Scaling Velocity

"Scale Velocities" is found on the Tools pull-down menu. You are offered the choice of scaling the entire sequence, or just the marked events -- you choose. Two slider gadgets select the percentage of scaling at the start and end of the sequence. To just alter the volume of the sequence, these should be the same, with percentages less than 100 decreasing the velocities, and obviously percentages greater than 100 increasing them. You can also create crescendo and diminuendo effects by making the End scaling greater or less than the Start scaling.

Setting Repeats

To add a repeat, click on Move and drag the marker so that it is exactly on the end of the sequence. Then click on Add, and then Set Repeats from the pop-up menu. When you next click anywhere in the editing window a REP:1 marker will appear.

You can drag this marker whilst still holding down the mouse button. Now one of the slider gadgets in the bottom right hand corner of the screen will change to REP. Drag this until you have a decent number of repeats, say fifty.

Storing your edited Sequence

Repeat steps one to six, until you have recorded all the tracks you need for your song. You will notice that when you record subsequent tracks, the previous ones play along. This is particularly useful for composing melodies on the fly, but if you find it too much (or need to play a sequence in a different key for example), click on the timing part of the sequences display line (this will probably contain something like 0000), until it displays "Off". To turn it back on, simply click on the same place again.

Creating a song

Next, pick an empty Play Sequence, and EDIT it. This will be your master control sequence. Use Grid to select whole notes (the biggest ones), so that it is easy to line up your Play Sequences. When you get more proficient, you can start to be a bit more daring with timings.

Hit Add, then Play Sequence, and then OK. You are now ready to start piecing together your track. Click on the area of the edit window where you wish to add the sequence. The vertical position determines which of the Play Sequences is added, with the first being at the bottom, and working up. Music-X is not always entirely accurate in this, but can sometimes produce unexpected and interesting results.

If the placement of the sequence is incorrect, or if it is the wrong sequence, click on Move and then on the sequence. Then use the cursor keys to move the sequence around. Holding down SHIFT whilst you use the cursor keys changes the length of the sequence by the length of the note selected in Grid.

Add as many play sequences as you need to make up your song. You can use the shifted cursor keys to make each one as long as you like, but in practice best results are obtained by ensuring no play sequence is longer than eight bars. If you want a sequence to play for longer than this (and of course with techno, most of your sequences will last the entire length of the song), just add two or more sequences consecutively. Any longer than eight bars seems to cause Music-X a bit of a problem and timing glitches can occur.

When you exit out from this Play Sequence, give it a name (like "Rough Mix 1"). You can create as many of these "Control Sequences" as you like, but it's probably a good idea to only play one of them back at a time unless you have a stupendous amount of polyphony available.

Saving your work

CANCEL will remove the requester, STORE will make the changes and return to the main screen, DISCARD will forget all the changes and HOLD will put them somewhere temporarily.