Writing music in OctaMED v3.0 ============================= Hello and welcome to the Challenge Logic Music tutorial. In this chain of documents I will be telling you how to write music on OctaMED v3.0. If you have a printer you will be able to print out this document and use it as an instruction manual, oooohhhhh!, but make sure you use Traction Feed paper because there are a lot of words! Unfortunately if you have any version of MED or OctaMED that is under this version number, you will not be able to use any of the example modules. However, OctaMED 3 is now Public Domain, so you should be able to buy the program quite cheaply, or if you feel like it you could always go for OctaMED 4 or 5, but at the moment these programs are commercial. One note before you read any further: Don't be afraid to experiment with any part of this program if you want to find out more about the un-described buttons in the tutorial. If you do experiment, make sure you have the OctaMED disk and any of your own programs backed-up safely, use the back-up disks in normal use so you cannot damage the original data in any way. If anything does go wrong, try first to get out of it without resetting the machine. This way you can learn from your mishaps and remember them in case you are stuck again. If you cannot undo anything just press the 3 magic keys (CTRL, Amiga x2) and start again. And now without further ado, we will start with a concise tour of OctaMED v3.0. First of all, we start with a nice little piccy of a person with a lot of keyboards and other interresting bits! Click past this because otherwise you will not get the program to work! In the top right corner of the screen you have all the buttons for different screens and most of these are self-explanatory but I will explain the different screens. FILES ===== This window is accessed by pressing none other than the FILES button! This window is the one to use for loading and saving tunes, samples and other exciting things. Top left of the screen is a box with 'SAVE FORMAT' at the top of it and this should be set on 'MOD 1 (+ INSTR)'. This basically saves the module in the OctaMED v3.00 form with the instruments incorporated in the same file. Other settings are for saving without instruments, 'MOD 1 (NO INSTR)', saving in the old OctaMED form, 'MOD 0 (OLD)', and for saving as an Sound Tracker Module, 'ST MODULE'. Quite easy really! Next to this are two buttons which are 'INFO' and 'ICON'. The first button 'INFO' selects if you want to save text with the module ie. the text gadget in the TRANS window and also text that you insert at the bottom of the play window, just above the equalizers. However more about this in the play section. The second button, 'ICON', simply selects if you want the module to have an icon saved with it. Other buttons on the screen include 'DEL FILE', (delete), and the load and save 'MSG' and 'MAP'. I don't know what the hell these buttons do so I have left them alone, you are welcome to try messing about with them but don't be suprised to find your latest tune wiped! PLAY ==== This is the window that you are confronted with when you load OctaMED and it has the provisions for playing blocks and the whole song. Top left of the screen, the position window, this will be explained later, volume controls, 'HEX' for commands in Hexi-decimal, and 'DEC' for decimal, 'FILTER' which turns on the audio filter, 'E1','E2' and 'E3' are all for the equilizers. These are useless poncy bars that flash and jump in time to the music. Some of them look quite pretty! 'SPD' is the speed counter, and above are two slider bars that control the speed. Underneath the volume selectors is the 'CH. MODE' button but this only works with 8 channel compositions. This will also be explained later. Just above the 'orrible number thingys, is a set of numbers that look something like: 0001/0001 000/000 The first set of numbers indicates the total number of blocks in the position indicator, if you like, the number of blocks used in the tune. The other one shows how many blocks are in the block bank, or, the amount of blocks that the tune is made up of. For more about this look in the block section. The buttons after these counters from left to right are as follows: 12 - The transpose button. This transposes the sample up an octave within the range of the sample. E - Edit. This is used for putting notes on the 'orrible number thingys. SP - Using the edit screen you can instruct the program to jump any specific number of lines when you are writing music onto the 'orrible number thingys. CHRD - This is a chord function which allows you to play a 4 note chord on the number bits. The program normally allows you to write one note at a time. In musician talk this is called Monophonic. At the bottom of the window there is the provision for naming blocks, and naming the tune. The Text gadget on the right-hand side of the memory counter is used for naming blocks. You simply click in the gadget and type in your chosen name for the block. This can be useful as you will see in future. The other gadget next to this is for the name of the tune or a loved one or something else!. Next to this is a button marked 'NRM' for normal speed, clicking this button will slow the tune down to half speed and another setting that I can't remember. INSTR ===== Here we have all the buttons for altering the samples, ie. making them faster or slower, changing the length and looping. This is however easier with the 'SMPED' button or the sample editor which will be covered later on in the document. Buttons in the top left part of the window are for moving up and down the sample bank, 'FLUSH' is for removing the sample from memory, 'LOAD' is for loading a sample from the 'SLIST' (also explained later). Underneath are the buttons displaying the sound type, to the right of this is the 'VOL' slider to change the volume of the sample in the tune, and above this are the loop controls, transposing and finetuning. More about these later! BLOCK ===== Belive it or not the block window houses all buttons to make and modify blocks! CUT, COPY, PASTE and SWAP functions can be carried out on all tracks or blocks. A block is a set of lines, usually 64, a track is one channel in the block, however more about this later! To the right there is a set of buttons for changing the amount of channels played at one time, 4 8 12 and 16. The Amiga can handle 8 of these simultaneously but this is not very processor friendly as the machine splits the samples played in a channel and oscillates between them. The HQ button in the PLAY window speeds this oscillation up but it will only work with a 68020 (or higher) processor. The Amiga, under normal circumstances only has 4 channels. The other channel buttons, 12 and 16 are used for MIDI. Under these buttons is the lines display. This selects how many lines there are in a block, normally 64. Other buttons on this side of the screen include 'DEL BUFFER' 'DELETE THIS' etc., but I have not used these so I don't know what they do! On the left of the screen, under the CUT and PASTE, are two buttons 'EXPAND' and 'SHRINK'. These also denote how many lines are in a block. The EXPAND button doubles the number of lines ie. 64 - 128, SHRINK divides the number by two, 64 - 32, easy! Under this is the button labeled 'NEW BLOCK'. This inserts a clean block after the last block and numbers it accordingly ie. if you have 4 blocks and you press 'NEW BLOCK' a new block appears called block 05. Now I will explain the Position counter. In a tune, for instance the background one playing on this disk, the tune is made up from different blocks. Each block has a number such as 00, 01, 02 and so on. The position counter displays the order that the blocks are played in so, block 00 has a drumbeat and block 01 has the drumbeat with a tune over the top of it. You want the drumbeat to play through twice before the tune comes in. Below is what the position counter will and should show! 00 00 01 The number 01 is put in by pressing the + button on the position counter. Other buttons include an up arrow with a line, this is to move to the start of the list, the down arrow with a line moves to the end of the list. The other arrows in between these moves up or down a block number. Got that so far? OK then, at the right hand side of the little window are the + and - buttons, below these is the 'INS' button, this inserts a block 00 where the list is highlighted, a 'DEL' button, which deletes the highlighted block number, and 'INS' with an arrow pointing down. This button inserts the block that you are working on into the list instead of you inserting a block 00 in and using the + button to change the number. You can scan through the block bank by holding down the right shift key, and pressing the up and down cursor keys. The set of numbers underneath the channel selector on the PLAY window indicates which block you are currently on. Have a good mess about with the position indicating window and its buttons. Because it is rather hard to explain exactly what this does, you should find out yourself and then you can understand it in your own way. EDIT ==== The edit window contains many of the buttons for editing and also some to configure the program. At the top of the window is a set of numbered buttons with 'TRK ON' written at the side. These turn on or off the tracks or sound channels. You can see which channels are in which state an a small display next to the button that has 'CHRD' written on it, the first 4 buttons top left to right correspond to the channels used for the playing of samples the rest can be used for MIDI. You can turn the channels on or off by: clicking on the numbered buttons within the EDIT window clicking on the small display next to the 'CHRD' button or using the Alpha-numeric keypad. the top 4 buttons operate channels 1-4 ie. ( ) / *, the next row are for 5-8 and so on. Those unlucky enough to own an Amiga 600 cannot do this as they will not have an Alpha-numeric keypad. Hahahahahahahaha!!! Most of the other buttons in this window I have left alone, purely because I know how to use everything I need. The only things that I find useful here are the 'EDIT ON' button, although you can just as easily press the escape key!, and the 'SPC' button with the small window next to it. By typing a number in this box, and clicking the button on, or using the key that is below the escape key, you can enter a note into a block and set the program to skip any number of lines after each note. Bottom left of the screen, there is a row of buttons with 'ADV' next to them. These control the block when entering notes, but to appreciate the proper function of these you should experiment. MISC ==== Here you can set preferences for running the program. Next to the colour palette there is a block of buttons, the top row, I know nothing about, the next one down has a button to close the workbench if you are using a small machine. Under that 'LOADGFX', if you have a machine with a hard drive or an external drive with only a small amount of memory, this button takes all the un-important graphics out of the memory to save the space for tunes. If you use this button make sure you keep the program disk in one of the drives so it can access the graphics. Next to this is 'MOUSE 2'. This can be set so by clicking in the area of one of the tracks or blocks you can either turn the channel on or off, and on the other setting you can click on a line and the line will appear in the highlighted area of the music writing screen. The cursor will also appear in the channel that you clicked. The bottom row has 'SAVE PREFS' to save the settings of the program, 'NO 16' which I think has something to with 16 channel mode, and 'DEP2'. This button turns of the colours of the program and makes it appear in monochrome. This saves memory and also saves the processor a great deal of work. Next to this block of buttons, there are 4 buttons, each one does as follows: 'CLEAR ALL'. This clears the song and all the samples from the memory so you can start again, from scratch. 'CLEAR SONG ONLY'. This clears the song and leaves the samples in the memory. A very useful button if you want to write your own tunes using samples from an existing module! 'QUIT'. Hmmm, I wonder what this button is for! '^ CONFIRM ^'. When you press any of the other buttons you have to confirm your actions, in case you press the wrong button and delete many hours of work. VOL === This screen is pretty simple and self explanatory. Each channel has a volume setting which is 00 - 64, this is set at the bottom left. Next to this, quite correctly pointed out by an arrow, is the master volume setting which is also 00 - 64. MIDI ==== MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. This is a method that entails an Amiga MIDI interface and a MIDI keyboard. This is a sequencer that allows you to control keyboards in this way, but unfortunatly due to the fact that I just can't be bothered to work out how to use this, you will just have to do this yourself! TRANS ===== This window allows you to transpose the tune or just one track or block into a different key. Don't worry about this if you are confused, I will be covering this in the near future with the new section of the magazine entitled "Dots for Dummies". Also included in this window is a text thingywotsit. This allows you to put a piece of writing at the top of the screen when you load your tune. RANGE ===== There are some very useful features in this screen, but unfortunately I don't know most of them. However, the ones that I do know, I will explain. 'SELECT TRACK', 'SELECT BLOCK', 'CUT', 'COPY' and 'PASTE' are all fairly self explanitory, but they work in a different way. If you copy the block from line 00, you can then go to line 32 (if you are using a 64 line block) and by pressing paste you can have the notes that start at lines 00 thru 32, duplicated 32 to 64. This is quite hard for me to explain but if you try it for yourself you will soon get the hang of it! Other useful bits include 'NOTE ECHO' and 'SPREAD'. 'NOTE ECHO' is the same as it sounds, if you highlight a track by moving the cursor on to the track that you want to echo, and clicking the 'SELECT TRACK' button, it will alter the track so... well, just see for yourself! The other useful bit is 'SPREAD'. You write your tune on channel 0, the far left channel, and press one of the 'SPREAD' buttons. 2 spreads it over two tracks, 3 over three and so on. _____ ===== ===== Sorry about the crap symbols, ha! This button basically takes you back to the 'orrible number thingys and that crap symbol is supposed to represent these. More about them later. (I am not even going to attempt the next set of symbols!) ========================================================= However these should represent the following: A note A bass clef A sharp sign A semibreve Do any of these sound familiar? If not then wait until the next issue of: ____ ___ < < / /__ > > < < / OTAL ___/OLUTION > > Available from Challenge Logic on 1/4/94 Sorry I couldn't resist that, now then, where were we? Erm... oh yeah, do any of these no... wait, if you don't recognize any of these names then look for the section called "DOTS FOR DUMMIES", which will appear as if by magic in the next issue. The basic music theory section for people who know nothing or very little about dots. Ok then, this button takes you to a music notation screen. Yes that's it. Nothing more to say. Absolutely sod all. Well what I am trying to say is I don't know how to use this bit of the program either. This is because I once had a program on the A***I ST, yeuk, and this was the only way to write music on this sad horrible excuse of a music program. So I haven't even bothered to give the OctaMED version a chance, even though I can read music notation. I personally find the method of numbers easier. If anybody out there would like to play around with this part or indeed any other part of the program that I can't cover in the name of ignorance and stupidity, then try to work out how the sodding thing works and send me a word-processed document so I can include it in the next issue of Total Solution. Cheers! (On with the tour!) SYNTH ===== You can use this to make chip sounds which sound crap, but take up hardly any room. There are some in the 'CHALLENGE LOGIC SAMPLES LIBRARY' which should be available soon! (Another advertisement out of the way!) SMPED ===== Sample editor. If you have never used one of these before, you will find it very hard to get used to. For those who have used Aegis Audiomaster this sample editor is less complicated and a lot quicker and easier to use. If you do sample ripping from modules or games you can load the module or sample into memory and then when you have finished you can save the whole lot in one go with the MED paths utility which will be explained next. Unfortunately there is one problem, samples which are over 70k in length do not seem to play properly. For those people who haven't had the chance to use a sample editor, this particular editor and many others will be covered concisely in one of the later issues. SLIST ===== This is one of the most useful features of OctaMED. You can store information about every sample on your disk if you use this facility. Listen carefully because I am about to reveal all. What you do is you sort out all your sample disks i.e. you have to name all your disks with what is on them so if you have a disk with Bass instruments on it, you relabel it as "Disk_1-Bass" (you should omit all spaces otherwise this messes up the system sometimes). The second disk preparation is to put all the samples within a directory called the same name as the disk, so this will be called "Disk_1-Bass". You will soon see the reason for all this messing about! When you have all your disks sorted out as stated, you sort them out into the order that you want them as, and pile them up next to your machine. With OctaMED in memory, click on the 'FILES' button, insert your new samples disk and click on DF0: in the devices column. Click once on the directory name and then wait for all the sample names to load. When the message "Directory loaded" appears at the top of the screen, click on the 'SLIST' button and press the 'ADD' button underneath the word 'DIR'. (This is in the middle of the screen so you shouldn`t miss it). You can also save all samples from a module in memory onto a disk if you press the 'SAVE ALL' button. Make sure that all the samples within the song are named otherwise the program will not save them. When you have a large MED paths list, you can load the file into a word processor, print out the document and have a complete catalogue of all your samples and samples disks. Clever innit! Now that the tour is over, I am going to leave this hot keyboard alone for a bit whilst I decide what to write for the next issue. In this we will begin to write some music and you will also get a couple of example tunes to study and experiment with. If you can already write music but want to improve your skills, then don't just ignore this section of the magazine, have a good read through the documentation, because you might miss something you don't know. That is all for now so have a good play around and if you have any tunes try using the samples to write something. If you don`t have any modules then you can always use the background tune on this disk. Please remember that the samples are property of Challenge Logic so if you do use them, please credit us! To write tunes you have to make sure the edit facility is turned on by pressing the escape key. Other keys that you will need to use to write music, are the cursor keys. Left and right move the small square cursor along the line in the middle of the play screen, up and down moves the 'orrible number thingys up and down. By holding the right shift key down, the left and right cursor keys move the sample bank up or down one. You can see which sample you are on by the screen underneath the 'CONT. BLOCK' button on the play window. If you press the up and down keys whilst holding the shift key down, this alternates which block you are currently on. The block counter is on the same line as the sample name display and works like this: 000/000 | | | This shows how many blocks are in the bank. | | This shows the block that you are on. The computer keys represent the notes of a keyboard, have a prod about with a sample loaded to hear the notes. That is basically it for now, however issue 2 is currently being worked on so if you have any ideas or queries, scribble or word-process them and send them to me, the address to send them to is somewhere else in the editorial. Cheers, FIN