STUDIO MAGIC READ ME FIRST TO HEAR DEMOS 1. Turn on your Amiga 2. If you have an Amiga 1000, insert Kickstart into your internal drive. When the Workbench screen appears, remove your Kickstart. 3. When the Workbench screen appears, insert the disk that has DEMO on its label into your EXTERNAL drive. 4. Insert the program disk (the disk that does not say DEMO) into your internal drive. The disk drive light will come on and Studio Magic will load. A small window will appear asking you to type in a word from your Studio Magic manual. Enter the correct word, and the Studio Magic screen will appear. 5. Pull down the PROJECT men and select OPEN. A file requester will appear. 6. Click on the DRAWER string gadget. Erase the DF0: by holding down the right-Amiga key and X at the same time. If you have an Amiga 1000 or 500, type DF1:. If you have an Amiga 2000 with an external drive type DF@:, if you have an Amiga 2000 with an extra internal drive, type DF1:. Press the RETURN key. 7. A directory of your demo disk will appear. Click on the words MIDI DEMOS. A new list of files should appear. You can move up and down in the list by clicking inside the vertical rectangle on the right side of the disk requester. Click on the word GROOVE the OK. The groove demo should now load. When it is finished, you can play it by pulling down the SEQUENCER menu and selecting MIDI PLAYBACK. 8. You can play all the demos in the MIDI DEMOS directory this way. All you have to do is pick names that have no period in their name. For example, GROOVE, BATTERY, and FEVER are all demos. Do no pick names like GROOVE.BUF0 or GROOVE.MIDI. CONTENTS Getting Started 5 Copy Protection 5 Introduction 6 Demos 6 Using the Graph and Sliders 8 Storing Settings 9 Editing 10 Processing and Special Effects 11 Setting Sustain Points 11 Splitting the Midi Keyboard 13 The Midi Sequencer 14 Appendix A (Menu Commands) 17 Appendix B (Screen Gadgets) 32 Appendix C (MIDI) 34 Appendix D (Audio Connections) 35 Appendix E (The CLI) 36 Appendix F (Tricks and Tips) 38 GETTING STARTED Before you run Studio Magic, take some time to make a backup copy. See your Introduction to Amiga manual for an explanation on how to copy a disk. To run Studio Magic simply insert the Studio Magic program disk in the internal drive when your Amiga asks for the workbench disk (this happens when you first turn on your Amiga). Studio Magic will automatically run without any user help. Alternately, Studio Magic can be run from the CLI or workbench. To run Studio Magic fromt the workbench simply double click on its icon in the usual manner. Studio Magic is a large program, and on a standard 512K Amiga you should run Studio Magic from the CLI without loading workbench in order to save memory. If you run from the CLI, you can set the buffer size parameter. For example: Stack 5000 STudioMagic 80000 This would run Studio Magic and allocate 80 thousand bytes for each of Studio Magic's two buffers. if you do not enter the buffer size after the file name, Studio Magic will examine the free memory pool and take a fair guess. not that the CLI stack must be set to 5000 before you run Studio Magic. If you are not familiar with the CLI see Appendix E. COPY PROTECTION Studio Magic is copy protected using the "manual system." This means when you run Studio Magic, you will be asked to enter a word from the manual. For example, "Enter word 3 on line 2 page 11." When you see this prompt, enter the correct word and the program will continue. All the words will be small and located near the top of the page. 5 SunRize Industries is sorry for the inconvenience this is causing ou, the legitimate Studio Magic owner, however, we feel it is a necessary evil in today's microcomputer market. INTRODUCTION Studio Magic gives you the power to manipulate sampled sounds with your Amiga computer. It is designed for use by people wanting studio-quality control over digital sounds. It can also be used to create sound effects for your own videos or programs, and, of course, just to have fun. There are basically two ways you can use this program. First, Studio Magic allows you to edit sampled sounds the same way that they are editd in state of the art digital recording studios. You can create flawless digital splices among any number of sounds. You can mix sounds directly on top of each other. In addition to mixing and eidting, you can subject sampled sounds to a variety of digital signal processes. These range from a simple ECHO algorithm to an unusual EXPAND routine which can stretch out a sound over longer periods of time. These processes are the same ones found in modern recording studios, and the effects will be familiar to anyone who has ever heard a pop song. Second, once you have edited and processed the sounds into interesting forms, you can lay them out as SETTINGS, which can then be p0layed from any midi keyboard. You can record and playback these performances using a built in midi sequencer. In short, this program turns your Amiga into a powerful sampled-sound processor, and, in tandem with a midi keyboard, into a full featured studio quality sampling synthesizer. DEMOS This program is fairly easy to learn, but before going any further, you may wish to get some idea of the kinds of 6 things it can do. Insert the DEMOS disk included with your program in any drive. Choose OPEN from the PROJECT menu. If the Studio Magic demo disk is in a drive other than df0: type the drive name (i.e. df1:) in the box labelled DRAWER and press return. Now click on the words MIDI DEMOS to change to the demo's directory. Next select the name of the file you w9sh to load. There are a number of demo files included in the disk, but for the moment, choose the one named GROOVE. You may notice that there are actually four files names GROOVE; there is a GROOVE, a GROOVE.BUF0, GROOVE.BUF1, and GROOVE.MIDI. This will be explained later in detail. For now you only need to know that each of these files contains a different kind of information. Selecting the one without any suffix (GROOVE) will cause all four files to be loaded correctly. After about 15 seconds, the loading will finish. Notice that names have appeared to the right of the vertical row of numbered buttons. These buttons (and the names next to them) refer to SECTIONS of the buffer full of sound. They are equivalent to the numbered buttons on most synthesizers that allow you to change among various pareset sounds. Move the pointer to the button labeled 3 and press the left mouse button. You will notice that a number of things change on the screen. These will all be explained later. Now hit the PLAY button, and you will hear an orchestral chord. If you have a midi keyboard hooked up, with it's midi output hooked to the midi input of your Amiga's midi interface, you can now play this sound with your keyboard. Note: the power on your keyboard should be turned on before you load Studio Magic, or your keyboard may not work correctly. If you don't have a midi keyboard, or when you get tired of being an orchestral conductor, choose MIDI PLAY from the SEQUENCER menu. This plays the sequence of midi data currently in memory which, in this case, was loaded in 7 from the file GROOVE.MIDI automatically. A midi sequence is simply a stream of information about what keys on a synthesizer got pushed down or released. A midi sequence provides a nearly perfect replay of a live performance. Once you have grown tired of this demo, try loading some of the other demo files on the Demos disk. Remember to choose OPEN and then the filename without any suffixes (.buf0, .buf1, or .midi) attached to it. When you're through and have the inclination, turn to the next section and begin the tutorial. USING THE GRAPH SLIDERS The large white rectangle in the upper third of the screen represents a windo into the memory buffer where your sampled sounds are stored. It contains a "picture" of the sound, actually a histogram, which, read from left to right, describes the shape of the sound in terms of its loudness. Unlike some audio programs for the Amiga, this graph only shows positive values. This is because it is an RMS (Toot Mean Squared) representation of the amplitudes, which has proven to be a more accurate graphic representation of the way peop0le perceive loudness. Places where the graph is high are places where the sound gets loud. Placves where the graph is more or less a flat line represent silences in the sampled sound. Note that there are actually two buffers which you can toggle between using the BUFF button. The size of these buffers is determined by the amount of available chip memory in your Amiga when the program is loaded, and by any command line options you may have entered. Choose OPEN from the PROJECT memu, and load the file VOICES. Hit PLAY to hear the sound you have just loaded, and notice the way the graph corresponds to what you hear. Big bumps in the picture represent loud 8 points--in this case words. Stretches on the graph which are smooth an low represent the silences between the words. With a little practice, this representation will come to seem quite reasonable. Also, notice that hitting the PLAY multiple times quickly will produce some very nice echo effects. You may have already discovered that you can move the two sliders below the graph. Try doing this now, and hit PLAY again. These sliders allow you to choose the section of the buffer which will be played. Try alternately moving them around and hitting PLAY until you start to get a feel for the relationship of the graph to the sound. Try to use the sliders to select a single word or syllable. The richness of sounds present in this one simple sample becomes apparent when you start playing small sectionws of it out of context. STORING SETTINGS Once you have found a section of the buffer you are particularly fond of, you can store the position of the sliders in any of the 16 numbered buttons immediately below the graph. Note that only eight are visible at a time--you toggle between them using the button labelled 9-16 or 1-8. To store your slider positions, just hit the SET button and then button 1. Henceforward, hitting button 1 will return the sliders to their present position. If you like, you can type in a name for this setting by clicking in the space immediately to the right of button 1. If there is text already in the gadget, you should clear out the gadget using Right-Amiga-X and then simply type in your name, hitting RETURN when you're done. You have just created your first synthesizer setting. Try playing it on your midi keyboard. Create a few maore, and notice that you can change between them from your midi keyboard as well, using its numbered program selection buttons. See APPENDIX C (MIDI) if you midi keyboard is not behaving properly. 9 EDITING Even if you don't have a midi keyboard, the numbered buttons are a convenient way to partition off various portions of your buffer for editing and manipulation. Choose a couple of sections now, using the sliders and storing them as above. Now look at the EDIT menu. Using these commands, you can cut, paste, and mix together the sounds just like text in a word processor. They give you the power of precise digital audio editing. Before computers, this sort of audio manipulation was done by hand, splicing magnetic tape. Not only was this tedious, it resulted in a loss of fidelity with each iteration. The beautoy of digital audio manipulation, aside from its speed, is that there is no fidelity loss, regardless of the number of cuts and re-cuts and re-re-cuts you make. These editing commands work quite simply. For PASTE, OVELAY, and INSERT, you must first delineate a section using the two sliders below the audio graph, and then choose MARK. You will notice that the "marked" section is highlighted in orange for easy reference. To insert sound from one part of the buffer into another part, you first mark the section to insert in the above manner. Next move either slider to the position in the buffer at which you want to insert a new copy of the "Marked" sound and choose INSERT. PASTE and OVERLAY work in th same way, but PASTE writes over whatever sound was present where it gets copied to, and OVERLAY mixes the "Marked" sound with the sound beginning at the last moved slider. The other commands don't require that you "Mark" a section. You simply delineate the sound, and choose the menu item. See the appendix for an explanation of these commands. 10 PROCESSING AND SPECIAL EFFECTS In addition to editing the sounds in your buffers, you can subject them to a wide variety of digital signal processes which alter the way they sound. Some of these effects may be quite familiar, while others will undoubtedly be novel. All of the processes are found in the TOOLS menu. They all operate on the samples currently between the two sliders directly beneath the buffer graph. You simply find the section of sound you wish to alter, using those two sliders alternately with the PLAY or LOOP button. Once you have found the section you want to process, choose the desired tool from the TOOLS menu. Once you pick a took you may be prompted for some parameters. if you're not sure what these mean, you can always use the defaults. A little experimentation, however, will lead to an amazing array of effects. See the section labeled TOOLS in APPENDIX B for a detailed description of each of these processes. SETTING SUSTAIN POINTS After you have partitioned off various sections of your buffer for use as settings on your midi keyboard, you may have noticed that the notes that you play can last only as long as the sample itself. That is to say, you cannot hold notes indifinately, because even the longest sample will eventually run its cours, and leave you in silence. To get around this, it is convenient to establish SUSTAIN POINTS in the sample. These are points which bound a sub-section of a given voice setting. This subsection is looped through repeatedly, for as long as a key is depressed on the midi keyboard. To find and set a sustain point in a section you have created, first click on the numbered button corresponding to that section. This moves the sliders beneath the graph to the borders of the section. Now hit the LOOP button. 11 Notice that the section between the sliders is repeated over and over again. Now move the sliders in a bit toward each other, and listen as the repeating section gets shorter. Keep moving the sliders until you find a "loop" that sounds natural, or at least interesting. Now hit the STOP button, to silence the infernal looping, and choose SET SUSTAIN POINT from the KEYBOARD menu. Try playing your sound from the midi keyboard. Notice that there are now three parts to your sond. First you hear th part of the sound from the beginning of the section to the start of the loop. This is the ATTACK of your sound. Then you hear the loop over and over again, until you release the key. Once you release the key, you hear the loop finish, and whatever portion of the sample remains between the end of the loop and the end of your section will be played. This is the DECAY of your sound. Of course, if the end of your loop is at the end of your sample, there will be no decay part. The loops created by your sustain points can be very small (just a few samples) or several seconds long, depending on the effect you want. Experimentation will be the best teacher, but generally speaking, for settings which require smooth and even tones, a smaller loop is best, while larger loops are better at preserving the texture and ambience of the original sample. Finally, if you are having trouble finding smooth loops while moving the sliders around with the LOOP button on, try hitting the LOOP button again from time to time. This invokes a pattern matching routine which tries to find a likely pair of zero-settings to bound your loop. Once you've found the right general region for your loop, this may be the best way to get rid of the CLICK at the beginning of each repetition of the loop. 12 SPLITTING THE MIDI KEYBOARD One of the biggest problems encountered when using sampled sounds as musical instruments is that the process of speeding them up or slowing them down to change their pitch results in a distortion of the original sound. You really can't transpose most sounds more than about a fourth (5 half steps on the keyboard) in either direction before even the most unwashed listener can tell that something is "wrong" with the sound. Studio Magic offers a solution to this problem. It allows you to "split" the midi keyboard into any number of sections, with each section playing its own unique sample. This means that you can play the full range of your keyboard, without stretching one poor sample all the way across it. You should first determine how many sections you want to split the keyboard into, and where those sections start and stop. For most aplications, I find a tritone (c-f#) is a convenient size, since exactly two fit into each octave and most sounds can tolerate being transposed this much without too much damage. There may certainly be times when you want to use even smaller sections. See the SCAT demo file on the demos disk, which has a keyboard split into individual keys. Now for each section of the keyboard, you must create a sample which sounds good at the pitch appropriate for that section. For example, if your first sections goes from c below middle c to the f# above that, you probably want a sampled sound that was originlly somewhere between those two pitches. The ideal pitch would be Eb, since it is exactly in the middle. Having created a sample which plays well at Eb (or so) below middle c, you should TUNE the sample so it plays that Eb when you hit the Eb key on your keyboard. 13 Using the two medium-sized sliders above the DURATION and RATE meters, you can adjust the sampling rate us to PLAY the current sample. The upper slider is fine tuning, the lower is coarse. Use these alternately with the PLAY button to get the sample sounding at the desired pitch (in this case Eb below middle c). Just like any instrument, you will need to tune it to some external reference, maybe a piano, pitch pipe, or another synthesizer. Finally, once you have gotten a sample which PLAYS at a pitch that lies within the keyboard section you want to assign it to, hit the TUNE button. This will prompt you to hit any note on the midi keyboard. Hit the note corresponding to the pitch of the sample you have just created. You have just PUT this transposition of the sample at that particular key on the keyboard. All other keys will transpose up or down accordingly. Repeat this procedure with each section of the keyboard. Now, one at a time, you will assign these tuned samples to their corresponding section. hit the numbered button corresponding to the first section, and choose SET SPLIT KEYBOARD from the KEYBOARD menu. You will be prompted to play two notes. These should bound the section of the keyboard you want this sample to use (the bounds are inclusive). Once you have done this for all of the keyboard sections, choose ENABLE KEY SPLIT from the KEYBOARD menu. You now have a fully functional split keyboard. Try playing it, and make sure that all your various turnings worked out smoothly. It's easy to get confused at first about the way this tuning process works, but, as any musician will tell you, learning to tune your instrument just takes practice. THE MIDI SEQUENCER Studio Magic comes complete with a midi sequencer that allows you to record, play back and infinetly overdub midi information from your midi keyboard. If you have 14 another sequencer or an external midi sync device (such as a drum machine) you can synchronize Studio Magic's internal sequencer with the external timing clock. The simplest use of the sequencer, however, is to record something that you play, and play it back for you. To do this, choose MIDI RECORD from the SEQUENCER menu. Now the sequencer will record anything you do from your midi keyboard, until you select STOP RECORDING from the SEQUENCER menu. You can play it back simply by choosing MIDI PLAYBACK. If you want to sound more nimble-fingered than you really are, you can use ADJUST TEMPO to raise the tempo of the replayed performance. If you wish to create something more complicated than you are capable of playing in one "take", you can use the unlimited overdub feature of the sequencer. After recording your first material, you can add to it by choosing MIDI OVERDUB. After a brief pause, you will hear your first performance. Play along with it (using different section settings if you like) and when you're done, choose STOP OVERDUBBING. The progrm will then ask you whether you're satisfied with your most recent performance. If you reply NO the sequence will be returned to its original state. If you reply YES, the material you just played will be incorporated into the midi sequence. You can repeat this process indefinitely, choosing MIDI OVERDUB, playing along, then choosing STOP OVERDUBBING. Bear in mind that since the Amiga has four sound channels, you can only have four sonds occurring at any given moment, but this shouldn't prevent you from creating some fairly complex material. If you have an external midi device which sends midi timing signals (a sequencer or a drum machine) you may wish to synchronize with it. Simply choose EXTERNAL SYNC ON from the SEQUENCER menu, and now the commands PLAY, 15 RECORD, and OVERDUB will wait for the "start" signal from your external device, and will time the sequence using the clock signal from that device, instead of the Amiga's internal clock. This makes it possible to synchronize the Amiga's sequenced material with sequenced material elsewhere in your midi studio. 16 APPENDIX A - MENU COMMANDS PROJECT MENU NEW This clears all of the preset buttons, and erases both buffers. Only choose this option if you want to begin an entirely new project. OPEN This loads a selected file (IFF or Studio Magic formats) into the current buffer, destroying the current contents of the buffer. If the file has any associated files (a second buffer, section setting and/or midi sequences) these will automatically be loaded in as well. APPEND This loads an IFF digital sound file and places it at th end of the current buffer. RECORD This allows you to record directly into the current RAM buffer, starting at the most-recently moved slider. You should have a PERFECT SOUND stereo audio digitizer plugged into your Amiga's serial port. A prompt will appear, asking you to hit the left mouse button to begin. Until you hit the left mouse button, the Amiga will continuously monitor the input of the digitizer, allowing you to adjust the gain until a reasonable level is found. See your Perfect Sound documentation for more information on this. Once you hit the left mouse button, the Amiga will record directly from the digitizer into the memory buffer until 17 you hit the left mouse button again, or unti lyou run out of room in the buffer. LOAD MIDI This loads in a selected file as a midi sequence, which can then be played back using MIDI PLAYBACK from the KEYBOARD menu. See SAVE MIDI below for information concerning the format of this file, and ways in which you can manipulate it. SAVE MIDI This saves the current midi sequence (as recorded with RECORD MIDI). The file created by this command ("filename.midi") is an ASCII file which can be understood and edited by human beings. Each line in the file represents a note in the midi sequence (like a note on a sheet of music paper). The form of each line is: (N)(start time)(duration)(pitch)(velocity)(preset num) For example, this line: N 8 .5 60 64 1 would cause a note to start 8 seconds into the midi sequence, which would last for .5 seconds. It's pitch would be middle C (60=C in midi, 59=B natural, 62=D, etc.) It's loudness (velocity) would be 64 (on a scale between 0 and 127). It would use the samples corresponding to preset button number "1" on the Studio Magic screen. This means that, having created and saved a midi sequence you can "fine tune" it using your favoite text editor or word processor, simply by editing the ".midi" file. You can delete unwanted notes simply by deleting the line that plays 18 them. You can adjust rhythmic inaccuracies by changing start times or durations. You could also create midi sequences from scratch, without a midi keyboard at all. For example: N 0 1 48 64 1 N 1 1 50 64 1 N 2 1 52 64 1 N 3 1 53 64 1 N 4 1 55 64 1 N 5 1 57 64 1 N 6 1 59 64 1 N 7 1 60 64 1 would play a C major scale from C below middle C (midi pitch 48) to middle C, with each note lasting one second. SAVE SAMPLES This saves the samples in the current buffer which are between the sliders. SAVE EVERYTHING This saves both buffers, any section presets, and any midi sequence. The sections are stored under the selected file name, while the two buffers are stored as "filename.buf0" and "filename.buf1". The midi sequence is stored as "filename.midi". If "filename" is selected from OPEN in the PROJECTS menu, all four of these files will be automatically loaded. STEREO ON/OFF This toggles tetween stereo mode and mono mode. In stereo mode, the two buffers are treated as the left and right channels, and any PLAY or midi keyboard commands will cause the currently selected section of samples to be played from both buffers simultaneously. 19 SAVE IFF INSTR. Saves the most recently created IFF instrument of IFF "oneshot" sound (see below) to disk. This file may be loaded by any IFF-reading program, such as Deluxe Music Construction Set. Note: There is some variance among various Amiga applications concerning the tuning of IFF instruments. You may have to experiment with TUNE-ing the section to differnet levels before "Creating IFF Instrument". CREATE IFF INSTR. This option will either create an IFF instrument for you, or mark a section as "IFF oneshot" for saving to disk. For example, suppose you have created a stand-alone sound to be used in Deluxe Video. To save the sound to disk in IFF format (IFF oneshot format in particular,) pick this menu option CREATE IFF INSTR. When you are asked, "Create Multiple Octaves", answer NO. This causes the sound to be marked as a simple IFF oneshot sound. To save it to disk, use the above menu item SAVE IFF INSTR. If you answer YES to the question "Create Multiple Octaves," STudio Magic will create a 5-part IFF instrument from the samples in the currently selected section. To support IFF looping, you should have set a sustain point in the section (see previous pages of manual.) The 5 octaves are created by interpolation and decimation of the samples in this section. you should have tuned this section, using the TUNE button and a midi keyboard. In short, to create an IFF instrument, you should first create a "section" using the sliders to choose the sound of interest, and then "storing" that slider position in a section button. you should set a sustain point in the section and finally, if you have a midi keyboard, tune the sound. Only then should you choose "Create an IFF instrument". 20 Once created, you can play the instrument from your midi keyboard. You will find, however, that custom built studio magic sections are much more powerful than IFF instruments, since they make complete use of multiple samples, rather than interpolating one sample across several octaves. The principle reason for ever creating IFF instruments with Studio Magic is for transporting digitized sounds to other applications. As long as you are working within Studio Magic, this conversion to IFF will be wholly unnecesary. QUIT This ends the program. Any date not saved will be lost. 21 EDIT MENU UNDO This will restore the buffer to its condition prior to the last Edit Menu or Tools Menu command. If this item is disabled, it means there is not enough free working space to preserve samples before changing them. In general, if you are doing a lot of editing and experimentation, it is a good idea to keep one buffer mostly free, and do your work in the other, so that the UNDO option is always present. MARK This stores the current pointer position (and the current buffer) for use by the PASTE, INSERT, or OVERLAY command. PASTE This puts a copy of the "marked" smaples starting at the most recently moved slider, erasing whatever was there before. OVERLAY This mixes a copy of the "Marked" samples onto the samples at the most recently moved slider. This procedure rescales the result if necessary, to keep the samples within the 8-bit range. REMOVE This discards the samples between the sliders, and slides over any samples to the right of those removed to fill in the gap. 22 CLEAR BUFFER This removes everything from the current buffer. If the data has not been saved, it will be lost. INSERT This adds a copy of the "Marked Samples" at the most recently moved slider, sliding the samples already present to the right so that nothing gets written over. BEVEL This applies linear attack and decay ramps to the currently chosen samples. You are prompted for the ramp duration, in seconds. This is the time it takes for the signal to "fade in" to its full volume, and also the time it takes it to "fade out" to silence at the end. This is useful for eliminating clicks at the beginning or ending of a sound. ZERO REGION This sets the section between markers to zero. 23 TOOLS MENU REVERSE This simply reversed the selected samples 9so you can play it backwards). INTERPOLATE This raises or lowers the pitch of the sample between the sliders. This is equivalent to raising or lowering the sampling rate, which is usually easier, but there may be occasions, such as mixing together de-tuned versions of the same sound, that this software interpolation is helpful. COMPRESS This shortens the duration of the selected samples without altering the pitch. You will be prompted for "Frame Size" which is the size in samples of the moving window that produces the compression. A small frame size results in greater intelligibility, but may introduce some AM distortion, whle a larger frame size eliminates a AM distortion, but may garble the signal through time. EXPAND This is the inverse of COMPRESS (see above). GRAVY This uses a combination of interpolation and compression/expansion to affect a change in pitch without changing the duration of the selected samples. The side effects are the same as those listed for compression, so try different values for "Frame Size" to get very different effects. 24 RESCALE This finds the maximum amplitude in the selected samples, and prompts for a new maximum. This number must be between 0 and 127. The selected samples are then "rescaled" to the new amplitude. This is useful in conjunction with the editing commands. It may also help reduce the distortion introduced by the other processes. This command may be most simply understood as a way of "adjusting the volume" for a section of the buffer. If, for example, you decide you want your trumpet sample to be some3what softer than your vocal samples, you could simply position the sliders at the trumpet section, choose RESCALE and select a somewhat smaller value for the maximum amplitude. COMB This applies a comb filter to the selected samples. A comb filter resonates and amplifies the energy in a very narrow band of the input signal. you are prompted for a pitch, which represents the band accentuated by the filter. You are also aprompted for the amount of feedback. This determines te intensity of the effect, with .99 being the highest. Try applying several combs to the same samples. AM This amplitude modulates the selected samples. Amplitude modulation is the process used to transmit sounds over am radio. It is simply the application of a periodic "warble" to the original signal. It turns out to have an interesting effect when applied to a complex signal, such as you samples, instead of to a simple carrier wave, as in a radio transmission. The period is the rate at which the samples are modulated, with smaller (faster) periods resulting in more pronounced sidebands. The depth controls the intensity of the effect. 25 ECHO This will prompt for the number of echos and the delay time between them. Echo will choose the nearest power of two (2,4,8,16, etc.) to the number of echos you select, for reasons of efficiency. It will not allow you to select a maximum delay time greater than the available space in the buffer, or greater than the length of the selected samples. Note that the ECHO command does not automatically rescale your samples before the echo is performed, so your "echoed" sample may got out of the 0 to 127 range it is limited to. This will show us as distortion and crackles when you play the sound. It this happens to one of your samples, do a RESCALE to lower the level of the sample before doing an ECHO. DC BIAS This removes DC bias from the samples between the sliders. DC bias is the degree to which a signal is not centered around 0 amplitude. An ideal signal should have an equal amount of negative and positive amplitude, but most do not. It is a good habit to remove the DC bias from a sample before performing any of these processes on it. The effect of this command will probably not ba udible, but will affect the accuracy of other processes performed on the sample. FFT This plots a 512 point Fast Fourier Transform of the first 512 samples following the most recently moved slider. This graph represents the frequence content of the selected samples, where the x-axis represents frequency and the y-axis represents amplitude. Large lumps in this graph corresponds to large amounts of energy around that frequence. This is useful primarily in learning about the structure of sounds, but may also be helpful in tracking 26 down and filtering out hums and noise from any piece of audio apparatus. You will be given the opportunity to make a detailed printout of this analysis. If you click on YES at the prompt, a 256-line labelled graph will be printed on your printer, which can give you very precise information concerning the spectrum of the analyzed sample. 27 KEYBOARD MENU DISABLE/ENABLE MIDI This toggles the reception of midi information on and off. If you want the Amiga to ignore midi data passing through the midi cable, you should select DISABLE MIDI; otherwise you should leave it alone. SET KEY SPLIT This prompts you to play two boundary notes. These will delineate the region of the keyboard that will play the currently selected voice setting. See the section labelled SPLITTING THE MIDI KEYBOARD for more information. ENABLE KEY SPLIT This causes the changes in voice to be dictated by the various key split regions on the midi keyboard, instead of by the program change buttons, or by the numbered section buttons on the Studio Magic screen. you should only Enable the key split if you have used the SET KEY SPLIT option to lay out the keyboard, or if you have loaded a file with the OPEN command that contains a set of key split data. VELOCITY ON This causes the Amiga to expect velocity information from a velocity sensitive midi keyboard (such as a Yamaha DX7). if your synthesizer is velocity sensitive, this means that hitting a key harder will cause the Amiga to play its samples louder, while hitting it softer will cause the Amiga to play its samples more quietly. If you don't have a velocity sensitive midi keyboard, you should leave this menu option alone. Note that even without such a keyboard, you can benefit from the velocity sensitive midi performances sotred in ".midi" files from other users. Most 28 of the ".midi" demos on the Demos disk were created using velocity sensitive instruments. 29 SEQUENCER MENU MIDI RECORD This will record all your actions from a midi keyboard, erasing any previously-recorded midi sequence. Thus to record midi data, you select this menu and then start playing your midi instrument. Your composition will be recorded until you select the STOP RECORDING menu (the MIDI RECORD menu changes to STOP RECORDING once selected). MIDI PLAYBACK This will playback a midi sequence which you have recorded, or which has been loaded from disk. MIDI REPEAT This menu duplicates the contents of your midi buffer. You are prompted for the number of times to replicate the buffer. Once you answer this question, Studio Magic will duplicate your sequenced date the number of times requested. MIDI OVERDUB This allows you to add to a midi sequence already in memory, by playing along with it. After you're through playing along, you should choose STOP OVERDUBBING, to incorporate your performance into the previous sequence. EX SYNC ON/OFF This turns on or off the amiga's internal timing of midi events, causing it to rely instead on timing information from an external midi device (i.e., a drum machine or another sequencer). Note that when Ext Sync has geen turned on, the Amiga will wait for "start" signal from the 30 external device, before beginning ANY of the other sequencer functions. Once the "start" signal is received, midi clock information is expected to be received by Studio Magic. REMOVE INSTR This option will remove every use of a certain "preset" from your midi sequence. you can also think of this a s a "track delete" function. After picking this option, you will be prompted for the section number to remove. The current selection is the default. After you pick the selection you want, Studio Magic will remove all instances of the selection from your previously recorded midi sequence. You will find this function useful for removing a track you "overdubbed," but later decided you didn't like. CLEAN UP The Amiga is limited to playing four voices ar once; therefore, you are not allowed to hold more than four keys down at once whle recording a midi sequence. however, many musicians used to more expensive synthesizers often unconsciencely hold down more than four keys at once. On Studio magic, this results in lost notes. if you have this problem, you can use CLEAN UP to stop lingering notes. CLEAN UP will go through your midi sequence and try to make intelligent choices about which notes to turn off when more than four are playing at once. 31 APPENDIX B - SCREEN GADGETS THE SLIDERS There are six sliders on the Studio Magic screen. The two longest sliders, directly below the large white graph of the audio buffer, serve to delineate the beginning and ending of a subsection of that buffer. It doesn't matter which one marks the ending, and which one markes the beginning. In the lower left corner of the screen are two smaller rectangular graphs, each with a small slider below it. The left graph corresponds to the left most slider beneath the big graph (that is, the slider designating the beginning of the current buffer section) whil the right graph corresponds to the other (rightmost) slider, which designates the end of the current section. These graphs show a "zoomed in" view of the samples immediately adjacent to the beginning and ending sliders above. They are magnified views of the memory regions directly beneath those sliders. On these graphs, each pixel in the x-axis represents one sample. This gives you a windo onto the microscopic features of the sound, and may be useful in finding sustain points or in precision editing of your samples. note that since these smaller windows represent the actual sample values themselves they graph both negative and positive values. The orange line in the center of each of these graphs corresponds to the exact location of the sliders within the memory buffer. Moving the sliders beneath these graphs moves these points by very small amounts, and may be throught of as fine-tuning versions of the large sliders above. The numbers below these graphs represent the acutal number of the sample bine pointed to by the corresponding slider, where 0 is the first sample in the buffer and the last depends on how much memory you have (100,000 is typical.) 32 Serving an entirly different purpose are the two medium-sized sliders at the right-center of the screen. These adjust the playback and record sampling rate; the lower slider makes coarse adjustments, while the upper slider is for fine tuning. Notice that the value next to RATE: changes are you move these sliders. THE BUTTONS The PLAY button causes the Amiga to play the section of the buffer between the two sliders, at the current sampling rate. notice that you can press the play button quickly and produce real time echo effects. you don't have to wait for a sample to finish before you can start playing it again. The STOP button resets the audio device, flushing any sounds from the midi keyboard, the PLAY button, or the LOOP button. The LOOP button plays the current section, repeating it over and over again. Once this looping has begun, hitting the LOOP button again will move the sliders to the nearest pair of zero-crossings. This is useful in finding smooth loop points. You must hit the STOP button to silence the looping. The TUNE button should only be used in conjunction with a midi keyboard. It will prompt you to hit a note on the keyboard. The program will then adjust the tuning of the currently selected sample, so that the pitch heard when you hit the PLAY button is the pitch heard when you strike that note on the keyboard. The BUFF button simply toggles between the two buffers provided for sampled sound. Note that you can toggle freely between these buffers, using any of the TOOLS or EDITING commands in either or both of them. 33 APPENDIX C - MIDI Midi information passes in and out of the Amiga through a midi interfact attached to its serial port. You will not be able to use a midi keyboard without a midi interface and at least one midi cable to connect it to your Amiga. NOTE: ALL CONNECTIONS TO YOUR AMIGA SHOULD BE MADE WITH THE POWER OFF. Plug one end of the midi cable into the "midi out" port on your synthesizer. Plug the other end into the "midi in" port on your midi interface. If you want the Studio Magic sequencer to drive your synthesizer, attach another cable from the "midi out" port on the Amiga midi interfact to the "midi in" port on your synthesizer. Now turn on your synthesizer and then your Amiga. Make sure midi transmission has been enabled on your synthesizer, and that it is transmitting on midi channel 1. If possible, you should disable the transmission of pitch-bend data, and "active-sensing" as these clutter up the midi stream and can slow the Amiga's response time. Also if possible, you should make sure that transmission of "program changes" is enabled. System Exclusive information, After-touch information, Sustain pedal information, breath controller information, etc. should all be disabled. If your synthesizer doesn't give you access to these parameters, don't worry, they are probably not transmitted. After booting up Studio Magic, check to make sure midi is enabled (in the KEYBOARD menu) and that the midi input channel is set to 1 (or to whatever channel your synthesizer is transmitting on.) These are the default settings, and will only be different if you have changed them since booting up. 34 APPENDIX D - AUDIO CONNECTIONS The two RCA audio out jacks on the back of your Amiga output stereo sound. However, in its role as a sampled sound synthesizer, the Amiga is much more powerful when used to pruduce mono sound. The reason is simply that this allows you to play 4 notes at a time instead of two, and bring the power of four digital to analog converters to bear on the problem at hand, instead of just two. Aside from all of this, the richness gained by using the Amiga in "stereo" mode can more quickly and easily be attained by the simple use of a cheap reverb or digital delay box. None of the top of the line studio synthesizers output stereo sound, principally for these reasons. We suggest, then, that except for special occasions, you use your Amiga with Studio Magic in monophonic mode (the condition in which it boots up) and simply patch those two RCA jacks into one, using an inexpensive Y-adapter, or just punch the mono button on whatever amplifier your Amiga is coming through. If you're listening to your Amiga solely through its monitor, then this issue is moot, but, as an aside, it should be pointed out that you're missing much of the fidelity and richness of the Amiga's audio hardware if your using that little monitor speaker. 35 APPENDIX E - USING THE AMIGA CLI Most Amiga functions can be done from workbench, however, some require the use of the CLI (command line interpreter.) Specifically, deleting Studio Magic files must be done from the CLI. You get to the CLI by opening the system drawer in workbench. Here you will see the CLI icon. Double click the CLI icon to open a new CLI. Note: you must turn on CLI from preferences before this can work. From the CLI prompt, you can enter many commands similar to those on an IBM PC. For example, to do a directory type DIR To do a directory of your internal drive, type DIR DF0: To do a directory of your external drive, type DIR DF1: Suppose you have a data disk in your external drive, a drawer on that disk named SOUNDS (not that a drawer is the same as a subdirectory,) and a file in the SOUNDS subdirectory called HORN. To delete this file from the SOUNDS drawer you enter the following command: Delete DF1:Sounds/horn Likewise, you can examine the drawer Sounds by typing: DIR DF1:Sounds 36 An important step if you are running Studio Magic from the CLI is to set the stack. you do this with a command such as: STACK 5000 Finally, to exit the CLI environment, enter the command: ENDCLI 37 APPENDIX F - TRICKS AND TIPS This is a small collection of tricks that I have learned as a beta tester for Studio Magic. Reading this section first is not recommended, since this chapter takes for granted that you have already used Studio Magic at least a little bit. Though these methods work for me, you may find them unexceptable or inferior to methods you may work out. Let me say, then, that experimentation is the key to using Studio Magic. Doing your own thing with this program is the quickest way to start enjoying what it can do. 1. Drum Tricks Don't try to build your own drum tracks from scratch. Steal them. Steal them from any recorded song that has a clear beat with no other instru,ments for at least one measure. Once you have that measure of drum beats, using LOOP to repeat it will give you a continuous drum track that you can speed up, slow down, or even modify with the TOOLS menu. If you have a MIDI keyboard, set the sustain for the whole track. This gives you a drum track that takes only one instrument voice, and uses almost no MIDI sequencing memory (since you are just holding the key down continuously). If you aren't satisfied with parts of a drum track but feel it's usable, try OVERLAYING discrete percussion sounds onto your basic track to liven it up. If you won't be satisfied until you have made your own beat track totally from scratch, please take my advice. First, all beats must be a multiple of the whole note. Simply put, if the entire measure is made of 40,000 samples, quarter notes will be 10,000 samples each, and sixteenth will be 2,500 samples. Use the sample numbers at the top of the two small graphs as your guide when placing notes. DO NOT just put a note where it "looks 38 good". Second, don't start making a track by MARKING an eighth note and then PASTING it seven more times. This is a sure way to the dreaded clicks and pops wich plague us eternally. Instead, MARK a section of the correct sample length for your whole track. PASTE it somewhere new, and then ZERO it out. This gives you a base upon which to OVERLAY your drum beats. Using OVERLAY will give you a much smoother and natural sound. For an example of a created track, look at the drum track in the GROOVE demo. 2. Instruments As with drum tracks, get your basic sounds from other sources. Once you have found a close approximation to what you want, you can use the TOOLS menu to massage the sound into shape. You will quickly find that setting the sustain point for an instrument is nearly impossible without a big click or pop at the end of every loop. To combat this, try the sneaky approach. MARK the sustain loop you want, and PASTE it directly behind itself. Then REVERSE the second sample, and use both together as your sustain loop. This is not perfect, but with experimentation you can create a loop that sounds pretty good. 3. The Toolbox Here is a few hints for using the features of the TOOLBOX menu effectively. First, don't do anything to a sound until it has been RESCALED so that no part of the sound hits the top of the graph. Sounds that are out of bounds before you modify them pick up lots of ugly distortion during changes. Second, do your work only in one of the two buffers, and leave the other one clear if you possibly can. this will insure that the UNDO function will work for you. 39 The UNDO has been my best friend; I can never get exactly what I want the first time I modify something. Above all, have fun. This program does no one any good unless it compliments and supports their own creativity, and (in my humble opinion, at least) fun is necessary for creativity. 40 ============================================================================= Studio Magic docs brought to you by The Southern Star. These docs do not conform to line sequences as found in the manual (although they do conform to page numbers) so it may be somewhat difficult to figure out exactly what "manual code word" is needed for the program to operate properly.