To start with, we are going to look at an existing Symphony track, to give
you an overall feel of the program.
Insert the Symphony Resources Disk in the disk drive and double-click SELECT
the file 'Oberheim'. This tune will then load and begin to play.
When you have done this, move to the next page.
TOP:Controlling playback of a tune.
You should be hearing the tune 'Oberheim Power' which has a lot of
Synthesizer type sounds. If not, please refer to the trouble-shooting guide.
To provide some control over the tune that is playing, click 'SELECT' over the Symphony icon. A panel will appear with tape-recorder type controls. This is the 'Control Panel'.
TOP:The Control Panel (1)
Try pressing the pause icon and the tune will pause. If you then press rewind for a while, the song will be rewound. Then press play again, and the song will play from the position that you rewound it to.
Now, as soon as the play-position is greater than 005, try clicking the first 'tick'. The drum patterns will disappear. These are the voice masks. Click
any one of them to 'mask out' a voice, or to enable the voice again.
TOP:The Control Panel (2)
Now try holding SELECT over the 'Tempo' value. You will hear the track picking up speed very gradually. Use ADJUST to decrease it too.
Now try tapping SELECT over the 'Speed' value. Every time that you press
SELECT, the track becomes noticeably slower. The speed can be thought of as
the time-signature of a bar, and the Tempo as the number of beats per minute, although these analogies are not entirely suitable for digital scores.
TOP:The Control Panel (3)
Now try clicking SELECT on the 'Reset' icon. The Speed and Tempo will be set
to their default values. You will notice that the track is now playing exactly half as slow as it should do. This is because the track 'Oberheim' is quite a fast tune and so it's normal speed is 003.
Reset the Speed value to this number, before we continue.
TOP:Inquiries Window (1)
Now press SHIFT+F2 or select 'General.Inquiries' from the main Symphony menu.
A window will appear giving information on the current track. Notice that the
'original type' is Symphony, because 'Oberheim power' is a Symphony track.
You will notice that the track has 128 patterns, which is quite a lot. This
is because the track is quite complex. Also, notice that the track has only
4 voices, and that Symphony is configured for 4 voices at the moment.
TOP:Inquiries Window (2)
We find that 4 voices is more than enough to create even the most stunning tracks, but you are quite free to use all 8 voices. (See 'Edit.Hard Voices')
Also, the sample quality is 24µs (micro-seconds) which is quite adequate for a track. If you wish to change this, you must alter the preferences.
In the section 'Memory', we see that only 27% of the file is taken up with score. Typically, you will find that only around 10-30% of the file is score.
TOP:Inquiries Window (3)
In the 'Instruments' window, we see that the track uses 18 instruments. This is quite a lot for a track, but 'Oberheim' uses several 'chord' samples, and each of these are major, minor and 7ths etc. Also, a lot of the samples are percussion instruments.
'Garbage Data = 0' indicates that the file has no 'rubbish' at the end. If the track was 'pinched' from any source, it usually has garbage data.
TOP:Monitor Screen (1)
If you click ADJUST on the Symphony icon (not yet!), you will see a real-time
track monitor. This is layed-out as follows:
In the top-right hand corner is the play information (speed, patterns etc).
In the top-middle of the screen are 'VU Meters', and the coloured bars between these are 'VU Bars'. At the bottom of the screen is a scrolling digital score.
Now try having a look. Move to the next page when you are ready.
TOP:Monitor Screen (2) - VU Meters
The 'VU Meters' are 'visual representations of sound'. In effect, they are the voltages from each channel that are sent to the speaker, to produce the music. The voltage is in the vertical direction, and the time is the horizontal direction. If you watch the bass-line (voice 3, bottom left) you will see that low notes are 'wide' and high notes are 'tall'. It is best just to watch this to see the effect ( and revise your physics.)
TOP:Monitor Screen (3) - VU Bars
The 'VU Bars' are similar to 'peak level indicators' on a Hi-Fi. They show the maximum 'level' that is being played on each voice. As each new note plays, you will notice that they jump to maximum level, and then decrease back to nothing. Sometimes they hold still, or 'wobble' around a value. This is when a note is playing through it's looping stage, and the same levels are being sent to the speaker, over and over again.
TOP:Monitor Screen (4) - Digital Score
At the bottom of the monitor screen, there is a scrolling digital score. These are the events of the patterns for each sequence of the track. They are numbered 1 to 4 from left to right. See that they correspond to drums, synth-chords, bass-line and melody line (check with VU Meters!)
The line in the middle of the score is in double-height. These are the 'current events' on each voice. Above are previous events, below are future.
TOP:Preferences (1)
Press SHIFT+F4 or select 'General.Preferences' to open the 'Preferences'. At the top is the preferred stereo settings for each hardware voice. Clicking one of the buttons below them, e.g. 'Centre' will set all the stereo positions for you. 'Amiga' is supplied because many of the track used in Symphony have originated from the Amiga. 'Full' gives a wide spectrum of sound across the whole range, but for the full 8 voices.
TOP:Preferences (2)
In the 'Main Control' section, we have a list of buttons, most of which are very obvious. The 'Vu-Meter by..' option selects what will trigger the VU Meters and VU Bars, either a sample being played or an effect triggering. 'Supremacy' refers to the 'gear-lever' on the left of the Symphony icon. 'µs between samples' is the sample quality that is used to play a track. It is not recommended to change this value, until you feel you are an 'expert'.
TOP:Preferences (3)
The 'buffer' option enables you to use 'Sprite' space instead of RMA for the Symphony Work-space. This is provided for those with RISC OS 2 or users who do not wish to use up valuable RMA space for tracks. It is not always possible to use 'Sprite' space when loading Symphony, and Symphony will warn you about this when it is loaded. Causes are: Sprites already in memory,SparkFS running, Not enough RMA space free for sprites.
TOP:Preferences (4)
The 'Music Files' section documents what types of music are recognised by Symphony. You may choose 3 types of file which are defaults. At the moment, only 4 types of file are instantly recognisable: ProTracks, STModules, TEQMusic, and Symphonies. We do not recommend that you use 'STModules' as they are extremely bad quality, due to bad sample conversions. Instead, try to find the track in original ProTrack or TEQMusic format.
TOP:Preferences (5)
Refer the User Guide for information on the rest of the 'Preferences' options
TOP:Effects List
Press SHIFT+F5 or select 'General.Effects List' for the 'Effects Used' list.
The effects that are high-lighted, are the effects that are found to be in
the track, when it is loaded. The button on the left hand side of each effect
is an 'enable' button. Try disabling the effect 'Set Volume' (Effect 0C).
Hear the difference? This is because 'Oberheim' uses a lot of volume-control
on each channel to produce short/fading notes. Now re-enable the effect.
TOP:Samples List
Press SHIFT+F6 or select 'Generel.Samples List' and the 'Samples list' will
appear. If you double-click on any of the listed samples, the 'Sample Editor'
will appear, with the selected sample on view.
If you select a sample and choose 'XChange with' on the Samples List menu,
there will be no change in the music. This is because Symphony will swap all
the occurrences of each sample in the track, and this will sound the same.
TOP:Information Text (1)
Press SHIFT+F7 or select 'General.Info Text' and the 'Information text'
will appear. This is a window where you can put all the comments, credits and general information about a track, without affecting the track. On the Amiga, this is only possible by renaming all of the samples to the text that you wish to enter, hence, any Amiga file that you play will have obscure sample names. (Usually consisting of 'Hello to xxx', 'Composed by yyy'...)
TOP:Information Text (2)
You cannot type text into this window directly. It is best to compose the text in a text-editor (such as !Edit or !Zap) and then drag the file from your disk into this window. If you wish to clear the text completely, select 'Clear Text' from the 'Info Text' menu.
We recommend that you *always* supply some info text with a track. Better to
have some information about the file than just to save a few bytes...
TOP:Further Exploration
It's now up to you to discover the true power of Digital Symphony for yourself. We recommend that you work through the tutorial 'SweetDream' if you are still unsure about Sample Sequencing.
If you need any more help with Digital Symphony, then contact Oregan.
