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Text File | 1987-06-09 | 34KB | 798 lines

@@@@@ @@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @ @ A Single Voice Music Editor Version 1.30 Oak Tree Software P.O. Box 1163 Columbus, Indiana 47202-1163 Suggested Price: $20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ORDER FORM Name:__________________________________________ Address:_______________________________________ City:________________ State:____ Zip:_________ Telephone: (______) - _______ - _______________ COMPOSER..................................$20.00 (Indiana residents add 5% sales tax)......______ Total:....................................______ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments: -------------------------------------------------------------------- User Information: What type of computer do you have? PC___ PCjr___ Other________ How much memory does your computer have? 128k___ 256k____ 384k____ 512k____ 640K____ More____ Do you have a dot matirx printer ( y / n) If so, what brand? (Espon, IBM, Brothers, Microline...)_____________ Where did you first see COMPOSER?___________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contents Files Included On This Disk 2 About COMPOSER 2 Using COMPOSER 2 Starting for the First Time 3 Entering Notes 3 Paging Through Your Music 3 Changing, Inserting and Deleting Notes 4 Block Editing 4 Using The Note Selection Mode 5 Dotted Notes 5 Tied and Slurred Notes 5 Staccato Notes 6 Accidentals 6 The Key Signiture 6 Printing Your Music 7 The Erase Option 8 Selecting a Time Signiture 8 Selecting a New Tempo 8 Playing Your Music 8 Reading or Writing Music From Diskette 8 Leaving COMPOSER 9 Using 3PART.BAS 9 More About 3PART.BAS 10 Problems With 3PART.BAS 10 Using PRINTSET 10 - 1 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Files Included On This Disk Before you start to use COMPOSER, check to see if you have the following files: COMPOSER.EXE - Single voice music editor PRINTER - Printer initialization file PRINTSET.EXE - Customizes COMPOSER for you printer 3PART.BAS - Plays 3-part sound, if you have a PCjr compatible machine COMPOSER.DOC - If you are reading this file, you have it MAPLE1.MUS Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag MAPLE2.MUS MAPLE3.MUS LUDWIG1.MUS Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony Number 5 LUDWIG2.MUS LUDWIG3.MUS MINUETG1.MUS Ludwig van Beethoven's Minuet in G MINUETG2.MUS MINUETG3.MUS SOUSA1.MUS John Phillip Sousa's Stars and Stripes SOUSA2.MUS Forever SOUSA3.MUS About COMPOSER COMPOSER was written to take advantage of the PCjr's three part sound capabilities without sacrificing compatibility with single voice machines, such as the PC. COMPOSER generates a text file of BASIC PLAY commands for each voice written. Non-Junior compatible machines may create, edit and play a single voice at a time. Junior compatible machines may also create and edit a single voice at a time, but by using a simple BASIC program, up to three of these files may be played simultaneously. Using COMPOSER COMPOSER basically has two different modes of operation, the note selection mode and the note entry mode. In the note selection mode, a note's length and attenuation are determined. Factors effecting the whole piece of music, such as the time signature, key signature, and tempo can be set. The note selection mode has the options to get, save, play or erase a piece of music. - 2 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ After a note is "built up" in the note selection mode, its place in the music and its pitch is determined. The note is placed on a staff and moved up and down, right and left, until the desired position is found. Editing of music also takes place in the note entry mode. Notes can be changed, inserted or deleted. Block inserts and deletes are supported. Starting for the First Time Let us go step by step through a session with COMPOSER. Start off by booting your system with your DOS diskette. Insert your COMPOSER diskette and type COMPOSER. You will then see the COMPOSER logo and be prompted to press a key to continue. You will then be asked to specify which drive will be used in the writing and reading of your music files. Enter the appropriate letter. If you do not specify a drive and only press <ENTER>, COMPOSER will search the current drive for the music files. The next message to appear on the screen should be "Reading Directory." COMPOSER is now searching your music diskette for all files with the extension of .MUS. After a couple more flashes, the screen should clear and you should see two connected music staffs being drawn. Across the bottom of the screen are the symbols and icons used in the note selection mode. In the upper left hand corner of the screen is the page indicator. It should read "Page 1 of 1." At the middle C position between the two staffs, there should be a quarter note. You are now in the note entry mode. Notice that the time signature reads 4 4 time and you are in the key of C. If you have trouble reading the screen on a monochrome display or find the colors objectionable, try pressing the fn1 key. Repeatedly pressing fn1 will cycle through a set of sixteen colors. Choose the one that you find most pleasing. Entering Notes The note entry mode uses the up and down cursor keys to determine the pitch of a note. Hold down the down arrow. As you see, the quarter note will move down from its initial position, through the bass cleff staff, and then wrap around to the top of the treble cleff staff. The up arrow has the opposite effect. Position the note back at middle C between the staffs and press <ENTER>. The note will stay there and your quarter-note cursor will move over one position. Push <ENTER> three more times. A bar line should appear after the forth note. As you can see, COMPOSER counts the lengths of the notes as you enter them and draws a bar line after each measure has been filled. Paging Through Your Music - 3 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ COMPOSER can display up to sixteen notes on one screen at a time. Try entering twelve more quarter notes. Your cursor note should have wrapped around from the right side of the screen to the left side again. If you can not see the cursor note, it is probably overlapping one of the notes that you have already entered. Move the cursor up or down until you can see it again. Since the screen is full, it is time to go onto the next page. This is done by pushing the PgDn key. The staffs should be erased and a new set drawn. The page indicator should read "Page 2 of 1." As soon as you enter a note on this page, the indicator will be updated to read "Page 2 of 2." Enter a couple notes on this page. To go back to the beginning of the piece, press the Home key. Pressing the End key will take you back to the end of your composition, and PgUp will take you back one page. Changing, Inserting and Deleting Notes Assume that you accidentally enter a note as a C instead of as a D. To change the note, just position your cursor note at the desired position above or below the erroneous note (in our example, the cursor would go one position above the note) and press <ENTER>. The screen will be redrawn and the note will be corrected. The wrong note will be replaced with whatever the cursor happens to be. If the cursor is an eighth note and you enter it on top of a quarter note, the quarter note will become an eighth note. Inserts can be done just as easily as changes. Place the cursor note on top of the note that you want to insert before and press the Ins key. Again, the screen will be redrawn and the new note will be in place. To delete a note, just place the cursor note on top of the note you want to delete and press the Del key. The note will no longer be there after the screen is redrawn. Note: Sometimes when you are either changing, deleting, or inserting notes, you may make it impossible for COMPOSER to count your measures correctly. For example, suppose you are in 4 4 time and entered a measure with four quarter notes. You decide to go back and change one of the quarters to a whole note. After reading the whole note, COMPOSER will lose count and quit adding in bar lines or draw them in the wrong place. If this should happen, just finish editing the measure until it is of the correct length. COMPOSER will try to recount each time you edit a note. If you think that you are correct and that COMPOSER has miscounted, make COMPOSER do a forced note recount. This is done by simply replacing a note with an identical note. This will force COMPOSER to refigure the measures from the beginning of the piece and redraw the bar lines. Block Editing - 4 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you want to change more than just a couple of notes, individually changing each note can become tedious very quickly. Instead, you will want to use the block editing features COMPOSER offers. Block editing involves two steps, marking a block and then either inserting it somewhere or deleting it from the piece all together. The beginning of a block is marked using the fn2 key and the end is marked using the fn3 key. Move the cursor note on top of the first note of the block you want to use. Press fn2. A bracket should appear to the left of the note. When fn3 is pressed to mark the end of a block, a bracket will appear to the right of the note. To delete the block, simply press the Del key. The screen will be redrawn and the block will be gone. To copy the block to somewhere else in the piece, move the note cursor on top of the note that you want the block inserted before and press the Ins key. We have now covered everything you need to know about the note entry mode. Next, we will discuss the note selection mode. Using The Note Selection Mode To enter the note selection mode from the note entry mode, simply press Esc. Your note cursor will disappear and a pointing hand will appear on the bottom of the screen. Try moving the pointer back and forth using the right and left arrow keys. The first five items are the different length notes that you can select. Try pointing to one of these notes and pressing <ENTER>. Your pointer will disappear and you will be back in the note entry mode with a cursor note set to the note that you selected. Press Esc and get back to the note selection mode. Look at positions eight through twelve. These are the different rests that you can select. They are selected and used the same way that notes are. Dotted Notes At position six, you see a small dot. Move the hand above this dot and press <ENTER>. All of the notes to the left of this dot should now be dotted. This means that when a note is selected, its length will be one-and-a-half times that of normal. For example, a dotted quarter note will get one and a half counts instead of just one count. The note will stay dotted until you return again to the note selection mode. Tied and Slurred Notes At position seven, you will see a arch or semi-circle. Select this item with the hand. You should not notice any change. Select a note, go to the note entry mode and enter the note. After you enter the note, an arch will appear - 5 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ above the note. This arch means that the note that you just entered will play right up to the note after it, with no pause in between. In other words, if the next note you enter is the same pitch as the one before, the two notes will be tied. When played, they will sound like one continuous note. But if the next note you enter is a different pitch than the one before it, the two notes will be slurred. The pitch of the first will "slide up" or "slide down" to the next one. Like the dotted note option, the slurred and tied option stays in effect until you return to the note selection mode. All of the notes will be tied or slurred to each other until you press Esc. Staccato Notes At position twenty is a quarter note with a dot over the top of it. This is a staccato, or short, note. Staccato is the opposite of legatto. The staccato option follows the same format as the legatto option. When the staccato note is selected, no change will be selected. Only when you are in the note entry mode and have entered a note will you see a dot drawn above the note that you have selected. Accidentals At positions thirteen through fifteen, you will see single flat, sharp and natural signs. These are accidentals. In order to select one of these, simply move the pointer hand above one of the accidentals, say, the flat for example, and press <ENTER>. All of the five notes to the left now have flats in front of them. When one of these notes is selected, it will be a flat note. As with the other options mentioned so far, the accidentals stay in effect until the note entry mode is left. When you are in the note entry mode and are entering notes with accidentals, COMPOSER will display all flat, sharp and natural signs. For example, if you are in 4 4 time and enter 4 B flat quarter notes in a row, each note will have a flat sign before it. This repeating of the accidental signs only happens when you are entering the notes. If you cause COMPOSER to redraw the page by using PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, or any of the other methods mentioned earlier, only the first accidental will show up. In other words, the accidental lasts throughout the whole measure and is not redrawn every time it is repeated. The Key Signature At position nineteen, you will see three flat signs in a group. This is the symbol for selecting the key signature. Move the hand pointer above this symbol and press <ENTER>. A window will appear in the upper left hand corner of the - 6 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ screen. You will see the options "Natural", "Flats" and "Sharps". To select one of these options, move the highlight bar up and down using the up and down arrows. Press enter when you are on top of the one that you want. Natural will reset the key signature to the key of C (default). The key of C has no sharps and no flats. To select a key signature with flats, pick the flats option. Another window will appear with the letters "BEADGC" with an up arrow under them. Note: As with all windows in COMPOSER, pressing Esc will cancel the window and take you back to the note selection mode. The key signature will contain all the flats to the left of the arrow and the one that it is pointing to currently. For example, if the arrow is pointing to the B, you will be in the key of F, which has one flat, B flat. If you point to the A, you will be in the key of E flat, which has three flats, B flat, E flat and A flat. Press <ENTER> when you are pointing to the key that you want. The screen will be now be redrawn and the new key signature will appear on the staff. A key signiture will automatically "flat" and "sharp" the appropriate notes. Just like when the individual accidentals were used, the sharp and flat signs will appear when the notes are being entered. But when the page is redrawn, the accidental signs will disappear if they are already in the key signature. Printing Your Music At position twenty-one, you will see a piece of paper with writing on it. This represents the print option. When this option is selected, a window will appear prompting you for the name, the starting and the ending page of the music you want printed. The name you enter is the title that will appear on the printed music, not the eight character file name that you used to store the music no disk. The title will be centered on the top of every printed page. Each printed page holds five screens of music as shown on COMPOSER. So if you have typed in a piece of music that is ten pages on COMPOSER, it will be printed out on two pages. If you have an extremely long piece of music and do nat want to print the whole thing, you can specify what page you want to start and end on. Remember that the page numbers refer to printed pages, which contain five COMPOSER pages. NOTE: If you are not using an EPSON printer, you will have to initialize COMPOSER for your particular printer, using PRINTSET.EXE. For more information, read "Initializing Your Printer" later on in this manual. - 7 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Erase Option Postion sixteen has a box with an uppercase "E" on it. This is an eraser. When this option is selected, a window will be displayed asking you if you are sure that you want to erase all music in COMPOSER's memory. Selecting a Time Signature Position seventeen has a 4 4 time signature. This option is used to select a new time signature. COMPOSER lets you select between either 2 4, 3 4, or 4 4 time signitures. When a new time signature is selected, the screen will be erased and the music will be redrawn with the new time signature and the bar lines in the correct position. Selecting a New Tempo Position eighteen has a uppercase "T". The "T" is for tempo. When this option is selected, a window is displayed showing the old tempo and asking for a new one. Any number in the range of 32-255 is legal. When COMPOSER is first started, a tempo of 120 is used. Playing Your Music Position twenty-four shows a miniature pair of sixteenth notes. This is the play option. When this option is selected, a window will come up will the options "Graph" and "Keyboard". The graph option shows the music in a graph like form while it is being played. When the graph is being used, repeated parts of the music and transitions to different parts of the music can easily be seen. The "Keyboard" option draws a piano keyboard across the top of the screen. While the music is being played, an asterisk will move over the keyboard, indicating which note is being played. In any of the play modes, the music will start on the current page that is being displayed and will continue until the end is reached. To play the last half of an eight page piece, push PgDn until page 4 is reached and then play. Reading Or Writing Music From Diskette Position twenty-five shows a square with a circle in the middle. This is a diskette which represents input/output functions. When this option is selected, a window with the options "Get Music" and "Save Music" is drawn. If "Get Music" is selected, COMPOSER will draw another window containing all of the music files in alphabetical - 8 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ order that are on the drive specified in the "Selecting Drives" section. Move the highlight bar on top of the piece that you want to load in and press <ENTER>. The window will clear and you will see the first page of the music being drawn on the screen. NOTE: If you accidently select the "Get Music" or "Save Music" option and wish to escape, just press the Esc key. If the "Save Music" option is selected, another window will appear prompting you for a title. If the piece of music you are working on is already named, that name will be displayed. Pressing <ENTER> will save the piece under the indicated name. Otherwise, the title line will be blank. You can enter a filename with up to eight charcters. If you try to type more than eight charcters, a beep will sound. Leaving COMPOSER Position twenty-three shows your present active drive. Selecting this option will quit COMPOSER and return you to DOS. Using 3PART.BAS Now that you have learned how to enter music using COMPOSER, you will no doubt want to hear the music in three part sound. If you have a machine that, like the IBM PCjr, has three part sound capabilities, 3PART.BAS will allow you to hear up to three pieces of music made by COMPOSER played at the same time. If you are not sure if your computer can play three part sound, try to run 3PART.BAS anyway. If gives you an error in the line which has the SOUND ON command, your machine does not support three part sound and you will be unable to use 3PART.BAS. You will have to be content with writing music with COMPOSER and listening to a single voice. Let's play one of the pieces of music that should be on your COMPOSER disk already. Get into BASIC, load 3PART and run it. The screen will clear and remain blank for a few seconds while 3PART initializes itself. Next, a list of all of the music files should appear on the screen. Three of the files should be named MAPLE1, MAPLE2 and MAPLE3. These are the first, second and third parts to Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag." When 3PART prompts you for file names, enter MAPLE1, MAPLE2 and MAPLE3. After 3PART has read the files into memory, it will display the number of measures and the current tempo of the music. 3PART will also ask you where you want to begin, end, and if you want to change the tempo. For now, do not worry about these questions and just press <ENTER>. You will now hear your computer play beautifully Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" in stunning three part sound, as only a Junior or - 9 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ compatible computer can. After it is finished, 3PART will ask you if you want to play it again. If you reply with a "No", 3PART will start over again and ask you for 3 more file names. More About 3PART.BAS You do not need to enter three filenames every time. If you have finished only two parts to a song and want to hear how they sound, enter their titles, and when 3PART asks for the third file, just press <ENTER>. If you think that the music you are playing is being played too fast or too slow, enter a new tempo when 3PART prompts you. The previous tempo should be displayed after 3PART has read in the files. Any number between 0 and 255 is a legal tempo. If you want to hear a specific part of a piece of music and not the whole thing, you can specify the beginning and ending measure numbers when 3PART asks "Where do you want to start?" and "Where do you want to end?" Problems With 3PART.BAS For reasons that we are unable to explain, 3PART does not play some pieces of music correctly. Everything will sound normal until a particular measure is reached and one of the voices will drop out. The voice is silent until the beginning of the next measure, where it resumes one measure behind the other two voices. The problem does not occur when only two voices are being used. Most of the time, the problem can be solved by changing the order in which the music files are read in. For example, suppose you typed: first part? maple1 second part? maple2 third part? maple3 and you noticed that somewhere in the middle of the piece, one of the voices dropped out for a measure. You could try this: first part? maple3 second part? maple2 third part? maple1 or any other combination. This usually clears up any problems. Using PRINTSET On your COMPOSER diskette, you should also have a file called PRINTSET.EXE. This program will initialize printers - 10 - COMPOSER Version 1.30 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ other than EPSON printers. COMPOSER is set to use EPSON printers as initially distributed. Type PRINTSET from your DOS prompt. Some instructions should appear on your screen telling you to enter your printer codes as a series of 3-digit ascii values separated by a single space. What this means is that if you have a printer code that is ESC A, you would enter 027 065. 027 is the ascii code for ESC and 065 is the ascii code for a capital letter A. You will have to consult your printer's instruction manual for the correct codes for your specific printer. We have included the codes for EPSON and IBM Proprinter printers: EPSON 960 bit image mode with 800 dot columns across: 027 076 032 003 Set line spacing to 8/72'' or 24/216'': 027 065 008 IBM Proprinter 960 bit image mode with 800 dot columns across: 027 076 032 003 Set line spacing to 8/72'' or 24/216'': 027 051 008 PRINTSET.EXE will ask you to set you printer to its 960 bit image mode. If you printer does not have such a mode, but does have a higher density mode, such as a 1920 bit image mode, you can use this mode instead. The music will be smaller, hence harder to read, and it will not be centered on the page, but it should print. Any printer mode that has a density higher than or equal to 800 dots will work. - 11 -