct cycle gadget (Main Control window) or the F1 - F5 keys to select these. F1 and F5 cycle through three different octaves if you press them repeatedly. Before using a MIDI instrument, you need to change some settings in the Instrument Parameters window to the required values. MIDICh sets the MIDI channel for the instrument (1 - 16). For example, setting it to 5 means this instrument's notes are sent through MIDI channel 5. Preset sets the instrument's preset number. When set to zero, OctaMED uses your keyboard's default preset for the instrument's MIDI channel. In order to hear a MIDI instrument, you must also set its default volume to above zero. MIDI instruments can also use all 64 possible tracks (use the Block Properties window). In addition, you may mix Amiga samples and MIDI instruments on the first four tracks. The MIDI menu contains more MIDI-specific functions and settings. MIDI Active activates MIDI when selected. Input Active, when selected, allows the entering of notes into the song using your MIDI device. Edit mode (Main Control window) and MIDI Active must be on. Read Key-Up's, when switched on, records key-up events into the Tracker editor (as 0FFF player commands). Read Volume: If you have a touch-sensitive keyboard, the volume will be entered as a 'set volume' player command (0C) when notes are input. Reset Pitch/Presets resets pitchbenders, modulation wheels and presets on all channels. (OctaMED sends preset change messages for all MIDI channels). OTHER MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES The Tempo window Select Tempo Window from the Display menu. This window is used to set the playing speed (tempo). For basic use, ignore all gadgets except the Tempo slider. The higher the Tempo slider value, the quicker the speed. For more advanced use, read on. There are two tempo modes: SPD (the default) and BPM. Let's look at SPD mode first. The Tempo and TPL sliders are used in this mode. Each slider alters the tempo in a different way, and to fully understand the difference I'll need to explain a few technical aspects. Don't worry, it's all quite simple really! To keep 'in time', OctaMED responds to regular ticks that come from one of the Amiga's clocks. The tempo depends on two factors relating to these ticks: 1) The time between each tick (Tempo slider) 2) The number of ticks per Tracker editor line (TPL slider) So each Tracker editor line is divided into ticks. The TPL slider controls the number of ticks per line. With TPL set to 3, two typical consecutive lines look like this: Line no. Tick no. Action / 000 1 Play note C-3 / 000 2 000 C-3 10000 --\ ZOOMED --\ 000 3 001 D-2 10000 --/ ZOOMED --/ 001 1 Play note D-2 \ 001 2 \ 001 3 So notes are played on the first tick of each line. The other ticks are used for effects such as pitch sliding (although using certain player commands, notes can also be played on the other ticks). The Tempo slider controls the length of time between each tick. The higher the value, the shorter the length of time therefore the faster the tempo. For normal 4 channel or MIDI songs, Tempo slider values 11 - 240 should be used (ignore values 1 - 10). The TPL slider can be values 1 - 32. The higher the value, the slower the tempo. By default the sliders are set to 33 and 6 respectively. In BPM mode, the Tempo slider controls the number of beats per minute (just like a metronome). For example, a value of 60 is one beat per second. The LPB slider controls the number of lines per beat. For example, 8 (the default) means eight lines are considered as one beat. In this mode, it's best to leave the TPL slider at 6, otherwise the timing won't be accurate. 5 to 8-channel mode in brief When composing using OctaMED, you may find that the Amiga's ability to play a maximum of four samples at once (using its four sound channels) is a bit limiting. Luckily, OctaMED allows you to add up to four extra tracks, extending the maximum number of simultaneous samples to five, six, seven or eight; and this feature is called 5 to 8-channel mode. Firstly, increase the number of tracks to 5, 6, 7 or 8, using the Block Properties window. Next, select Set Options from the Song menu. On the left of this window, click on the appropriate channel mode button. Click Yes and Halve in the requesters, then close the window. Voilà! Unfortunately, you'll notice some side effects pretty quickly. The volume of all samples halves to minimize distortion. There's a different method of setting the tempo: in SPD mode, you can only use levels 1 - 10. And the quality decreases, but try selecting High Quality Mode in the Song Options window (if you own an A500 or A600, this will only work in 5 or 6 channel mode). For more details, press Help, click on Playback in the Features Guide and follow the links to 5 to 8-channel mode. Mix mode New to the Soundstudio is an incredible new playing mode: Mix. This is an alternative to 4-channel and 5 to 8-channel mode, and is best suited to reasonably fast processors (of the A1200's speed, or faster). Again usually with a loss of sound quality, you can play up to 64 notes at once, although it's unlikely that you'll ever need this amount! The sound can be sent through a number of "output devices": Your Amiga - in normal 8-bit or enhanced 14-bit mode, three different 16-bit sound boards, and even straight to disk as an 8-bit or 16-bit sample. One great feature of the Mix mode is its ability to add playing effects to your music. You'll want to play with Echo and Cross Echo straight away! For more details on the window, see the section for OctaMED V6 upgraders. @{" Mix Mode In Detail " link "Mix" 0} ARexx ARexx support was the most major addition to the previous version of OctaMED. ARexx is one of these 'buzzwords' used by so many Amiga people, but many users seem to be in the dark as to what it actually is. Well, in relation to OctaMED, it is both a way of adding new features to the program, and a time-saving alternative to mundane tasks. You use ARexx by typing in an ARexx script, a set of commands (instructions) that ARexx is to carry out. If ARexx were to control a toaster, some of these commands could be 'start toasting', 'cancel toasting', 'set timer' and so on. But we'll be using ARexx to control OctaMED, so commands are more likely to be 'play song', 'open the Font window', or 'mark a range over track 3'. Well, it would be nice if commands were so informal, but computers currently find informal English pretty difficult to understand! So commands are actually a lot more precise. For example, the instruction 'set instrument 04's default volume to 32' would in fact be performed by the two commands IN_SELECT 4 and IN_SETVOLUME 32. OctaMED's ARexx commands are not only used in scripts. Using the Keyboard Shortcuts window (Settings menu), you can assign any key combination to perform any OctaMED ARexx command! This gives you substantial control over the keyboard in OctaMED. As well as executing OctaMED ARexx commands, keyboard shortcuts can be defined to perform an ARexx script, send an ARexx command to another program, or load and run a program. A similiar facility is now available for player commands. Commands 2D01 to 2DFF can be set up to execute different ARexx commands, as well as the other facilities described above. So you can control OctaMED - and even other programs - from precise points within your song. This opens up huge multimedia possibilities! For more information, press Help and select ARexx from the Features Guide. A complete list of OctaMED's ARexx commands is given in Appendices D and E. @{" More About Arexx " link "Arexx" 0} Multi-modules Multi-modules are projects containing more than one song. Each song shares the same set of instruments. This allows you, for example, to compose different songs for each level of a game, without having to load or keep the same instrument in memory more than once. Multi-modules are also very useful when editing just one song, as you can treat one song in the multi-module as 'workspace', much like Deluxe Paint's spare screen option. You may design and compose in one song, then cut and paste to another. Adding and deleting songs Find the Sg 01/01 < > gadgets on the left of the Information window. Sg opens the Song Selector window, which allows you to add and delete songs in a multi-module, and to choose the current song. The two numbers (currently both 01) represent the current song and the total number of songs in the multi-module. < selects the previous song. If clicked while holding a Shift key, it deletes the last song in memory after displaying a requester. > selects the next song. If the current song is the last song, it adds a new song after displaying a requester. Clicking < and > while holding Shift is the same as selecting Delete Last and Add New respectively from the Song menu. Instrument remapping OctaMED can automatically remap instruments while loading. This feature can save you a lot of work. If you have one or more songs already in memory, and you load an additional song, a Remap instruments? requester will appear. If you click No: all previous instruments in the entire multi-module will be lost and the instruments of the new song will be loaded. This could be used, for example, to use the new, different instruments with the other songs in the module. But if you click Yes: 1) The new song's instruments will be loaded into empty places, so that instruments already in memory are preserved; 2) The new song's notes' instrument numbers will be redirected (remapped) so that they point to the new instrument positions. By clicking Yes, several sets of instruments used in several songs can be contributed to one large overall set of instruments. This is the option you'll most often (if not always) choose. In the Save Options window: the right-hand cycle gadget selects whether to save the whole multi-module (default) or only the current song. Some other smaller features Select Set Volumes from the Song menu. This window full of sliders is used to set each track's volume and an overall (master) volume. The 'relative' part in the window's title bar refers to the relativity between the track and master volumes. For example, setting both master and a track volume to half (32) will produce an actual track volume of a quarter (16). Select Set Options from the Song menu. Set the current song's name (different for each song in a multi-module) by typing it into the Name text box. The name will appear on the screen's title bar. Many different settings (preferences) can be saved using Save Settings in the Settings menu. For a full list of saved settings, press Help, select Appendices from the Quick Guide and follow links to the settings file. In your country, if the note between A# and C is H instead of B (for example Germany and Finland), select Miscellaneous from the Settings menu, then click H -> B in the window and save settings. That's all, as mentioned at the start of this introduction, press the Help key to reveal instructions for almost any part of the program. You can find out more about the new OctaMED Soundstudio features by reading the next part of the manual @{" Upgraders " link "Upgraders" 0} @{" Contents " link "Main" 0} @endnode