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The Sound Board v1.0 ... Guide to Users Daniel Farfan Automated Education P.O. Box 42284 Phoenix, AZ 85080-2284 USA January 31st, 1993 Table of Contents ═════════════════ Install.................................................2 Quick Start.............................................3 Background..............................................4 The Big Picture.........................................5 Driving Miss Sound Board................................6 Ah, but I Digress.......................................7 Listening to the Big Picture............................9 How do it know?.........................................9 Drawing the Song........................................10 Hold on tight...........................................10 A Little Higher Please..................................11 One Way to Play.........................................11 Another Way to Play.....................................11 Another Way to Play.....................................12 Polly Who?..............................................12 Feature Summary.........................................12 My SONG DRAWINGS are the Best...........................13 COPYRIGHT ═══════════ Automated Education Inc. reserves all rights to this product. You may freely distribute the entire package (ie. all files together). No one may collect ANY money for distribution. Only Automated Education may accept registrations. If you use this program or distribute it to anyone you will benefit by registering and becoming an official distributor. See 1lvlware.doc for more details. 1-Levelware and Dotes are trademarks of Automated Education, Inc. Phoenix Arizona USA. THE BAD NEWS ══════════════ It's a funny world we live in and while I've made every attempt to thoroughly test the product I must tell you that Automated Education, Inc. will take no responsibility for any damage caused by this product. This product is offered as is with no warranty explicit or implied (Sorry but the lawyers make me say this). INSTALL ═══════ Installation depends on the state of the files you received. all installations have 1 thing in common. First place the file(s) into the directory you wish the programs to be in (usually on your harddisk) using the copy command. Let's assume you have a floppy in your A: drive. The command: ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ MKDIR c:\mydir │ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ will create a new directory called mydir. You then place the file(s) into that directory with the command: ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ COPY a:*.* c:\mydir │ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ If you received a 'regular' archive file, then you must have the associated unarchiving program. For example, if the file has the extension .zip, the archive was created with PKZIP. Therefore PKUNZIP is required. The most common formats and the program required are: Extension Program Uncompress Compress ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── .zip pkzip pkunzip X.zip pkzip -f X.zip X.reg .zoo zoo zoo -e X.zoo zoo -f X.zoo X.reg .lzh lha lha e X.lzh lha f X.lzh X.reg .arc pkxarc pkxarc X.arc pkarc -f X.arc X.reg .pak pak pak e X.pak pak f x.pak X.reg The so-called self-extracting archive contains the program necessary to uncompress the archive builtin (amazing isn't it?). Thus it is all bundled as 1 file and has a .exe or .com extension. To uncompress this kind of archive, simply type the name of the archive. If neither of these situations seem to match (ie. more than a .zip or a single .exe is on the disk), then you simply have the files in their original form. You are set after you copy the programs to your harddisk. Pass GO and collect $200! QUICK START ═══════════ A new piece of software is like a new book. You know, you read the great reviews from the experts, rush to the bookstore, buy your own copy, curl up with your favorite pillow in your favorite chair and sit there and hold it for an hour or so without opening it. NOT... you dive right in. Reading the manual for software bores just about everyone. So in a nutshell, here's what you have and how to use it in bullet form. Θ F1 is the online help key. ... if you like to play, put the manual down and have at it! Θ You place DOTES(tm) on the screen by using 1-9 and a,b,c on the keyboard. Zero(0) denotes silence. Θ Move around using the cursor keys. Θ F6 turns the music on and off. Θ F5 turns additional voices on. Θ F4 saves your creations to disk. Θ Don't touch any keys to watch a demo of all song drawings on the disk. GO FOR IT. BACKGROUND ══════════ Automated Education, Inc. pledges to provide affordable, entertaining, consumer software dedicated to the education and entertainment of all ages of computer users worldwide. The Sound Board is one of a line of Automated Computer Toys available from Automated Education. The company's vision is that the home computer can be integrated into the educational and entertainment activities of its owners. Computer Toys such as this is one example of how. A companion line of educational software called The Educator is also available from Automated Education. Neither line of software attempts to replace the original (toy or teacher), simply make it all more fun. Read the file 1lvlware.doc on your disk for registration information and run the program register.exe TODAY! THE BIG PICTURE ═══════════════ You, no doubt, have encountered at least one of the so-called paint programs that allow you to draw pictures on your computer screen. If you collect software from bulletin boards and friends as a hobby, you probably have come across a number of music programs as well. Never the twixt shall meet. UNTIL NOW. The Sound Board is the only PC program available that gives you Sound AND Sight. As you read on and actually play with your new toy you will see something very special before you. How many software programs have you come across that are simply reproductions of real world applications? Let's face it. A drawing program is drafting board and pencils. A paint program is an electronic easel and some paints. Almost all music programs mimic pianos. Without a computer, I can go buy a drafting board, an easel and a piano. But you can't buy "The Sound Board". Not at any price... except on your computer. Now where else can you listen to drawings and draw songs. We are talking about an entirely new art form, here. And you can partake in the excitement. DRIVING MISS SOUND BOARD ════════════════════════ So how does one drive this hybrid piano, easel, sound and sight never before seen new art machine thing? After you start the program with the command ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ sboard │ │ │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ you will see the opening screen. In the future after you get board (no pun intended) with seeing the toy name, simply press any key while it is being displayed and the introduction will be skipped and you will go directly (without $200 this time) to a blank screen. Since you are just starting out, it will be very entertaining and educational for you to watch the DEMO MODE for at least a while. NOW, DON'T TOUCH ANY KEYS. The sound board will detect your lack of attention, enter demo mode and show you every SONG DRAWING on the disk one at a time in 1, 2 and 3 VOICES (more about SONG DRAWINGS and VOICES later). Okay. You watched DEMO MODE for a while and saw all manner of drawings (including recognizable images), heard all manner of notes (including recognizable songs). Press any key to end demo mode, clear the screen with F10 and NOW you have a 'blank' slate. Actually on the screen you will see a bunch of circles. Hundreds of them. See below for how to change the size and number of them. Your proverbial easel piano awaits. Every circle denotes a position in the ART. (If you don't like circles see below how to make them other shapes) The important thing is what happens when you place a DOTE(tm) in them. A DOTE(tm) as you may guess is both a DOT on the "easel" AND a NOTE on the "piano". Each number 1-9 and letters a,b and c correspond to a particular NOTE on the musical scale according to following chart. AH, BUT I DIGRESS ═════════════════ Did you ever wonder why musicians don't use colored pencils when they write music on paper? Did you ever wonder why painters have tons of colors and brushes to chose from and musicians use a single black pencil? How boring. Painting is about sight. Different colors combined all over the page make up the resulting drawing to be SEEN. Sometimes beautiful to look at, never much to listen to, though. How come? The roots of painting and drawing go back to caveman days... pre-langauge. These were times when a grunt meant "Get me water" and a louder grunt meant "Get me water, NOW!". Not much to listen too, huh? Drawings produce an image of a real thing so that it is recognizable to someone other than the creator. (TADA! COMMUNICATION!) That was all that mattered. Well, music (which came much later) picked up the audio slack, so to speak. Different sounds are denoted on the musical scale by POSITION. The 'higher' on the scale the note is drawn, the 'higher' the frequency of the sound. The farther right on the piano, again, the 'higher' the frequency. (TADA! COMMUNICATION!) Great to listen to, not much to look at, though. After centuries of having not much to say or hear, it probably was a welcome change, though. But, what if the Bic(tm) multi-colored ink pen would've been around in the early days of written music? What if different notes in music were denoted by the colors of the dots and the duration to hold the note signified by bunches of dots together. What a difference! What if we could see what that might have been like? Wouldn't the gap between drawings and songs be closed more than just a little bit? What if someone wrote a computer program to model such a concept? What if you could inexpensively obtain this program and explore the art worlds of sight AND sound? We have that luxury with The Sound Board. Move around the screen with the arrow keys and place those cute little DOTES(tm) around the screen anywhere your little heart desires and create something to be seen AND heard. Each DOTE(tm) has a color AND a tone. Don't like the color? Use Shift F7 to change it. Don't like the note, use a different keystroke (1-9, a,b or c). I imagine that the Michangelo's and Picasso's thought little of the early caveman's work. I also imagine the earliest musicians figured they had it all over their ancestors. Ah... but did their paintings please the ear? Did their music please the eye? Of course not. They didn't have The Sound Board. ╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ Visual Keyboard ║ ║ ───────────────── ║ ║ ║ ║ Color Character Note ║ ║ ──────────── ────────── ───────────────── ║ ║ Blue 1 A ║ ║ Green 2 Bb ( B flat ) ║ ║ Cyan 3 B ║ ║ Red 4 C ║ ║ Purple 5 C# ( C sharp ) ║ ║ Brown 6 D ║ ║ Light Blue 7 Eb ( E flat ) ║ ║ Light Green 8 E ║ ║ Light Cyan 9 F ║ ║ Pink a F# ( F sharp ) ║ ║ Yellow b G ║ ║ White c Ab ( A flat ) ║ ║ ║ ╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝ Full Driving Controls ─────────────────────── F1 - Help D - Draw Mode F2 - Select DOTES to Place M - Move Mode F3/SF3 - Save picture/template E - Erase Mode F4/SF4 - Load picture/template p - Print Portrait F5 - Place a Voice P - Print Landscape F6 - Turn Music on/off arrows,pgdn,pgup,home,end F7 - Configure Board - Move Cursor SF7 - Configure Dotes & Shading = - Transpose Dotes F8 - Global DOTE Change -/+ - Change Tempo(speed) F9 - Turn FLASH ON ctrl arrow - Transpose range SF9 - Unflash Current DOTE C - Circular DOTES CF9 - Start/Stop Flashing S - Square DOTES F10 - Clear Screen T - Triangle DOTES esc - Exit 0-9,a-c - Place DOTE o - Set Current Octave LISTENING TO THE DRAWINGS ═════════════════════════ Ready to here it? Press F6 to turn the music on and off. Notice while each NOTE is played (sound), the DOT is flashed (sight). That's it. Congratulations! You are an official a Sound Boardist. Don't forget to save your creation by pressing F4. How else can you give a recital to your family and friends later!?! Give it a file name that has from 1 - 8 characters. The extension of .pic will be placed at the end of the name you enter. Save with shift F4 and load with shift F3 for a surprise! HOW DO IT KNOW? ═══════════════ When you turn the music on, it will start playing the dote where the cursor is located. If the cursor is not on a dote, the first dote is chosen at random. Play continues around the drawing from dote to dote ONLY where dotes touch. For example a single line of dotes will play as such --> 6 4 4 1 2 1 2 1 4 4 6 <-- first in one direction and then another. Notice that the direction is only changed when the brown (6) dote is played (in this example). The corner example: 1 1 1 1 4 3 --> 2 5 Here The Sound Board makes a choice when on the red (4) dote. If it came from 1, the choice is 3 or 2 because they are both touching the 4 dote. Suppose the 3 is selected. What choices are next ? If you said 2 choices, 4 and 2 you were wrong. The Sound Board will reverse its direction only when necessary. In this case it is not. The 2 is available from the 3 and hence is the only choice. Now if the 2 had been selected after the 4, then next choice would be 3 or 5. Notice what happens if 3 is selected, 4 becomes the only choice and the corner is used to reverse direction. This is a very special property of the corner that adds great variety to the music. DRAWING THE SONG ════════════════ The Sound Board is great for playing your favorite tunes. If you have a music background, you'll quickly get the hang of the 5 octave scale available. If you are like me the best method to get a particular melody is to draw it from the sheet music. Make your music the old fashioned way... buy it ! Just remember that The Sound Board will move from 1 dote to any dote the current one is touching. It will reverse on itself only when necessary. This means recognizeable songs must have no junctions (no choices) in the drawing. See the included examples to get the main idea. HOLD ON TIGHT ═════════════ The Sound Board represents the different durations of notes in a piece of music by using multiple dotes. Think of it as four in a row is a whole note, 2 is a half note, 1 is a quarter note. Whether you are the music maestro or the restricted-to- the-shower-by-city-noise-ordinance opera star, you probably realize the TIMING is a very critical element of music. There are two mechanisms to control the timing of your DRAWING. The first is the number of dotes you place. Because the rate at which the notes play is (somewhat) constant (regardless of how many voices are playing), The Sound Board will effectively hold a dote when it is encountered in succession. Say for example the following is DRAWN: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 7 7 8 9 A A B C C C This arrangement plays the scale but notice the 7 note is played 4 times. This means that note is effectively played 4 times longer than the single note. This is the 'whole note'. A single note is the quarter note and of course the A (in there twice) is the half note. Cool. The second timing element in music is tempo. Control the tempo using + ( to increase ) and - ( to decrease ). Simple In no time at all you'll be an accomplished Sound Board musician wondering what it must have been like "in the old days" when musicians and painters were restricted to just one sense. A LITTLE HIGHER PLEASE ══════════════════════ If you are really good, you can tell whether or not your Sound Board is in tune. If you have no clue, don't feel bad. The only thing perfect about my musical ear is the count (I have 2). Regardless of whether it is in tune or not, and whether you can tell, or not, you CAN adjust the pitch using the control key and the up and down arrows. To control the OCTAVE you are currently drawing in, press 'o' and select 0,1,2,3 or 4. Configure the shading with SF7 if you like. ONE WAY TO PLAY ═══════════════ My favorite way to play is start with a blank screen. Keep one hand on the arrow keys (for direction) and one over the rest of the keyboard (for placing dotes). I experiment with different transitions and combinations of dotes. For example, do dotes 1,3,7 and 'a' sound good when I make a straight line out of them ? Then I'll play with HOW MANY are placed ... such as 1 1 1 3 7 7 A 1 A 1 7 7 3 Then I'll search for another sequence I like and make my new creation connect so there is continuous movement around the screen in my song drawing. Definitely with this mindset, sound is the objective. Artfully combining sight AND sound is an exciting challenge indeed. Pictures in the center of the screen surrounded by musical accents make for an appealing SONG DRAWING. ANOTHER WAY TO PLAY ═══════════════════ But when is time to really jam out the tunes, I play the keyboard like a piano and let the cursor stay put. To record my 'jam session', I simply connect the output of my computer speaker to the input of my tape deck. This is most convenient when you have a hardware sound board to play your computer's sound through. Many have an output port for your computer's sound. Of course there is always the external microphone on the cassette recorder trick, when all else fails (YIKES). ANOTHER WAY TO PLAY ═══════════════════ Drawing pictures is equally rewarding. Can you make a corn field with a grain silo in the distance and a single propeller crop duster delivering its payload? (What does it sound like?) How about a battleship at sea launching a Tomahawk Cruise Missle toward a shoreline? You'll be surprised what you can create when you put your mind to it. Polly Who? ══════════ Place another voice and you will receive another independent note. This is known as polyphonic sound. It is equivalent to press 2 keys on a piano at the same time. The Sound Board supports FIVE voice polyphonic music. It is possible to have the second voice 'follow' the first voice along the entire path defining a song. Remember the classic 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'?? Load the picture RRRYB by using F4. Enter the name rrryb and press enter. Place the first voice, turn the music on, wait, then make the second a third voice join in at the right time. Even more fun than that old player piano, ya never had... isn't it? FEATURE SUMMARY ═══════════════ Θ 13 colors correspond to 12 notes ( black is silence ) Θ You select the colors for the dotes and the shades for octaves Θ Up to 5 voice polyphonic sound supported Θ 5 Octave range for each voice Θ Save SONG DRAWINGS to disk and recall them later Θ Easily create a TEMPLATE from ANY SONG YOU draw (SF3). Kids love to color by number on the screen Θ Alter templates and song drawings distributed Θ Change all dotes of a certain value to another value with just a few keystrokes (F8) Θ PRINT the songs drawings or templates. COLOR them, display them proudly or even give them as greeting cards Θ Hours of fun with your favorite tunes or your own music My SONG DRAWINGS are the best! ══════════════════════════════ Says YOU! Many think they are the best. Who knows, maybe you are. To find out, Automated Education holds an annual contest. Send your Sound Board Song Drawing creations on disk to: "My SONG DRAWINGS are the Best" Contest P.O. Box 42284 Phoenix, AZ 85080-2284 First prize is a $500 US Savings Bond. Only registered distributors are eligible. Each distributor may enter N+1 files where N is the number of distributors you have sponsored. The more you sponsor, the more song drawings you may enter. All entries must be postmarked by August 1st. All entries become the property of Automated Education. The winning song drawing will be included with the next version and the creator will be crowned the Sound Board Champion! Entries will be judged on originality, color, shading, sound and silence... The decision of the judges will be final. GOOD LUCK TO ALL!! ZW2.18@6,PRN⌠TXT pCopyright 1992 Automated Education Inc Page