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Text File | 1992-11-27 | 47KB | 1,032 lines

__ / ) / _ ____ _ _ _ _ __> _ (__/ (_)_/ / <_/_)_(_)_/_)__</_/ ( /_)_ / ' _ _____ __ ' ) / / / ) / / / / _ __ /_ /--< _ _ _ /_ (_(_/ (_)_/ (_/ <_/___/_</_| \__(__/ /_ Composer's Workbench release 1.35 Copyright (c) 1991 1992 by Dennis McNamara, all rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1987 1989 by Music Quest, Inc. Distributed as a share-ware demo with limited playback capability. With the shareware distribution, you can play existing MIDI files of any length, but files that you create or modify will only play back the first two pages, up to 20 bars of music depending on the time signature. For a full-use license giving you unlimited playback, please send $50 ( fifty dollars U.S. ) to Dennis McNamara 268 9th Avenue San Francisco, Ca. 94118 or call (415) 752-2073, or email dmcnamar@netcom.com. VISA accepted. Included with the license are two small, fast utilities to convert MIDI files from format zero ( all voices on one track) to format one ( voices on separate tracks), and from format one to format zero. For a limited time, your license will include unlimited lifetime update privileges for new features of Composer's WorkBench. Table of Contents: INTRODUCTION ...............................................Page 3. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS .........................Page 4. INSTALLATION ...............................................Page 4. AUTHOR'S NOTE ..............................................Page 4. USING Composer's WorkBench .................................Page 4. PLAYING EXISTING MUSIC .....................................Page 5. CREATING NEW MUSIC .........................................Page 6. MODIFYING EXISTING MUSIC ...................................Page 8. THE STAFF MENU: MOVE CURSOR ................................Page 9. ENTERING NEW MUSIC .........................................Page 9. TRIPLETS, DUPLETS, AND GRACE NOTES .........................Page 10. CORRECTING MISTAKES by entering 'u' ........................Page 10. CORRECTING MAJOR MISTAKES by entering 'ctl-u'...............Page 11. MOVING AROUND YOUR SCORE ...................................Page 11. GOING TO ANOTHER VOICE AND DOWN THE STAFF...................Page 12. CUTTING AND PASTING ........................................Page 12. ACCIDENTALS ................................................Page 12. TRANSPOSING ................................................Page 12. CHANGING OVERLAP ...........................................Page 13. TIES .......................................................Page 13. ATTACK DELTA AND "SWING" ...................................Page 13. RETURN TO THE STAFF MENU AND CHANGE DYNAMICS ...............Page 13. SAVE .......................................................Page 14. EXIT .......................................................Page 14. PLAY PART OR ALL ...........................................Page 14. PRINTING YOUR MUSIC ........................................Page 15. LICENSING ..................................................Page 16. APPENDIX 1: Creating the VOICES.DB and MIDI.DB databases. ..Page 16. APPENDIX 2: Reporting Bugs. ................................Page 17. APPENDIX 3: Useful Utilities. ..............................Page 17. APPENDIX 4: Summary of Key Stroke Commands .................Page 18. Page 3. INTRODUCTION ------------ MusicWare Composer's WorkBench is an integrated notator/sequencer program for the I.B.M. PC line of computers, driving a Roland MPU-401 or compatible MIDI interface. MusicWare Composer's WorkBench features: - full staff and musical notation with automatic barlines; - enter music in up to ten bars by 8 staves per page for the Hercules Graphics Adapter and high resolution color. - enter music in seven bars by 5 staves for Color Graphics Adapter ( CGA). - context sensitive help at each prompt. - see the music as it plays; - staffs scroll on screen during playback; - requires no piano playing skills; - easy, rational entry of notes on a staff: enter note and time values from the computer keyboard, enter note values from the MIDI keyboard and time values from the computer keyboard, or record both note and time values from the MIDI keyboard; - when entering from the computer keyboard, the hands stay in home typing position. - the length of the music you enter is limited only by how much random access memory (RAM) you have. CWB itself is very small; it dynamically allocates from the rest of available memory as you enter music. For example, a 256 bar Irish Reel in three voices and a lot of notes takes about 40K of random access memory above the memory required by CWB itself. - read and write standard MIDI format one ( multi-track); - up to sixteen voices on sixteen staves; - easy "undo" to change a note or notes on a staff; - easily cut music from one staff and paste it onto the end of the same staff, or onto another staff, transposing as desired; - enter dynamics from ppp through fff, crescendos and diminuendos; -musical form functions: define the time signature, key signature and your favorite instrumentation for, say, a jig, and save it to disk; recall all that information easily. - librarian functions: create a data base of preset MIDI voices and their corresponding program numbers, refer to the English name, and the program substitutes the MIDI program number. - MIDI database functions: create a data base documenting the interrupt and data port you are using, if non-standard, and what you use for a drum machine channel. - optimized for Celtic music, with true grace notes and a bagpipe type drone. - "swing" capability: enter the time value the note sounds before and after the beat. - CWB in its shareware version is not copy protected. You can make backup copies of your licensing diskette with the DOS utility DISKCOPY. - your Copyright Notice is protected against change with a password you enter and which is kept in your MIDI file in encrypted form. No one can change your Copyright Notice without your proper password. HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS ---------------------------------- Composer's WorkBench has been tested on IBM 80286 and 80386 computers. It requires a minimum of 256 kilobytes of RAM and one double sided Page 4. double density ( 360K) floppy drive. CWB tests for the graphics adapter installed and adjusts accordingly. It has been thoroughly tested with the Hercules (tm) Graphics Adapter, the CGA and VGA graphics adapters. CWB was tested under MSDOS 3.3 . It is not implemented for Windows, nor for Mouse support. CWB has not been tested with any Terminate and Stay Resident ( TSR) program, like Borland's Sidekick(tm). Of course it requires a Roland MPU401 or compatible MIDI card, and a MIDI capable electronic music keyboard or synthesizer. INSTALLATION ------------ The software does all this in a file called CWB.EXE, for Composer's Work Bench. Use the MS-DOS copy function to put CWB.EXE onto the disk and directory you wish to work from, then move to that directory. Assuming CWB.EXE is on a floppy diskette in drive A, at the > prompt, type: A:> MKDIR C:MUSIC A:> COPY CWB.EXE C:MUSIC A:> CD C:MUSIC to make the directory MUSIC on your hard disk, then copy to it. The program will look for a file containing MIDI voice information called VOICES.DB. You can create this file with any text processor (see Appendix 1. ). The file VOICES.EG is an example of this file. CWB also looks for a file called MIDI.DB, containing information for your MIDI setup. The file MIDI.EG is an example of this. AUTHOR'S NOTE ------------- The primary design consideration in writing Composer's WorkBench was to put as much music processing power in as small an executable file as possible, so that the software loads into memory and operates as fast as possible. Because of this, many of the gimmicks that some consider commercially standard are not supported. There is not now nor ever will be a Graphics User Interface with cute icons, nor support for a mouse, for the simple reason that both take far too much computing power, and you can enter that much less music much slower. Composer's WorkBench allows you to enter all music notation from the standard typing home position. As explained below, you do not have to move back and forth from the arrow keys to the letter keys. If there is enough interest, a future release will support your choosing which keys move the cursor up and down, to the left and right, and which keys you press to enter the time value. I chose the present keys to make CWB as much like vi, the editor that comes with UNIX, as possible. USING Composer's WorkBench -------------------------- PLEASE NOTE: commands to CWB are case sensitive, it recognizes the difference between 'n' and 'N'. So the first thing to do is to TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK by pressing the CapsLock key. Page 5. At the prompt, type: C>: cwb music to play an existing MIDI file, either format 0 or format 1 called music, or C>: cwb to play an existing file, modify an existing file, or create new music. Note you do not need to enter the extension if you want to work with a for standard MIDI file ), enter both the file name and extension ( music.smf). First the copyright screen comes up, so press the any key. CWB then reports: enter 1 to play existing music 2 to modify existing music 3 to create new music 4 to exit back to DOS Enter the number of what you want to do. At any point where CWB is expecting something back from you, you can get help by pressing '?'. CWB reads from a text file called CWB.HLP to explain what it expects now. You can modify this text file as you wish for additional notes. Entries in CWB.HLP are keyed to a prompt with "+*n" as the initial entry on a line, where 'n' is any number. This starts the multi-line help that will appear. You will see there are two types, one in which "press any key" is the last text on a line, and others in which it is not. The "press any key" prompt is for help when you are in screen graphics mode, and the help appears in the prompt window at the bottom of the screen. If you choose "Play existing music", CWB expects a file with .mid (for MIDI data) at the end, e.g. symph1m2.mid, to be in this directory, unless you specify a file with a different extension, e.g. symph1m2.smf. PLAYING EXISTING MUSIC ---------------------- If you choose "Play existing music" of "Modify existing music", CWB will prompt "what input file? " You can enter the name of an existing file in either the current directory or another directory, or you can list the contents of a directory by entering "?" . If you enter "?", CWB prompts "display what path and what files? " You can specify a different directory than the current one by entering, for example, "\xmas" for a path. You can use wildcards for the filenames, *.mid for all the files with a ".mid" extension. So the entry for all files with a .mid extension in the current directory is "*.mid", and for all .mid files in the xmas directory, "\xmas\*.mid" . CREATING NEW MUSIC ------------------ When You Create New Music, CWB will ask the following questions: Page 6. what output file? newmusic Enter the name of the file you want to make, e.g. newmusic.smf for the file with a smf extension. If you enter simply newmusic, CWB will create newmusic.mid. What musical form? <Ent> for new form Here you can enter 'jig' or 'reel', if you have the files jig.frm or reel.frm on your disk. For this example, I pressed <Enter>. how many voices 3 Enter a number between 1 and 16, the number of separate musical lines you want. You can change this later. Bagpipe chanter and drones take up just one voice, but take two channels ( more on this later). what time signature? ( e.g. 3/4) 6/8 Enter the time signature, in the form TOP over BOTTOM, for example 3/4. CWB recognizes two through 12 as valid for TOP, and 2, 4, and 8 as valid for BOTTOM. Note that for 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, and 12/8, CWB takes a dotted quarter as the one beat you will specify as how many beats per minute, an eighth note gets one third of a beat. what key signature: 0 for C, 1 for G ( 1 sharp), -1 for F ( 1 flat ) etc. 1 Enter the number of sharps or flats in the key signature. This also is Standard MIDI File practice. If you are not sure of what key signature you want, check out the included auxiliary file KEYSIGS.HLP, described in Appendix 3. alternating treble and bass clefs on each staff? n SATB format? n what clef for voice 1? treble what clef for voice 2? treble what clef for voice 3? treble If you answer y for yes to the alternating clefs question, staff 1 will be treble, staff 2 bass, staff 3 treble, staff 4 bass, etc. If you answer n for no, CWB will ask "SATB format? " This stands for Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass format, the way vocal music is usually written. It will give you treble clef on the top two staffs and bass clefs on the bottom two. If you answer n, CWB asks what clef for each staff. Respond with "treble" for a treble clef, or "bass" for a bass clef. how many beats per minute? 120 Enter the metronome value, for example enter 120 for 120 beats per minute, one beat takes one half second. For 3/8, 6/8, etc., this onebeat is a dotted quarter. If you truly want an eighth note to take one beat, enter one third of this value, Page 7. for example enter 40 to have 120 eighth notes per minute. each voice assigned to corresponding channel? n voice 1 assigned to what channel? 1 voice 2 assigned to what channel? 2 voice 3 assigned to what channel? 16 If you answer y for yes, voice one is assigned to channel 1, voice 2 to channel 2, etc. If you answer n, you can assign each voice to a specific channel, e.g. for a drum machine. enter MIDI program assignments or 'dm' for drum machine If you have created the VOICES.DB file, you can simply enter the name of the voice, for example enter "violin" or "bagpipe". This feature makes it easier to go from one synthesizer to another. Otherwise, you will have to enter the MIDI program number for that voice. voice 1 assigned to what MIDI program? bagpipe is voice style legato, marcato, or staccato? l/m/s l This has to do with how long a note is on, and either how much silence between notes or how it overlaps with the note following. Take as an example, three quarter notes, C, D, and E from middle C and with 192 pulses per beat. Overlap is a value you will enter next. An acoustic bagpipe has a continuous flow of notes, with no off between notes. So if you enter l for legato, and specify an overlap of zero, the three notes will be: C on, wait for 192 D on, wait for zero time (overlap) C off, wait for 192 E on, wait for zero time (overlap) D off, wait for 192 If these were the last three notes of a composition, CWB would also generate E off, wait for 0. A harp ( or trumpet, or violin) will have some silence between notes, so if you enter m for marcato, with an overlap of 6, the three notes will be: C on, wait for 186 ( 192 - overlap) C off, wait for 6 (overlap) D on, wait for 186 ( 192 - overlap) D off, wait for 6 (overlap) E on, wait for 186 ( 192 - overlap) E off, wait for 6 (overlap) Drum machines have a short note on, followed by silence to fill out the time value. So if you enter s for staccato, with an overlap of 1, the three notes will be: C on, wait for 1 (overlap) C off, wait for 191 ( 192 - overlap) D on, wait for 1 (overlap) Page 8. D off, wait for 191 ( 192 - overlap) E on, wait for 1 (overlap) E off, wait for 191 ( 192 - overlap) enter number of drones 2 ( This and the next two questions apply only to a bagpipe. ) CWB will accept zero, one, two, or three on what note? d an acoustic bagpipe has three drones on D octaves starting at D above middle C and octaves below. on what channel? 3 As mentioned earlier, the chanter and drones are both on a single track, but should have separate MIDI channels. Enter a free channel number; if you enter a number that is already assigned, CWB will note that and ask for another. what overlap? 0 For a legato style instrument, use a small overlap value, zero to four. For a marcato style instrument, please make sure the overlap is less than the smallest note value you plan to use; for thirty- second notes and 192 pulses per beat, overlap should be less than 24. In practice, an overlap of 6 gives good note separation without being excessively staccato. For a staccato style instrument, use an overlap value of zero or one. The value you enter becomes the Standard Overlap for all notes you enter for this voice. You can change the overlap later for a single note or groups of notes. voice 2 assigned to what MIDI program? harp is voice style legato, marcato, or staccato? l/m/s m what overlap? 6 voice 3 assigned to what MIDI program? dm what overlap? 0 After you have specified for each voice, CWB asks Save this form? If this is a form that you will use often, that is the time signature, key and voicing, you can save it so you will not have to enter all that again. If you answer 'y' for yes, CWB prompts: Under what name? Enter the name you want without extension, for example "jigfwd" for a jig with fiddle, whistle, and drum, or "sonata", and CWB will save it with a ".frm" extension. MODIFYING EXISTING MUSIC ------------------------ If you choose 2 from the menu, to modify existing music, CWB first asks: Page 9. What input file? Enter the name of the file you want to work with, without an extension if it is a . mid file. CWB then reports Reading MIDI file: please wait... The number of voices currently is N Change? y/n where N is some number between 1 and 16. Press 'y' to change the number of voices, or 'n' to not change. If you add a voice or voices, you are prompted for their characteristics like when you create new music. THE STAFF MENU: MOVE CURSOR --------------------------- Next the screen clears and CWB draws staves with the proper clefs. In the upper left hand corner of the screen is "v1 p1 s1", which stands for voice 1, page 1, staff 1. These change as you move around the score, to remind you of where you are. In the menu area at the bottom of the screen is the current menu. Move the cursor to the right with the space bar, to the left with the backspace key, and press Enter when you have the cursor over what you want to do. ENTERING NEW MUSIC ------------------ When you choose "MOVE CURSOR" and you are creating new music, CWB places the cursor on the third space of the first staff, corresponding to C above middle C for the treble clef, and E below middle C for bass. There is a help menu, to remind you of how to invoke the following functions. Simply enter a question mark ( ? ), then the space bar to see the following lines. You put music notation on the staff by first positioning the cursor, then entering the notation. To move: press: down on the staff, the enter key. up on the staff, the minus key ("-"). to the right, the space bar. to the left, the backspace key (which is also control h: hold down the Control key and press h ). To enter notes on the staff, first position the cursor for the note value you want on the staff, then press to place on the staff w a whole note h a half note q a quarter note e an eighth note s a sixteenth note g a grace note rw a whole rest rh a half rest rq a quarter rest re an eighth rest rs a sixteenth rest rNN rest NN bars ( 1 <= NN <= 256 ) for example r16 to rest 16 bars. Page 10. Note that when you first press the key, nothing appears on the screen. CWB is waiting to see if you want to enter a '.' to make a dotted value, a minus or enter to move the cursor up or down the staff for the next note, or simply a space. After you make the second key stroke, the note appears and the cursor automatically moves to the right the proper spacing. CWB recognizes dotted sixteenth, eighth, quarter, and half notes or rests. TRIPLETS, DUPLETS, AND GRACE NOTES -------------------- You can indicate triplet values by first entering '3' before the first of the three triplets. For example, in 2/4 time to enter 3 triplet eighths on the 2nd line of the staff, first move the cursor to the FIRST line of the staff, press '3', then press '-' twice to move to the second line of the staff, then press 'e' three times. In 2/4, 4/4, etc. CWB recognizes triplet sixteenth, eighth, and quarter notes and rests. Of course, three triplet sixteenths equals one eighth, three triplet eighths equals one quarter, and three triplet quarters equal one half. 6/8 time is a special case, since it is by nature a triplet time. Three eighths equal a dotted quarter, equals one beat. Yet a sixteenth is one half of an eighth. CWB recognizes triplet sixteenths in 6/8, three of which equal one eighth. Again, press '3' before you enter the first of the three sixteenths. There is no special duplet entry for 6/8 analogous to triplets. But note that a dotted eighth ( an eighth tied to a sixteenth) is exactly half of a dotted quarter ( a quarter tied to an eighth). So in N/8 time, enter duple eighths ( that split the beat into two equal parts) as two dotted eighths. Similarly, four dotted sixteenths split the beat into four equal parts. Grace notes can be used for any instrument, but are especially useful for bagpipe envelope types. Two C notes in a row, for example, first turns on the second C, then immediately turns off the first C. So separate them with a grace note: a quarter note C, a grace note D, then a quarter note C. This will show as a true grace note, not as a double dotted eighth C and a thirtysecond D. CORRECTING MISTAKES ------------------- Correcting Mistakes is easy. Press "p" (for previous note) or "n" (for next note ) to put the cursor over the start of the mistake. Then press "u" for undo. The message area at the bottom of the screen will say "undo more with 'n', <esc> to end". So, if you want to correct more than one thing, notes, sharps, flats, etc., press the 'n' key until all the mistakes are deleted. When you are finished, press the Esc (escape ) key. The cursor will move back to the first note deleted. Now enter note values as you did before until all corrections are made. Until you have entered as many notes to make up the time value of the Page 11. notes you undid, all the cursor movement keys are disabled, except for the '-' key to go up the staff and the 'Ent' key to go down the staff. If you undid a half and a quarter in 4/4 time, you must enter three beats of time, another half and quarter, 3 quarters, 6 eighths, whatever, before you can move to another part of the music. Note that rests are carried inside CWB as a wait time from the previous note off; a C quarter note followed by a quarter rest followed by a D quarter appears as a C on, wait for a quarter note time, C off, wait for a quarter note time, D on, etc. So if you undo a quarter C followed by a quarter rest, you really delete both the quarter C and the quarter rest , and you must enter two beats of music. The same logic applies to correcting a grace note followed by another note; the time value of the grace note is subtracted from the time value of the note following. So, even if the grace is correctly placed and you want to change the note following, you must undo both the grace and the note following. CORRECTING MAJOR MISTAKES ------------------------- Correcting Major mistakes is easier still. If you want to delete many notes over several pages, first position the cursor over the first note you want to delete, then press 'ctl-u' (hold down the Control key and press 'u'). The message area at the bottom of the screen will say "undo all for sure? y/n". Enter 'n' for no if you have second thoughts, or 'y' for yes to delete from there to the end. MOVING AROUND YOUR SCORE ------------------------ Depending on the time signature and video adapter, you have up to ten bars per page. To go to the next page, press 'N' for next page, or 'ctl-f' to go forward. To go back a page press 'P' for previous page, or 'ctl-b' to go back a page. If you are navigating around a large piece of music, press 'ctl-p' to go to a specific previous page. CWB will ask what page now in the command space. Enter a number, press the Enter key, and you will be on that page. The same applies to 'ctl-n' to go to a specific page forward in the music. To go to a specific bar in the music, press 'f' for find. First, CWB notifies you that the "current bar is nn, what bar: nn, or +nn, or -nn, or $ ". Press any number key(s) and "enter" to go to a specific bar number, for example enter "32" to go to the 32nd bar of the music. Press "+' and any number to go forward that number of bars, for example "+16" to go forward 16 bars. Press "-" and any number to go backward that number of bars. Enter "$" to go to the end of the music for this voice. Page 12. GOING TO ANOTHER VOICE AND DOWN THE STAFF ----------------------------------------- To enter notation for the next voice, press 'v' for voice. The message area will prompt "what voice now?". Press the key for the number of the voice you want now. If you enter 2 or more, the cursor goes immediately to the staff assigned to that voice. If you enter '1', CWB waits for another keystroke to see if you want voices 10 through 16. If you want to go back to voice one, simply strike the enter key now. CWB will display five staves on a page for the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), and eight for the Hercules, EGA, or VGA adapters. If you specify more voices than will fit on a page, press 'D' for down to go down the score on the same page, and 'U' for up to go up the score. CUTTING AND PASTING ------------------- Cutting and Pasting music from one voice to another (or the same voice) is straightforward. First position the cursor to where you want to start the cut, using 'N', 'P', 'n', and 'p'. Then press 'c' for cut. If you had a previous cut, CWB will ask "repeat previous cut?". If you answer yes, CWB will repeat the previous cut from start to finish. If you answer no, CWB asks you to place the cursor over the last note or bar line of the cut, using 'N' and 'n', and press the Esc (escape) key, to indicate the end of the cut. The message area will say use all cursor keys to show paste point that is use 'v', 'D', 'U', 'N', 'P', control-n, control-p, 'f', 'n', or 'p' to place the cursor over the point to which you want the music duplicated. Then press Esc ( the escape key). Next the message area will ask "transpose on paste?". If you answer yes, you can use the minus key or enter key to move up or down the staff to place the cursor on the proper place for transposition (especially if the voice you are cutting from is a different clef than the voice you are pasting to). When everything is in place, press the Esc (escape ) key again. The music will appear. ACCIDENTALS ----------- Enter accidentals within a bar by pressing '#' or 'b' before the note you want to sharpen or flatten. That note will remain sharpened or flatted within that bar. CWB follows standard musical usage in resetting these accidentals when it draws a barline. TRANSPOSING ----------- Transpose music up by pressing "+nn" before the first note you want to transpose. "nn" can range from 2 through 15, corresponding to a second interval through two octaves. Transpose up a 5th would be "+5", an octave "+8", an octave and a fifth would be +12, and two octaves "+15". Page 13. Transpose music down with "_nn", that is "underbar nn" where underbar is shift minus keys. Again, nn is in the range 2 through 15. After you transpose up or down, all the notes you enter will be transposed until you press "+0", to take the true note value without transposition. CHANGING OVERLAP ---------------- To change the overlap value for existing notes, press "o" for overlap change. CWB will report: current overlap is (some number), enter new overlap: Enter the numeric value you want, and press Enter. CWB then asks modify this note or all notes to end? t/a Press "t" if you want to change just the note under the cursor, or press "a" to change all notes from the current to the end. TIES ---- You can tie two notes together with the '^' key, ( shift 6 on the IBM PC keyboard). For example, say you have entered in 2/4 time an eighth C, a quarter D, and an eighth E. This fills out a bar, and CWB draws the barline. If you want to enter notes that take twice those time values, enter a quarter C followed by a quarter D. CWB again generates the bar line. Press the '^' key, then quarter D again, then the quarter E. The D will have a two beat time value. The same logic applies to tied notes as to rests; if you undo the tied D in the example, you must enter two beats of music. ATTACK DELTA AND "SWING" ------------------------ You can add swing to the music by altering the "attack delta", the small amount of time that the note sounds before or after the beat. To alter just the note under the cursor, press 'a' for attack delta. CWB will prompt: "enter attack delta: " Enter a negative number, e.g. -3, to start the note three ticks BEFORE the beat, or a positive number, e.g. 3, to start AFTER the beat. To add swing for many notes, press 'S' ( upper case S) for swing. CWB will prompt: enter attack delta: -3 what decay delta? 3 A negative attack delta starts the first beat of each measure slightly before the beat, and subsequent notes in the measure alternate between slightly after and slightly before the beat. RETURN TO THE MENU AND CHANGE DYNAMICS -------------------------------------- To return to the menu press 'ctl-x', hold down the Control key and press 'x'. To change dynamic values, that is the volume level from pp through ff Page 14. or diminuendo or crescendo, first position the cursor where you want the change to be, then press 'ctl-x' to get back to the menu bar, space over to "enter dynamics", and press Enter. Now only the '-' and 'Enter' keys are active, to move the cursor up or down the staff. The default dynamic value is mf. To change this value, enter: "ppp", "pp<Enter>", "p<Enter>" (for piano), "mp<Enter>", "mf<Enter>", "f<Enter>" (for forte), or "ff<Enter>". SAVE ---- You can and should save what you have entered to disk at any time. On the menu, place the cursor over "save" and press 'Enter'. You will return to the menu. EXIT ---- If you have made major mistakes and just want to abandon the current effort without modifying an existing file, position the cursor over "EXIT" and press enter. CWB will pause as it clears internal tables, then prompt Press Enter to continue You will be back at the main menu. PLAY PART OR ALL ---------------- You can "play part" of what you have entered, or "play-all" from the start to the finish for all voices. If you choose "play-part", CWB will ask you where to start the playback and where to end it. You only have to show these points on one staff. Then CWB asks which voices to play back. When you choose either play-part or play-all, CWB asks if you want "display during playback", that is do you want to see the notation as it plays. If you press 'n<Enter>', CWB goes on to play the music. If you press 'y<Enter>', CWB says "use cursor movement keys to find page, ctl-x to return". Use the 'N' or 'P' keys ( for Next page or Previous page) to find the first page you want to display, then hold down the control key and press 'x'. CWB then goes to the next consecutive page of music, and asks "display another". Again, respond 'y<Enter>' or 'n<Enter> and proceed. Press 'y<Enter>' to display another page. You do not have to specify consecutive pages: if you are having trouble with bar 3 on page 1 and bar 15 on page 3, simply press 'N' to go to page 3 and press ctl-x. Note: The IBM PC family does graphics, but reluctantly. Because of overhead, there is a limit of 12 pages you can see during playback. Next CWB tells you what metronome value it knows, and asks if you want to change it. Then CWB shows the Program Change instrument assignments for each voice and asks if you want to change any. Now, enjoy your music. Page 15. PRINTING YOUR MUSIC ------------------- You can print your music on a dot matrix printer by pressing <ctl p>. The sample data base included, SAMPMIDI.DB, is set up for the Epson model FX-86e. If you have another brand or model it may or may not work. Rename SAMPMIDI.DB to MIDI.DB and try it. To set up for another brand or model, you need to make three entries in the file called MIDI.DB . The first is to tell CWB how to set the printer for a line feed of 7/72 inch. Look in your printer's manual for the "escape sequence" of how to do this; it will be an <esc> character ( hex 1B or octal 23), followed by one or more characters. This should appear in the data base as the keyword grlfs ( for GRaphics Line Feed String), followed by one or more blanks or tabs, followed by the escape sequence, followed by a new line. For example: grlfs <esc>3<ctl u> The escape sequence will be the hex digits 1b 33 15, representing for the Epson line spacing of 15 hex or 21 decimal / 216 inch, or 7/72 inch. Getting this in text is easy with vi, the VIsual Editor that comes with Unix. For the <esc>, hold down control and type 'v', then hold down control and press '['. It will appear on the screen as ^[, and you can verify with od -xc MIDI.DB that it really is a hex 1b. Similarly, enter <ctl u> by first pressing <ctl v>, then <ctl u>. The second keyword CWB needs if grhdr for GRaphics HeaDeR, the escape sequence to put your printer into 120 dots per inch graphics mode. grhdr <esc>L The last keyword is grrst for GRaphics ReSTore, the escape sequence to put your printer back into text mode: grrst <esc>@ When you press <ctl p>, CWB prints the current page, so first position to the first page you want to print. If it is the first page of the composition, CWB prints your Title and Copyright Notice, then proceeds to print the page. At the end of the printing, CWB has positioned the printer to do the next page, so if there is a next, press N for next, then <ctl p> again, and on until you've printed the whole file. An after word: We hope to keep the price of The Composer's WorkBench as low as possible, to make it accessible to everyone. A large part of this effort is advertising. We hope you like our product enough to give us good word of mouth. Talk up CWB to your friends, at MIDI meetings, and on the MIDI computer BBS's. Page 16. If you find something you don't like, or that doesn't work as it should, please contact us. Write to: Dennis McNamara 268 9th Ave. San Francisco, Ca. 94118 or call (415) 752-2073. Thank you. LICENSING The Composer's Work Bench is distributed as Shareware with a limited playback ability. With this version, you can choose to Play Existing Music from the main menu and play back MIDI sequences of any length. But if you choose to Modify Existing Music or Create New Music, you are limited to playing back only the two pages, which depending on the time signature and display adapter will give you 16 to 20 bars. You can obtain the fully licensed version with which you can Modify or Create MIDI files of any length by sending $50 (fifty dollars U.S.) to: Dennis McNamara 268 9th Ave. San Francisco, Ca. 94118 Please tell us the 8 character password you want to use and your full copyright name. APPENDIX 1: Creating the VOICES.DB and MIDI.DB databases. VOICES.DB is a "straight ASCII" file, there are no special characters involved, so it is easy to create with any word or text processor. The entry for each MIDI voice consists of: the name of the MIDI voice; followed by one or more spaces or tabs followed by the MIDI program number for that voice followed by one or more spaces, tabs, or the enter key. So a typical entry might be (with b/ indicating a blank or space: accordionb/b/10b/b/ If you use something other than the standard Interrupt Request or port for your Roland MPU401 or compatible MIDI card, or if you must use a specific MIDI channel for a drum machine, you should create the file MIDI.DB . It is also a straight ascii file, and is keyword driven, one keyword per line. To specify a non-standard port, enter port 0xhhh where hhh is the hexadecimal number for the port, for example 0x330. To specify a non-standard interrupt, enter irq n where n is the interrupt request number, for example irq 2 . To specify a certain MIDI channel for a drum machine enter dm n where dm stands for drum machine, and n is the MIDI channel, from 1 through 16. Page 17. APPENDIX 2: Reporting Bugs. We have tested CWB by actually using all of its features to create a large body of music. But no software is perfect, there probably still are bugs in the system. If you have a problem, please describe it as completely as possible, note down the version of DOS you are using, and what graphics adapter you have. Send by land mail to the above address, along with your name, address, and phone number. Or send email to dmcnamar@netcom.com. We will get back with a fix as soon as possible. APPENDIX 3: Useful Utilities. Two programs are included you may find useful. XD.EXE gives you a hexadecimal dump of a file. Type xd music.mid to get a dump of the file music.mid one page at a time. At the end of each page, press Enter to see the next page, or SPACE Enter to see the next line. To dump the file continuously without paging, use the -p option. So if you want to print the file, type xd -p file > PRN that is, dump the file without pausing at a page and redirect the output from the monitor to the system printer (PRN). KEYSIGS.HLP is a useful file. The "root" in the heading means the note the music ends on (usually, some folk music ends on the fifth note of the scale). Maj and min mean the conventional Major and Minor keys. The Major is for example the white keys on the piano from C to C octave. The Minor key has the third, sixth, and seventh notes of the scale lowered 1/2 step corresponding to the scale on the white keys for A to A octave. On 2nd means the scale built on the second note of the scale in that key, for example the scale from D to D octave in the key of C, no sharps or flats. Music Theorists call this the Dorian Mode. It has the third and seventh notes of the scale lowered 1/2 step, but the sixth note is the same as in Major key. The scale built on the fourth note of the scale is, for example, from F to F octave in the key of C. It raises the fourth note of the scale 1/2 step, providing a 2nd leading tone, and is used frequently in jazz. The scale built on the fifth note of the scale features a lowered seventh note of the scale, and is popular in Irish traditional music. The number associated with each key is the number of sharps or flats, a '+' number means that many sharps, a '-' that many flats. One sharp, key of G Major, has F sharped. Major Key Notes Sharped G F# D F#, C# A F#, C#, G# E F#, C#, G#, D# B F#, C#, G#, D#, A# F# F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E# C# F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B# Page 18. The flatted Major keys are: F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb, corresponding to these notes flatted: Bb Eb Ab Db Gb Cb Fb cumulatively, that is key of Bb Major has both B and E flatted. There is unusual gold to be mined by taking familiar music and putting it into another mode. For example, a traditional Irish tune, Planxty O'Kelly, originally in Major, becomes completely different and quite powerful when put into Dorian Mode, built on the second note of the scale. APPENDIX 4: Summary of Key Stroke Commands Cursor Movement: Enter key down one space or line minus key up one space or line space key to the right one column backspace to the left one column n next note p previous note N next page P previous page D down to next set of staves on this page U up to next set of staves on this page f find a specific bar or end. Note Entry: (all values except 'g' and 'd' may be followed by a '.' to give the dotted value) s sixteenth note e eight note q quarter note h half note w whole note g grace note rs sixteenth rest re eighth rest rq quarter rest rh half rest rw whole rest r8 8 bar rest (up to 256 bars) Corrections: u undo one or more notes on this page ctl-u undo all notes from this note to the end of the music. Cut and Paste c start a cut where the cursor is <Esc> end a cut where the cursor is <Esc> the second Escape, start a paste (insert the cut music) where the cursor is. (Note that <Esc> is the same as holding down the Control key and pressing the '[' key. ) Exit Edit Mode ctl-x