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Loadstar 237
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2022-08-26
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u
M U S I C O P U S
An Introduction
by Dave Moorman
Crunch Time! It's Saturday night.
I had promised a script for the Easter
Pageant plus music for a song for our
Sunday School the next morning.
There's nothing like last minutes to
get things done!
We wasted precious time hunting
the Web for a recording of the song we
wanted to use. No dice, not even after
downloading WalMart's music search-
and-download software (plus Windows
Media Player 9.0). The music just
wasn't there.
Time to punt. I hunted down
SONGSMITH, LOADSTAR's easy to use SID
music writer. I could have used
QuickSMITH, by Lee Novak, but I wanted
to monkey with the files. (More on
this later in the tale.) Though I had
never used SONGSMITH before, the
program is almost intuitive. In a
matter of 45 minutes, I had a fair
three-voice arrangement playing.
I was using VICE, and one of its
great features is Sound Capture. Just
turn it on, choose a filename, play
the music, and turn the capture off.
There on my harddrive was a decent WAV
file of the music. I used my CD burner
software to make a music CD. Done!
While I was doing all that, Sheri
was looking through the Web for
suitable scripts, skits, and readings
for a Palm Sunday/Easter Reader's
Theatre production. I edited together
the stuff and had the master script
finished by 3 AM. Like I said, there's
nothing like last minutes....
Sunday evening (after a good nap
that afternoon), I found SIDSMITH -- a
great little program by Debbie Cruz
and Jeff Jones that converts SONGSMITH
files into SIDPlayer MUS files. Once I
got it going, my little song was an
honest-to-goodness SIDSong in a
matter of seconds. But I didn't stop
there.
Years ago, I heard about another
LOADSTAR program -- MIDI PLAYER 64 by
John Serafino. This neat piece of
software takes a SIDSong and plays it
out a MIDI interface. I dug around in
the garage and found my interface and
a little Casio MT-240 keyboard, which
does a marvelous job of playing MIDI
-- even with just 20 preset
instruments, three channels, and
limited polyphonics.
I then cut a 1581 (using 1581Copy
on the PC) to take every- thing over
to my REAL C-64, plugged in the MIDI,
and tried out MIDI PLAYER for the
first time. MP generates 6 voices --
for stereo SIDSongs. For mono,
three-voice SIDSongs, MIDI PLAYER
repeats the voices. You can assign
each voice to any MIDI channel -- and
set features such as instrument,
velocity, volume, and octave. My
little keyboard doesn't do velocity
(how hard you press the key) or MIDI
volume. But the results were
outstanding anyway!
Monday evening, I decided to go
one step further. I used SONGSMITH to
rework my original song for a stereo
track (the STR files one sees for
Stereo SID). This is a lot clumbsier
than using my own PRESTO music
processor, which has six SID voices
built in. The trick with SONGSMITH is
to load the first file, then monkey
with the notes to add the three extra
voices. The results can then be
converted to SIDPlayer format, and
played by MIDI PLAYER.
My GOODNESS! I was amazed at the
sound coming from my little keyboard!
This is sweet!
SONGSMITH has its limitations --
no triplets or tying across measures
-- and it is not quite as easy to use
as QuickSMITH. But it is not
completely hopeless. It is fast, and
the resulting data can be massaged
into the format most used on the C-64.
So that's the story. And here are
the three programs I used, plus one
other -- SMITHSID by Doreen Horne.
This program takes a SIDSong and turns
it into a SONGSMITH file. It is far
from perfect -- again because
SONGSMITH does not have all the
features of SIDPlayer. But with it,
the essential notes are present for
editing. The result can be returned to
SIDPlayer format.
I don't have Craig Chamberlain's
SIDPlayer software, so I can't go in
and mess with the SIDSong file. But I
really don't have time for that. These
four programs do most of what I need.
And they are LOADSTAR programs. That
means they have LOADSTAR quality and
[documentation]. Everything I needed
to get up and running was right there
on the disk with the software.
So I know you will be hearing more
music from Dave Moorman. I have
several compositions that should be
put in SIDPlayer format. And when I
need a quick tune for any reason, I
know where I can get it!
DMM
[By the Way] I found the text of Craig
Chamberlain's talk to an Expo several
years ago and included it in the
LOADSTAR Files area.
I have put a couple of Stereo SIDSongs
(but no player) on this side for you.
Enjoy!