------------------------------------------------------------------------- Docfile MIDI ComposerTool/ChordSequencer alias midichords (v3.2) febr.'93 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- In order to work correctly the code expects the following files to be in the same directory (or on the root of a disk): - midichords - pointmod.file - blscrmod.file - sqscrmod.file - scscrmod.file - mcdocmod.file - Seqfile 1 - 7 loadable samples wherever the program itself (midichords) is copied to. Whenever the code saves Seqfiles to disk, it will be to that same directory (or that root). All MIDI data are send to your synthesizer by means of the serial device, the data themselves are nothing more than Note On/Off command sequences. All synthesizers however, require that the received data are send at a very specific (high) speed: 31,250 bytes/second. This is the standard baudrate for any MIDI message. Since the code makes use of the serial device to send the MIDI data to your MIDI-interface (which in turn will actually send the data to your synthesizer) you might need to adjust the baudrate for your serial device to: 31,250 bytes/second. This can easily be done in your Preferences-program or by clicking on that telephone-icon on your Workbench which is called: Serial. The precise setting of your serial device should be (while you're at it): Baudrate: 31250 Buffer Size: 512 Read Bits: 8 Write Bits: 8 Stop Bits: 1 Parity: None Handshaking: None. Save these values and the code will work fine. After copying all required files to the same directory (or some root) the program will start after clicking its icon or after typing "midichords" in the CLI, provided you changed the active directory to the one where you copied the program and its files to. This can be done by using the cd command in the CLI. Once the serial device is correctly set, this program will enable you to: - Play any chord with a simple mouse click in 9 different scales. - Get the played chord, notes and MIDI notenumbers displayed, also a display of which keys to press on your synth may be produced. - Find any chord which matches 2, 3 or 4 notes in a selected scale. - Create small sequences of chords by copying them into one of the 8 possible buffers: (BLOCKS) B1 --> B8, each block containing up to 24 entries (chords) in a sequence as a maximum. - Create larger sequences by arranging these blocks themselves in a sequence of 24 entries (blocks) and again this is a maximum. - Load and save socalled Seqfiles, containing all vital information concerning the specific sequence you created. (see PS.1) - Send the contents of a Seqfile to your printer (when connected). - Play the selected and sequenced chords by clicking your mouse, or play any loaded Seqfile repeatedly in auto mode. - Affect the way the notes are played by means of an adjustable delay between the MIDI note-messages, creating arpeggio's. - Switch the playmode from MIDI out to the soundchips of the Amiga. However, no efforts were made to expand this output further since it was only built in for those amongst you, who are neither in possession of a MIDI-interface nor synthesizer. So go out and get yourselves hooked on MIDI to do justice to me and my code...!! (Oopsh: you may now also load one type of Sonix *.instr samples.) - Switch from 4 to 8 notes played each chord in both output modes. - Play SuperChords: chord + same chord a QUINT higher, be careful with this one though... (see PS.3) - Create music using randomly choosen chords in any selected scale. - Search for chords with about the same harmonical contents (notes) as any chord selected. - Play up to 24 buffered chords by pressing the keys of your Amiga. The best way to get to know these different functions and buttons is to experiment with the program itself, and while at it, some reading of the information given after each succesful keyclick might be useful too... If you're anxious to know more, you'd better read the following tutorial: At the very start of this code (as soon as everything is loaded) a short MIDI test is performed to check your MIDI connections. So if your synth is switched on reception of MIDI and the correct baudrate is set, you should hear some sounds played by your synth. As already mentioned the program will only be sending Note On/Off messages, which means that you will be staying in full control of all other available synth functions. If this MIDI test fails to produce any sounds from your synthesizer, you will have to adjust the baudrate used by the serial device... Once the MIDI test has been performed you will be facing a screen which belongs to the socalled Block Mode (BM) of the program. A similar screen is displayed whenever the program is in the Sequence Mode (SM), so try clicking with your left mouse button on the gadget called SEQUENCER which is located at the bottom right of the BM-screen. As soon as you managed to do that, you will be facing the SM-screen from where you can only exit by clicking with your left mouse button on the gadget EXIT, right beneath your pointer (after clicking on SEQUENCER). Now click on EXIT to return to the BM screen, leaving the SM screen as it is for the moment... Assuming the BM screen is facing you, move your pointer to the blue-white-grey panel, right above the keyboard on screen. Whenever you click the left mouse button (while the pointer is on this panel) one of all possible chords is played and all essential information about the played chord is displayed in the blue panel at the bottom left. Clicking the right mouse button (instead of the left one) will result in playing the same chord, however, the third note and the fourth note of the same chord are SHIFTED one octave downwards. Which button you pressed is also displayed in the information panel: the fundamentals of all unshifted chords are displayed in capitals, while those of the shifted chords are displayed normally. Right above this chord-matrix, a small bar is placed at the top of the screen, serving the purpose of TUNING your synthesizer by means of sending one selected note in 3 different octaves. The actual tuning and fine-tuning can then be performed by using those controls of your synthesizer. As long as you hold the left mouse button depressed (while the pointer is on the tuning-bar) the tuning notes are send to your synth, which is also the case for any chords played in that panel below the tuning-bar: releasing the depressed mouse button will stop the playing of the chord. Now, click on the tuning-bar with the right mouse button, turn on the AUDIO of your Amiga and click some chords... You'll notice that the turquoise LED (directly to the right of the tuning-bar) changed to pink indicating your use of the Amiga soundchannels. In this mode there is no transmittance of any MIDI messages to your synth at all. Clicking on the tuningbar with the right mouse button (again) will switch this mode off and restore the pink LED to turquoise, indicating you're back into MIDI mode. Now click with the left mouse button somewhere on the keyboard and play any chord...! What you did is set a specific DELAY between the played notes ranging from 0.02 to 1 second, the selected amount of delay is on display in a blue field on the control panel to the right of the screen. Clicking with the left mouse button somewhere on the keyboard again will reset the delay to 0 and the display on the control panel will change to: -- ,indicating there's no delay set. Whenever a delay is set, the bottom line of the screen will change from black to red and the amount will be displayed on the control panel by means of numbers between 1 and 49. You can easily set the amount of delay by clicking on a specific key of the keyboard, clicking on the far left key will set the delay to 1 and clicking on the far right key will set the delay to its maximum: 49. At this point it's wise to play around a bit with these delay-settings, so try some different settings to hear your chords played in the ARPEGGIO-style... Now clicking somewhere on the keyboard with the right mouse button will cause the program to enter the CHORD-SEARCH-MODE indicated by the color change of the pointer. At the far right of the control panel (right after the word: plus) you will be asked to INPUT the notes, you want the program to find the matching chords to. Input the first note by clicking with the right mouse button on a specific key of the keyboard, whereafter you will be asked to input the second note. Do that by clicking with the right mouse button on some other key in the neighbourhood of the first key, and from this point on the choice is up to you: if you only want the program to search for a chord matching TWO notes click on your left mouse button twice to cancel the input of the third and fourth note. If you need to find some chord matching THREE notes just enter the third note the same way as you did with the previous two: clicking on some key with the right mouse button, then click just once with the left mouse button to cancel the input of the fourth note. When the program is searching for chords matching 2 or 3 notes there are always more possibilities than one and therefore all matching chords will be presented to you one by one at each click of your left mouse button (as long as the code finds any matching chords). When the program is no longer searching the color of the pointer will be restored to the color it had before, which indicates that the pointer is free to move outside the keyboard again. Since all found chords are displayed on the keyboard as well, it's wise to move the pointer away from the keyboard area of the notes you entered while the program is in search of the 2 or 3 notes matching chords. The pointer might be in front of the key-display... If you need to find the chord belonging to FOUR specific notes you just input all 4 notes whereafter the program will search for the FIRST chord which contains these 4 notes and that chord will be presented to you. Though the key-display itself will be wiped out, all relevant information will be preserved in the blue panel at the bottom left of the screen. If no matching chord can be found, you could try to switch to another scale and reenter the chord-search-mode. Switching the scale is done by clicking with the left mouse button on the gadget SCALECTOR (right above the SEQUENCER gadget on the control panel) whereafter you are invited to select another scale by clicking the left mouse button on any of the offered possibilities at the bottom of the screen, the default being Yonic which is the most used scale in Western music. Clicking on the long bar below the scale-gadgets will not affect the selected scale itself, it only acts upon the way each chord will be played (SuperChords), until this bar is clicked left again. Pressing the Amiga keys will play the chords as displayed on the right. Anytime you'll find the scale selected for the chord-matrix displayed on the BM screen on the control panel (at the right) in capitals, whereas the scales of the buffered chords will be displayed normally below the scale-indication for the chord-matrix. Right above the gadget labeled SCALECTOR, you'll find another gadget, which controls the key display of the actual played keys on the keyboard, whenever a chord is selected from the chord-matrix. So click the left mouse button on SHOW KEYS and play some chords to see what happens to the keyboard on screen... You can switch the key display off again by clicking with the left mouse button on the same gadget (which will read at this point: HIDE KEYS). Let's switch the key-display off for the moment and continue with a more interesting part of the program: the CHORD-BUFFERING. At the bottom of the screen in the middle there's a blue bar with the indications: B1 B2 B3 ... B8 facing you. That block Bx which is printed in red at the moment is the active and current buffer. (If you've been following this tutorial so far, the current buffer will probably be B1.) Now, click any mouse button on the chord-matrix: as usual, you'll see the selected chord and its notes (as well as the corresponding MIDI notenumbers) displayed. Move your pointer to any one of the 24 places below the Block-bar B1-->B8 and click with the right mouse button. The FUNDAMENTAL of the chord will be displayed instead of the number, indicating that that place in the current block is occupied by your selected chord. Now, move your pointer to another number and click your right mouse button again: that same old chord will now occupy the second place you selected with your pointer. Go on and get some more (DIFFERENT) chords stored in a block in the same way, whenever you've made a sequence (without an empty place in between) click the left mouse button on the PLAY BLOCK gadget. Your first chord will be played as long as you keep the left mouse button depressed. Now click left once more: the next buffered chord will be played etc. etc. Once you've finished playing your block, click with the left mouse button on any block in the Block-bar which is not printed in red, to make that selected block the current one. You'll see another empty 24 places to fill in with another chord-sequence, so proceed and play a chord from the chord-matrix and store it in the first place: 01. Then play another chord and store that one in place 02. Now click left on the (no longer empty) first place: you'll hear the stored chord again and you'll see the information corresponding to this very chord displayed... Now move your pointer to the third place in your current block and click your right mouse button... The result will be that the first chord is now COPIED to the third place and in fact it can be copied to any place... If in the meanwhile you would have selected another scale (SCALECTOR) and you copy a buffered chord in a different scale by clicking on its fundamental, you'll find the scale-information copied too. This enables the mixing of different scales in a Block-sequence and it gives you as much creative freedom as possible at the moment (9 scales available). You will always OVERWRITE any occupied place in a block, when you want to store another chord in that peticular place. If it's your wish to get rid of any occupied place and delete its contents: move your pointer to that place and click with BOTH mouse buttons at the same time... If you decide to work on another block: simply select that block in the bar by clicking on it with your left mouse button and you will find that that block didn't change a bit. This enables a fast switching between the 8 different Block-buffers in order to put NO LIMITS to your creativity. You will have noticed by now that any chord being displayed in that information panel at the bottom left of the screen can be copied into a specific place of the current (or any other) Block-buffer, and that there are two ways to get a specific chord displayed: the first will be to click on the corresponding location in the chord-matrix and the second is even much more convenient, once you already selected a chord: click your left mouse button on the fundamental displayed in the Block- buffer. Clicking your left mouse button on PLAY BLOCK will always play your sequenced chords one by one in the indicated order, clicking your right mouse button on PLAY BLOCK however will change the reading of the gadget to STEP BLOCK. This means that the sequenced chords are played in the same indicated order, however by pressing the [ESC]-KEY on the keyboard of your computer, you will force the playroutine to jump to any next chord in the defined order. It will take some LITTLE bit of practice to synchronize your [Esc]-key-presses and left mouse-clicks, but once you mastered this timing-problem, the STEP-function may turn out to be very useful indeed... Clicking on your current played block on the Block-bar will reset the play/step-routine. At the far right of the screen on the control panel you'll notice some other useful gadgets, such as the INFO gadget (click left on it and you'll know who's fully responsible for this very code, click left again to restore the screen) and the gadget labeled ? (click left on it and you'll be adviced to read this docfile first, click left again and quit the program to print this docfile to paper...). The gadget right below the previous ? will perform the MIDI-test by a simple click of your left mouse button. Clicking on that tiny gadget below the MIDI-test-button will enable you to load some other waveform to be used by your audio-channels, read the info given. The next gadget of any interest is the one labeled RND>, clicking your left mouse button on it will cause the code to play randomly choosen chords in the current scale with or without any set delay. However, it must be stated that those randomly chord-sequences sound much better when the delay is set to 20 or so... Clicking right on RND> will play the randomly chosen chords not in argeggio mode (when some delay is set) but more in legato. This will only function whenever the MIDI output is selected, the audio output will not be affected by any clicking right. You'll have to find that out for yourself, but another useful tip might be that you can very easily EXPAND these arpeggio's any time by clicking left on another gadget, labeled 4 VC: this allows at least 8 notes to be arpeggio'd each chord. Click left on the same gadget again to restore the default setting: 4 VC. At this point you might be interested in the way to STOP this randomly playing: simply KEEP the left or right mouse button depressed until the playing stops... (this may take a while, especially when a long delay is set and all 8 voices are active...!!) Clicking left on >PRT will have no effect on the BM screen, it performs a print out of your Seqfile (we will come to the SM screen in just a little while from now). Whenever you click left on the gadget labeled MODE its display will change to >>>>, indicating that a faster mode is active. In this >>>>-mode there will be no information about the played chords or blocks at all, its purpose being to improve any concentration. In this >>>>-mode you will, consequently, NOT be able to do any editting to your sequenced-chords-blocks B1 to B8. The gadgets SHOW/HIDE KEYS and SCALECTOR will also be disabled when in this mode. Clicking left on >>>> again will restore the default setting (fully informative). The gadget below the MODE-gadget just toggles between 4 voices (notes) or 8 voices played each chord (arpeggio'd or not), just click the left mouse button on it. We have already met this feature a few phrases ago... This takes us to the last gadget worth noting: QUIT. This gadget can only perform its duty when in the BM screen, and by clicking the left mouse button, a sort of requester will appear in which you can actually quit the program by clicking your right mouse button, clicking left will restore the screen as it was and it will be like NOTHING had happened at all... This completes our journey through the Block Mode screen and take your time to get really acquainted with all functions, before you start any exploration of the Sequencer Mode screen, which will be the next topic of this (still relatively short) tutorial... Whenever you feel like it, click with your left mouse button on the SEQUENCER-gadget and presto...!! The screen facing you is the Sequencer Mode screen (SM screen) which looks very similar to the BM screen. Its main function is to allow you to chain your pre-fabbed chord-sequence-blocks in any peticular order. This is simply done by clicking left on the B1 to B8 gadgets to select the Block-buffer to be placed in the sequence. If you move your pointer to the first place (01) and click left again the previously selected Block-buffer will be played on that place in the sequence as a whole. The playing of the sequence of Block-buffers will stop whenever an empty place is encountered, so chain your Block-buffers one after the other without any empty place (if you want the created sequence to be played all the way...). You can delete the contents of a place in the sequence by clicking the right mouse button whenever your pointer is on that peticular place. You'll find most functions of the BM screen copied into this SM screen: setting the DELAY, toggling between MODE and >>>>, number of VOICES used, toggling between Amiga out and MIDI out, TUNING, PLAY- or STEP-function, even clicking left or right on the chord-matrix will produce chords (however there will be no information given) and you might also want to test your MIDI connections using the MIDI-test-gadget. However the RND>-, INFO-, ?- and QUIT gadgets are disabled whenever in the SM screen, and another search mode is available by clicking right on the keyboard on screen and subsequently clicking on the chord-matrix. New options in the SM-screen are formed by the three gadgets at the bottom right of the screen: LOAD FILE, SAVE FILE, Seqfile 0. The last mentioned gadget allows you to choose any Seqfile with a number between 0 (default Seqbuffer) and 9. By clicking the left mouse button whenever the pointer is on that gadget the Seqfilenumber will be increased by 1, by clicking right it will be decreased by 1. By clicking left on the LOAD FILE gadget the current Seqfile will be loaded from disk into memory and once the loading is completed you will be returned to the BM screen. Now clicking left on the SEQUENCER gadget again will result in an updated SM screen. Any Seqfile can only be loaded if it exists, if not, you will be returned to the BM screen immediately. By clicking right on the SAVE FILE gadget the current sequence will be saved to disk with the name as indicated in the Seqfile-gadget. However any existing Seqfile of the SAME number will be completely OVERWRITTEN, so be careful with this option... All LOAD/SAVE functions require a Seqfilenumber not equal to zero. This means: you can not LOAD or SAVE Seqfile 0 (default Seqbuffer). To serve as an example and to demonstrate the LOAD FILE option there's a simple Seqfile included, it's called: Seqfile 1. Try loading it now... And by clicking your right mouse button while the pointer is on the >PRT gadget, the contents of the current Seqfile will be send to the printer... You can exit the SM screen by clicking left on the EXIT gadget, clicking right on this gadget will CLEAR all buffers in memory (including all the previously set settings...!!!) and subsequently you will be returned to the old BM screen again, like any loading or saving a Seqfile does... In both screens (BM- as well as SM-screen) the current Seqfilenumber is displayed in a small blue gadget right below that tiny unlabelled button on the control panel at the right of all screens. There's one more thing you should know: whenever you are PLAY-ing or STEP-ping through your Seqfile and you feel like stopping in the middle of your composition, you can abort the PLAY- or STEP-routine by clicking your right mouse button. This will free your pointer again to change some setting or so... Finally, you may switch to auto mode by clicking left or right on the tiny unlabeled gadget below the MIDI-test-gadget. Having done so, try clicking left on PLAY or STEP to hear your Seqfile looping... This is the END of this tutorial... This means that ALL features have been explained, so click, play, toggle, compose, record etc. as much as you like. In case there are still any questions about the operation of midichords, I'll be glad to answer them. Click on the INFO gadget of the BM screen and you'll know how to reach me... With a little bit of your ENCOURAGEMENT I will be developing new features and expanding old ones in the near future... Theo Brugman. PS.1 Whenever you run out of your EMPTY Seqfiles and you don't want to overwrite an existing Seqfile, you can simply rename all Seqfiles in your directory by using the CLI. Like so: [1] > cd (return) [1] > rename "Seqfile 1" as Seqfile1 (or any other name) [1] > rename "Seqfile 2" as Seqfile2 (or any other name) [1] > etc. etc. After having done this, midichords will no longer recognize your precious older Seqfiles and you provided yourself with a complete new (unused) Seqfiles to record again... PS.2 Since the program (and its related files alltogether) needs about 250k you're adviced to copy some fully functional (but stripped) Workbench1.3 disk and copy all relevant files directly to the root of that disk: this will give you lots of working space to handle your Seqfiles (renamed or not!) when you stripped your WB disk of all programs which aren't needed at the time (like Notepad etc.). However if you're lucky enough to own a hard disk, simply copy all relevant files to some directory of your hard disk, make that directory the current one and everything (like the loading of the program itself) will run even faster... PS.3 Clicking left on the long blue bar in the SCALECTOR mode will do a trick I learned to appreciate, using old-fashioned synthesizers... Whenever you play some chord this very same chord will also be played a quint higher. For instance: when you click on C min, you will hear C min and G min as well... This makes your chords sound more massive, however not each chord is suitable for superimposing so take care not to make a mess of it. On the right control-panel you will note that the display for the selected number of voices has changed to: ****, whenever this effect is switched on. The only way to switch this effect off again is clicking left on the bar in SCALECTOR mode once more. As long as the display is **** the number of voices used can not be adjusted by clicking on the gadget itself, so if you decide not to use it: go back to the SCALECTOR, click left on the long bar and you'll be returned to the BM screen again with 4 active voices. Now, if you want to use the 8-voice extension again, click left on the appropriate gadget. PS.4 Note that you may use the notes played on the tuning-bar in the same way as real chords. This enables the buffering of your melody, played over three octaves, as if it was a chord-sequence... I hope you'll enjoy the program as much as I did creating it, buy... TB.