Simtel MSDOS 1992 June

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======================== P L A Y E R P I A N O ======================== User's_Manual Copyright 1984 by KEY SOFTWARE PRODUCTS 440 Ninth Avenue Menlo Park, California 94025 (415) 364-9847 WHAT IS PLAYER PIANO ? PLAYER PIANO is a program that allows you to play, record, save, retrieve, and edit music on your personal computer. The top two rows of your computer's keyboard are used as if they were keys on a piano keyboard; the top row is used for the sharps and flats (black keys), and the next row is used for the naturals (white keys). The screen of your computer displays an image of a piano keyboard and a "roll" of player piano music. When you play a note on the keyboard, or while you are playing a roll of music, the corresponding keyboard keys change appearance on the screen and the roll of music advances to show the next "hole" in the roll. WHAT HARDWARE/SOFTWARE DOES PLAYER PIANO REQUIRE ? This version of PLAYER PIANO is for the IBM PC, compatibles, and the PC Jr. A minimal system is usually sufficient - you will need 128 KBytes of memory, one disk drive (single-sided is OK), a monitor (either black and white or color) and any version of either the PC-DOS or MS-DOS operating system. Nothing else is required - no special hardware or other software. WHAT CAN I DO WITH PLAYER PIANO ? PLAYER PIANO can be played like a regular piano, or you can use it to play prerecorded music, such as those that you will find on the distribution diskette, or compositions of your own. The pitch of each note is computed to be exactly on key, and so it can be used as a reference for tuning other musical instruments. When you strike a note on the keyboard, the musical name of the note (A, B#, Eb, etc.) is displayed next to the hole in the paper roll, and so helps the beginner to learn about music. WHAT ARE THE MUSICAL CAPABILITIES OF PLAYER PIANO ? Although only two octaves of a piano keyboard are mapped to the top two rows of keys on your computer's keyboard and shown in the display, these two octaves may be shifted anywhere within a seven octave range. This gives you a total of 84 different musical notes! Each note can be played or recorded with one of five different time values (full note, half note, quarter note, etc.) and one of five different loudnesses so that you can add syncopation and dynamics to your compositions. In addition, the overall tempo can be adjusted anywhere from 50 to 990 beats per minute, and the overall volume can be adjusted to any of five different levels. And finally, when you play a prerecorded roll of music, you can have it played in any key, any octave! You cannot, however, play more than one note at a time as in a chord. WHAT ELSE WILL I SEE ON THE SCREEN ? Shown below are the two octaves of the piano keyboard as they appear on the screen of PLAYER PIANO. Note that the keyboard is surrounded by characters. These characters indicate the keys on your computer's keyboard that you should strike for each of the corresponding piano keys. ('bs', 'cr', and 'tb' are for backspace, carriage return, and tab, respectively.) If you locate these keys on your computer's keyboard, you'll soon notice that their layout is very similar to a real piano. That's why the top row of your computer's keyboard is used for the flats and sharps (black keys), and the row just below the top row is used for the naturals (white keys). Just beneath the keyboard image is a bar graph labelled "Octave Range" that indicates where within the entire seven octave range that the keyboard is currently positioned. You can shift the keyboard up and down within this range by simply striking the keys indicated just below the bar graph. Note, however, that adjacent positions overlap by one octave, so that there are only six possible choices, not seven. You'll also find two other bar graphs on either side of the keyboard. The left one labelled "Time Value" shows the time duration applied to notes relative to the current tempo, and the right one labelled "Dynamics" shows their relative loudness. As always, the labelling on these bar graphs indicate which keys to strike to change the current settings. Immediately below these two bar graphs are shown the current tempo and volume. As indicated, the tempo may be adjusted up or down by striking the '<' and '>' keys respectively. Similarly, the volume can be adjusted up or down by striking the '{' and '}' keys. Above the keyboard is a window that normally diplays white characters on a black background as seen below. This reverses to black characters on a white paper "roll" of piano music when one has been loaded. Just outside and on either side of the window at its bottom are two arrowheads pointing towards the bottom row of characters inside the window. Each time a note is played, the contents of the window roll up and a "hole" appears on this row in a horizontal position relative to the pitch of the note being played. The lowest note will appear as a hole on the far left, with the highest note on the far right. In all modes except playback, the holes are labelled with the names of the corresponding musical notes. MANUAL PLAY You can play the keyboard of PLAYER PIANO at any time by simply striking the keys corresponding to the notes you wish to hear. However, if a roll of music has been loaded, PLAYER PIANO will ask if you want to discard it before it will allow you to return to manual play. In manual play you can change the tempo and volume, as well as set the octave, time value and loudness. If you accidentally strike a key that PLAYER PIANO doesn't recognize, you'll get a flashing message to let you know. THE FUNCTION KEY MENUS At the top of the screen on either side of the paper roll window you'll find two function key menus. The left one labelled "MAIN MENU" is used to load a roll of music, play it, save it, record a new roll of music, or enter the editor. The right hand menu labelled "EDIT MENU" is only active when you're in the editor. It allows you to scan forward or backwards in the music, delete or insert notes, and to listen to the most recent nine notes relative to the current position on the roll. PLAYING PRERECORDED MUSIC In order to play a roll of prerecorded music, you must first use the LOAD ROLL function key in the main menu to load the roll. PLAYER PIANO will prompt you for the name of the file that contains the roll, which may be optionally preceeded by a disk drive name and a colon. If the requested file is found, it will be loaded into memory, the tempo will be set to the same in effect when the roll was saved, and the beginning of the roll will appear in the window showing its name, the composer, and the date it was recorded. If the file could not be found, or if errors occurred during loading, a suitable error message will appear. Once you have loaded a roll, you may play it as many times as you like by using the PLAYBACK function key in the main menu. PLAYER PIANO will prompt you for the key in which to play it, suggesting the key in which it was originally recorded. If you strike the carriage return key in response, the piece will be played in the same key used when it was recorded. Otherwise, you may enter the name of the key you wish to have it played in. This is done by enterring a single character ('A' though 'G'), optionally followed by either '#' (sharp) or 'b' (flat). You may also preceed the name of the key by a (signed or unsigned) digit to indicate entire octave shifts of 1 to 5 octaves. You can abort the playback at any time by striking any key on the keyboard. RECORDING YOUR OWN COMPOSITION Once you are familiar with manual play and playback of prerecorded music using PLAYER PIANO, you'll probably want to record some music of your own. To do so, simply strike the RECORD function key listed in the main menu. PLAYER PIANO will ask you for the key that you are recording in. You may enter this exactly the same as you did when for playback, except the name of the key may not be preceeded by a signed or unsigned digit to request an octave offset. If you don't know what key to enter, enter 'C'. Once you have enterred the record mode, all subsequent notes that you play will be recorded with whatever octave range, time value, and dynamics settings are in effect at the instant that you play the note. If you want to change these settings, you should do so just before playing the note to which the new settings apply. You don't have to record at a regular pace according to a beat; the beat will be determined during playback by the tempo and the time values recorded with each note. During recording, if you wait a while before striking the next note, your pause will not be inserted into the music. If you want to insert a "rest" in the recording, strike the space bar. You'll notice that the roll advances as before, but no hole appears in the paper. When the music is played back, that rest will have a time duration established by the time value in effect when the space bar was struck. Rests longer than a full note, or rests of unusual duration (e.g., 5/8ths) may be recorded as a combination of two or more simple rests. The octave range and dynamics settings have no effect on a recorded "rest". If you accidentally play the wrong note or rest, you cannot erase it while recording, although you may enter the editor later to correct your mistake. Recording can be terminated at any time by simply striking any of the function keys in the main menu. What you have enterred will remain in memory and can be played back, edited, or saved on disk. However, note that each time you "record", PLAYER PIANO assumes you wish to start at the beginning of a new piece of music. Therefore, if you want to add something onto the end of a piece, you must enter the editor, scan forward until you reach the end, and enter the insert mode. Suggestion: We have found it easier to record using all quarter notes at about halfway up the dynamics scale, and then use the editor to go back and insert rests and adjust each note's individual time value and loudness. SAVING YOUR COMPOSITIONS The SAVE ROLL function key in the main menu is used to save a roll of music as a file on the disk. PLAYER PIANO will prompt you for a filename (optionally preceeded by a disk drive name and a colon), the composer's name, and the date of recording. If any of this information is already known by PLAYER PIANO, it will display it and only a simple carriage return will be necessary to leave it unchanged. For example, this occurs when you load a roll of music, edit it, and then save the modified version on the disk. Any response other than a carriage return will erase the old information, and allow you to replace it with something new. EDITING A ROLL OF MUSIC There are five basic editing functions as listed in the edit menu. You can scan forward, scan backwards, delete a note, insert one or more notes, and listen to the nine most recent notes as displayed on the roll in the window. However, all of these functions require that a roll of music is loaded and that you have enterred the editing mode using the EDIT ROLL function key in the main menu. To change a single note, you must first position the roll so that the note you wish to modify is lined up with the arrowheads on the bottom of the window. You can do this with the SCAN FORWARD and SCAN REVERSE function keys. When you strike either of these, PLAYER PIANO will begin playing keys in the requested direction until either (1) it reaches the end of the roll, or (2) you stop it when it reaches the desired note (or rest) by striking any key. You can slow down or speed up the scanning by adjusting the tempo in the normal manner. You will probably find it easier to stop at the desired note when scanning if the tempo is below 400 beats per minute! Once you have positioned the note to be changed between the arrowheads, you may change its octave, time value, dynamics, or even the note itself by simply striking the corresponding key. PLAYER PIANO will play the modified note to let you hear how it sounds without advancing to the next note. If it still isn't right, you can change it again until it is. The note may be deleted instead by simply striking the DELETE function key; when you do, that note will disappear and the next note will appear in its place and be played. To hear how your change sounds without losing your position, strike the REVIEW function key. PLAYER PIANO will back up the roll a bit and then play the most recent nine notes, leaving you at the same position in the music. To insert notes, strike the INSERT function key. Then all notes that you play will be enterred as if you were recording, and are inserted starting just after the note that was at the bottom of the window. When you are finished inserting, strike the INSERT function key once more, and it will return you to the editor. SHARING MUSIC WITH OTHERS If you have a modem and communications software, try to find out if there is a public domain electronic bulletin board in your area. This is a computer that you can connect to over the telephone in order to "upload" and "download" information between your computer and the bulletin board. Ask the system operator if he will set up a special area on the disk for PLAYER PIANO music. If he will, then you and others in your area can share music via the bulletin board. Not only is this a good way to get a lot of extra music for your computer, but since PLAYER PIANO rolls always show the composer's name whenever they are played, you'll get credit for your compositions! HAPPY MUSIC!