*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************       PROTRACKER STUDIO; PART 2!      THIS ISSUE'S LESSON:    NOTE DELAY (EDx)      NOTE: THERE IS AN EXAMPLE PROTRACKER MODULE THAT GOES WITH THIS ARTICLE!! THE MODULE IS STORED IN THE "Music" DIRECTORY ON THIS DISK, AND IS CALLED "MOD.DELAY-EXAMPLE". *** Welcome to the second article in this series on "How to use Protracker to it's maximum"! This series was started in AM/FM issue #13, and in that issue, we looked at how to use the "Note retrig" effect. This time, we will take a closer look at another special Protracker effect command: The "Note Delay" command. As I said last time, far too many Amiga musicians use Protracker just like it was still an old Noisetracker! This is really sad, because your music can be so much more lively and well-produced with a few touches of those special Protracker effects. The Protracker was launched with lots and lots of brand new, wonderful effects and commands, and it seems most users have ignored these effects, or maybe never managed to get them to work like they wanted them to. The documentation in Protracker itself isn't exactly easy to read or understand for anyone who hasn't been using trackers for 10 years. This series of lessons will explain in a more detailed and easily understandable way how to use these special Protracker functions that so many are ignoring. As I mentioned above, this issue's lesson is "How to use the Note Delay effect". The "Note Delay" effect's function is, as the name implies, to delay a note a certain number of "Vertical blanks" before actually playing it. Last time, I described in detail what a "Vertical blank" is, but I will do a short repetition of that lesson, because to be able to work properly with these special functions and effects, it is really vital that you understand the "Vertical blank" timing concepts. Your machine has a certain operating frequency. For european PAL machines, that frequency is 50 Hz, and for US NTSC machines, it is 60 Hz. The screen is redrawn 50 (Europe) or 60 (USA) times per second, and the time it takes to draw the screen once is called a "Vertical blank". Hence, in Europe, we get 50 Vertical-blanks per second, and this again means that a Vertical-blank takes 0.02 seconds. With the "Note Delay" function, we can tell Protracker to wait a certain amount of Vertical-blanks before actually playing the note. This can give us an "off-beat", or "human" feel to the music, as we can deliberately add notes played slightly "out of time"! If you listen closely to a piano player, for example, when he plays a chord, it is very rare that he hits all the keys in the chord at the exact same time. If you play three notes in Protracker on the same step in the pattern, these three notes WILL be played on the exact same time, making it sound a bit "computerized". Now, if you delay one or two of these notes a tiny bit, it will immediately sound more "human" and "real". The Note Delay effect is called with the characters ED and then a number from 0 to F (Hex). The number is the amount of Vertical-Blanks (50th's of a second) to wait before playing the note. For example: C-3 01ED3 In the example above, we can see that a C-3 is being played with instrument no. 01, and the note is delayed 3 Vertical-blanks, which equals 0.06 seconds (on European Amigas). Now, if any other notes was played on the same step in this pattern, you would be able to hear that this C-3 note appeared a little bit after the other note(s). One particularly effective way to use the Note Delay function is to create a "double" drum hit, just like it sounds when a real drummer hits a drum with both drum sticks. A real live drummer is very unlikely to hit the drum-skin with both his sticks at the exact same time. So; to make a very realistic "both-hands-drum-hit", try this: Channel 1: Channel 2: C-3 01000 C-3 01ED2 You can see from the above example that the same sound is being played in two sound channels; but the one in the second sound channel is delayed by two vertical-blanks, i.e. 0.04 seconds. This gives a very realistic "BALAM!" sound, just like when Phil Collins smashes his snare drum with both drum sticks. For variety, try a delay of just ONE vertical-blank too (ED1). This also gives a quite realistic effect. Extra special cool delay effect! -------------------------------- I once discovered, by accident, a very nice effect that isn't documented anywhere, but which can in fact be created with the note delay command. If you play two identical notes with the same instrument in two different sound channels, and add the effect ED0 to one of them, this will give you a very cool sounding delay/phaser effect! Apparently, if you trig the Note Delay effect, but tell Protracker to wait ZERO vertical-blanks, i.e. nothing at all, before playing it; then Protracker will, for some reason, delay the note just a tiny little bit anyway! The length of the delay will be very very short, and if you play it together with another note with the same instrument, which doesn't have any delay at all, this gives you the great phaser effect. NOTE: The phaser effect only appears if the two sounds are played in the same loudspeaker! So if you are using a stereo system which splits the Amiga sound into two channels left and two channels right, then make sure you place the two phaser-creating notes in two sound channels going to the same speaker! In Protracker, tracks 1 and 4 goes left and tracks 2 and 3 goes right! So if you place the two sounds in channels 1 and 4, the phaser effect will appear, but if you place them in 1 and 2, the effect will NOT appear! Naturally, IF you have mixed it all down to Mono before it goes to your speakers, then it will work anyway! The point is that the two sounds that create the phaser effect have to come out of the same loudspeaker. If you still don't understand how it works, load the "DELAY-EXAMPLE" module into Protracker and study it carefully. That was today's lesson. Join us next time for further ventures into those wonderful Protracker effects. Meanwhile; practice! Bjørn A. Lynne *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************