*********************************** AM/FM ***********************************     OCTAMED UPDATE ON THE PT-STUDIO SERIES !    The "PT-Studio" series here in AM/FM was started as a kind of tutorial for the "advanced" user of ProTracker. In this series, we are going through the player- commands and other features in Protracker which not too many musicians are using, because they have been added as new features, after Noisetracker became ProTracker, and after MED became OctaMED. From the start, we aimed the tutorial directly at ProTracker, and didn't really go into the same functions in OctaMED, even though OctaMED in fact has *all* the player commands that Protracker has, including even the most advanced ones, and it even has *more* commands in addition. I don't really know *why* we didn't think of aiming the tutorial both at Protracker and OctaMED users, we were downright thoughtless, I suppose! However, starting from this issue on, the "PT- Studio" tutorial will be renamed to "PT/OctaMED Studio", and from now on, we will cater for *both* programs in the tutorial. The functions and player commands that ProTracker and OctaMED have are almost all identical, however many of them use different character codes to trigger them. For example; the codes for "Fine Volume Sliding" up and down are "EAx" and "EBx" on Protracker, while they're "1Ax" and "1Bx" on OctaMED - apart than this, they are *completely identical*. Unfortunately, all the OctaMED users out there have missed the first 3 parts of the tutorial, because these parts were aimed directly at Protracker users only. However, in the explanation below, we make it possible for you OctaMED users to get something out of those 3 lessons, because here are the OctaMED equivalents to the ProTracker commands that are described in these lessons! The below "short lessons" are *not* stand-alone lessons for OctaMED, but should be read together with the original "PT-Studio" lessons. The original lessons explain in great detail how the command works and how to use it - while the "OctaMED-additions" below only explains the additions/differences for use with OctaMED. We're really sorry we didn't incorporate OctaMED into the tutorial right from the start - of course we should have done that - however, we hope that this "update" will get you into the series and we promise to cater for both OctaMED and ProTracker users equally from now on throughout the rest of the series! Here we go...  LESSON 1; Note Retrig:  The first lesson showed you how to use the "Note Retrig" effect. This is in fact one of the commands that works a little bit different on OctaMED and ProTracker. While on Protracker, you give a command and feed it with the number of Vertical Blanks to wait between each time the note is triggered, OctaMED has instead special codes for trigging the note *twice* OR *three times* within the step. In OctaMED, if you want two notes played very quick, within the time normally used to play just ONE step, you add the command "FF1" to the note. If, for example, the tempo in your song is 06, then the Amiga will wait 6 Vertical Blanks between playing each step in the song. If you then want to play a note twice, in double that tempo, i.e. with only 3 Vertical-Blanks between, then you would do this: C-3 01FF1 The C-3 with instrument 1 will be played twice; in double the speed of one step of the song. There's another, separate code to play the note *even quicker*, THREE times within the same step. This code is xxx, and it is used in the exact same way as FF3, only that FF3 plays the note three times within the same step, i.e. even quicker than FF1. If your tempo is, say, 6, and you want to play three notes *extremely* quick, with only 2 Vertical-Blanks between, well then you would do this: C-3 01FF3 The C-3 with instrument 1 will be played three times; in triple the speed of one step of the song. (I.e. if the tempo is 06, the three notes will be played with on 2 Vertical-blanks in between).  LESSON 2; Note Delay:  As the code in lesson 1, this one actually works a little bit different on OctaMED and ProTracker. I know I said almost all of them work in the exact same way, and the two first have worked differently, but hang in there, past this one, and the rest is just different codes; I swear! If you have understood the previous lesson, "Note Retrig", then it's very easy to learn this one, because it works in the same way. The difference is that this one WAITS for part of the time of the step, and then, some time before jumping to the next step, it plays the note. Of course, the time units used here are *extremely* small, remember that, so when I write "wait", I mean wait for the time it takes to blink your eye, and *not* "wait", as in "sit back in the chair and wait for a while". Ok? If you have a tempo of, say, 06 in your song (it's a good example, ok??!), and you want one specific note to WAIT for half of this time before playing, in other words, you want to play a note *between* two steps in the song; then you add the command 1F30 to the note; and hey presto, the note will not be played until HALF of the time of the step has passed and gone. Take a look at this example: C-3 01000 F-3 02F30 These two notes will not be played at the same time, even though they are placed on the same step. The F30 code will delay the F-3 note by half of the time it takes before the next step is played. In effect, the F-3 is played *between* this step and the next step.  LESSON 3; Note cut + Step-loop:  These two commands work the exact same way in OctaMED as in Protracker, so all you OctaMED users can just go ahead and read the original PT-Studio lesson, but you should replace the codes: Notecut: Protracker: ECx OctaMED : 80x <====== Step Loop: Protracker: E6x OctaMED : 16x *********************************** AM/FM ***********************************