Music-X Tutorial:
Playing Amiga samples from a synthesizer keyboard.

Welcome, fellow fans of Music-X, to another one of those little tutorials
on various aspects within this fine MIDI program. As you know, in the last
few issues of AM/FM, I've been dealing with one little feature or one
little area of use within Music-X. This time, I thought I'd write a little
article on how to use your MIDI keyboard or synthesizer to play Amiga
samples. Partly because I think this is a feature that few users actually
know how to handle properly, and partly because a reader wrote to us and
asked how this is done.

There are lots of instruments and samples available to an Amiga owner. I
have never heard of a synthesizer offering such a wide spectre of sounds
as you can get on your Amiga by digging through PD sample disks and demos,
music disks, AM/FM sample disks, etc. etc.

Some of you may wish to use some of these samples in a piece of music, but
you want to be able to play your piece on your keyboard, not just on the
somehow tricky keyboard-layout that MED or Protracker offers. It's almost
like an Amiga sample is given new life and a completely new depth, once
you can really play with it on a proper keyboard. If you don't believe me,
try it!

To set up Music-X so that it triggers an Amiga sample when you play on
your synthesizer, you have to use two pages in Music-X that you may not
have used very often before. I have a feeling most users of this program
use the Sequencer page mostly, and so do I; but for this particular area
of use, we will take a closer look at the Amiga Samples page and the
Filters page.

You can select either of these pages from the left-hand pull-down menu in
Music-X. No matter which page you are on at the moment, you can always
select any of the other pages. First, go to the Amiga Samples page. You
will see a row of 16 numbered, empty slots, into which you can load 16
different Amiga samples. Note that these samples have to be in IFF format,
and you will not be able to load a sample that has been saved in a so
called RAW format. The best way to assure a sample will load into Music-X
without problems, is to save the sample from Audiomaster 1, 2, 3 or 4.
Save it as IFF sample. If the sample is already in RAW format, load it
into Audiomaster and save it back out on the disk. The sample is now in a
proper IFF format and should quite happily load into the Music-X Amiga
Samples page.

Once you've loaded a sample into Music-X, you can listen to it by clicking
on the sample that you wish to hear, and press C on the keyboard. If
everything is connected properly, you should hear your sample playing. The
sound may be a bit "muted" and low on treble, but to rectify this, use the
pull-down menu on top of the screen to TURN the sound filter OFF. You will
hear that the sound becomes much clearer and richter on treble. If you
have an old model Amiga, the red LED indicating that your Amiga is turned
on, will go out, but don't worry about this. For some obscure reason,
Commodore created the Amiga with the low-pass filter connected to the
power-led. I have always tried to convince myself this was some sort of
joke from Commodore.

Now you can click on one of the other 16 slots for samples, and load more
samples if you wish - up to 16 is allowed. Try this out and listen to each
of them by pressing C.

By using the graphic envelope editor at the bottom right-hand side of the
screen, you can change the attack time, decay time etc. on the sound. Try
this out too! I'm not quite sure how many "steps" you can have in this
volume-envelope, but you can have quite a few of them. To add another
envelope-point, press the tiny little "E+", and to remove an envelope
point, press the little "E-". The various envelope points can be dragged
around in the little window to adjust the volume, speed of attack, etc.
etc. You can also zoom in and out in the envelope editor window by
pressing the other little "+" and "-" gadgets.

Once you have loaded a few samples into the Amiga Samples Page, use the
left-hand pull-down menu to select Filters Page. This page is used to
distribute and redirect any incoming MIDI events that Music-X receives.
You can take a signal coming in on channel 1 and send it back out on
channel 5. For example. There's a _lot_ of other things you can do on this
page too, but today we'll settle for some quite simple redirection of MIDI
data.


Make sure your MIDI synthesizer is connected properly to the Amiga, i.e.
with a MIDI lead going from the OUT port on your synth to the IN port on
your Amiga; _AND_ another MIDI lead going from the OUT port on your Amiga
to the IN port on your synth. Now set your synth to a MIDI channel of your
choice, say, in this case, let's use channel 1. Set your synth to transmit
on MIDI channel 1.

Somewhere near the top of the Filters Page, you will see 16 buttons from
left to right numbered 1 to 16. Number 1 should be highlighted. This row
of buttons indicate which MIDI channel of incoming data that we should do
something with. Further down the screen, you will find a table of MIDI
channels split up in channels left to right and various MIDI events such
as notes, program changes, control changes etc. etc. top to bottom (listed
on the right-hand side). On the bottom line it says "Set All", which will
redirect all the various MIDI events to the channel you choose from the
table.

Even further down the screen you should find a larger button which says
"Local Off". Press this. If everything goes ok, your synth will no longer
play anything when you play it's keys! That's because you have just told
it to ignore it's own sound system, and use only the keys. Now, underneath
the "Local Off" and "Local On" buttons, you should also find a button that
says "Internal". Press this, and it will be highlighted.

Now, play on your keyboard again, and you should hear the Amiga sample
that you loaded into slot number 1 on the Amiga Samples Page! What you
have done is to redirect the incoming MIDI data on channel one to the
Amiga's internal sound sample number 1. Now use the table on the middle of
the page to SET ALL to channel 2, i.e. redirect all MIDI data from channel
1 to channel 2. You will now hear Sample number 2 play!

Once you've accomplished this, you have already learned the most important
basics about the Amiga Filters page, which is perhaps one of the most
complex feature in Music-X.

If you wanted to redirect your MIDI data to another MIDI channel instead
of an internal sound, you should turn off the INTERNAL button, and instead
select the RE-OUT button. Whatever comes in on the MIDI channel indicated
by the highlighted button on top of the page (in this case channel 1) will
be redirected to whatever channel you have given it in the table of MIDI
channels below.

Now, when you feel that you can fully master this aspect of using the
Music-X Filters Page, you are ready to move on and try out the other
possibilities here. I will advise you all to go ahead and experiment with
it - remember, you CAN'T wreck any equipment or software on this - you
just can't! So just go ahead and play around with it.

See you in another episode of "Dr.Bjorn goes bollox on Music-X" in the
next issue of AM/FM.

PS: Heard the latest??? AM/FM Special Disks #1 and #2 both contain tons of
music for Music-X, ready to load in and play! Get them from your favourite
AM/FM dealer!