Loadstar 216/216.d81/t.concert

Text File | 2002-01-01 | 7.9 KB | 327 lines

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     P R E S T O   C O N C E R T

           PRESTO Songs by
   Richard Derocher & Dave Moorman

   Program and Text by Dave Moorman


    The Derocher boys keep coming up
with exciting stuff for us. This month
we have a number of pieces written by
Richard with PRESTO, the Professional
Resolution Electro-Symphonic Techno-
Orchestra. These are playable through
PRESTO Concert.

    PRESTO CONCERT will not only play
your songs in the order you want them
played, it will allow you to chain
together parts of movements so that if
you've written a major, long opus that
taxes the memory constraints of
PRESTO, your listeners can enjoy it in
its entirety.


 THE CONCERT ITSELF
 ------------------

    We have put Richard's songs
together in "PC.RICHARDS CONC" so you
can enjoy them all at once.


 The Fox - A lively piece for those
    days when you are blurry-tailed
    and bushy-eyed.

 Waltzing Matilda - Known best as an
    Australian folk song. Neither
    "Waltzing" nor "Matilda" mean what
    you think.

 Fishies - One of those marvelous
    songs sung by my parents when they
    were stinking drunk during the
    1940's. Does anyone remember the
    words?

 Camptown Races - By coincidence
    alone, Sheri and I took our
    confirmation class to the horse
    races in Denver a couple of weeks
    ago. The students learned: Horses
    run fast. I learned: But not when
    you have money on them!

 Gypsie Dance - Like other people who
    live on the margin of society, the
    Gypsies brought their dance and
    music to all of eastern Europe,
    blending with Romanian, Bulgarian,
    Hungarian, and even Yiddish
    styles.

 Richards Conc - All of the songs
  played one after another.


 NOTE: The Concert program does not
work with WarpSpeed, but it does fine
with JiffyDOS, Explode and the Epyx
FastLoad.


 THE CONCERT PROGRAM
 -------------------

    The first menu (we'll call it the
Blue Menu), points to the two basic
areas of CONCERT:

   QUICK PLAY
   CREATE CONCERT

    In the QUICK PLAY area, you can
choose to listen to any song on the
disk. Simply select CHOOSE SONG. A
menu of PRESTO song and concert files
is displayed. Just choose the one
you want.

    Users of CMD devices can access
sub-directories in Native Mode if the
sub-directory name has a PD. prefix.
Just choose the PD.DIR, and the new
directory is displayed. PRESTO CONCERT
keeps track of how low you go, and
returns you to the mother of all
directories when the file menu closes.

    In the lower right of the screen
is a window that shows the play mode
and cue mode. PRESTO CONCERT polls
the location of the Stereo SID
cartridge. If it is present, Stereo
SID Mode is chosen. If not, MIDI &
SID Mode is selected. Below is the
CUE MODE, which, when on, halts the
program after loading a file and
waits for your key press before
playing the song. Choose CHANGE MODE
to toggle through the various
combinations of Modes.

    DISK ACCESS lets you send DOS
commands to the current device, or
change disk drives. When CHANGE
DEVICE is chosen, device numbers 8 -
15 are polled, and all active devices
are listed on a menu.

    You can Escape from all menus
except the file menu by pressing UP
ARROW. To leave the file menu, press
the STOP key. To return to the Blue
Menu, press BACK ARROW.

    CREATE CONCERT allows you to put
together any songs on the directory
into a continuous program, with cues,
pauses, or continuous play.

    Choose MAKE CONCERT, and the
command menu appears:

   BEGIN
   LOAD
   CUE
   PLAY
   PAUSE
   CONTINUE
   REMOVE
   END

    All concerts must begin with
BEGIN. Choose it -- and the Concert
Log appears in the middle of the
screen. This will show you what will
happen when the concert is
played.

   BEGIN
   >

    The BEGIN command sets the music
memory pointer to the beginning of
music memory. In the upper right
corner is the number of free bytes
available -- at this time 30
kilobytes, or around 120 blocks.

    You must then load some songs.
You can load as many songs as will
fit in memory. They will be played
later with the PLAY command.

   BEGIN
   01LOAD:PR.SONG
   02LOAD:PR.TUNE

    You will notice that the disk
drive whirs a bit after you have
chosen a song file to load. It is
NOT loading it at that moment, but
rather, doing a Verify to find how
long the song is.

    But before we play, let's command
the concert to halt and wait for a key
press before playing the song:

   BEGIN
   01LOAD:PR.SONG
   02LOAD:PR.TUNE
   CUE...

    When you choose PLAY, a list of
loaded songs appears in the upper
right corner. You can choose to play
songs in any order, or as often as you
like.

   BEGIN
   01LOAD:PR.SONG
   02LOAD:PR.TUNE
   CUE...
   PLAY02:PR.TUNE
   @ PAUSE
   PLAY01:PR.SONG

    Here we put a PAUSE between the
two songs. The pause is a two second
break, like between cuts on a record
album -- er -- CD.

    You can, if you wish, fill up
memory and play all the songs, then
use BEGIN to reset the memory pointer
to the beginning and load more songs.
You can only play songs that have
been loaded since the latest BEGIN.

    We will discuss CONTINUE in a
moment. REMOVE simply Removes the
bottom item from the Concert Log. If
you remove a BEGIN command, the disk
drive will whir a bit as the program
calculates how much memory is being
used.

    All good things must end, and we
have the END command, which MUST be
the last command on any Concert!
Chose END, and the Concert Log is
displayed until you press a key.

    Back at the EDIT CONTROL menu, you
can EDIT CONCERT -- which is the same
as MAKE CONCERT, except the Concert
Log is not wiped clean -- SAVE, LOAD,
or PLAY the Concert currently in the
Log. DISK ACCESS is the same as in
the Quick Pick area.

    But what about CONTINUE? As
PRESTO was being developed, the music
memory kept getting whittled away to
make room for more functions. A
Symphonic-scale song such as the 1812
Overture takes 20 to 30K of memory.
With PRESTO CONCERT, one can write a
huge piece in sections and connect
them in a Concert file.

    For example, the 1812 Overture
could be broken up into 3 sections.
Then, in the MAKE CONCERT area, these
are loaded into memory:

   BEGIN
   01LOAD:PR.1812 I
   02LOAD:PR.1812 II
   03LOAD:PR.1812 III

    The first section is PLAYed as
usual, but to connect the other two
sections seamlessly, use CONTINUE:

   BEGIN
   01LOAD:PR.1812 I
   02LOAD:PR.1812 II
   03LOAD:PR.1812 III
   PLAY01:PR.1812 I
   C0NT02:PR.1812 II
   C0NT03:PR.1812 III

    Without skipping a beat, PRESTO
CONCERT jumps from section to section.
Note that the default SID settings
and tempo are disabled on a CONTed
file. However, Legato is
automatically switched off before a
file is played. Also, CONTINUE can
only be used immediately after a PLAY
or C0NT command.

    One other feature of PRESTO
CONCERT is that a Concert file can
play a Concert file! Simply LOAD a
Concert file (with a PC. prefix).
The Log will show:

   BEGIN
   CONCERT:PC.1812
   BEGIN

    The second BEGIN is to remind you
that only song files loaded after a
concert can be played. And yes,
Concert Files can be nested -- up to 9
deep. You can even have a Concert
load itself (not recommended, and may
crash the program).

    PRESTO CONCERT uses a stack to
hold Concert files. When the command
is CONCERT, the new concert is loaded
at the bottom of the currently
playing file. Pointers are stored
and moved to point to the new
concert. When END is reached,
pointers are restored and play of the
old concert continues. When a concert
reaches the end of the stack, an END
is forced, which pulls the program
out of the stack.

    I am pleased to see Richard try
out PRESTO (from LS #128). It is
obviously my favorite music processor.
I used it at one church while our
organist was sick. I could code a hymn
in about 30 minutes, then put all the
music for the service in a Concert.

    By the way, I have added a Stereo
component to these songs. They sound
fine with just your built-in SID. But
if you have a Stereo SID cartridge or
can use VICE 1.9, the other side is
there as well.

 DMM