|
Tips and Tricks |
To create songs that sound good, you need two things:
1. good instruments
2. good music data
To get good instruments for your song, you should organize a library of instruments. Alternatively, you can play several songs and listen to their instruments. Since most MOD songs are freeware, you can use the instruments from them in your own songs. Simply open the song, select the desired instrument, and copy it to a clipboard (MacMod Pro supports 8 different clipboards - so you could transfer up to 8 instruments at a time.) Then create a new song (or select it in the Music Desktop if it is already created.) Bring the Instruments window to the front and select an instrument slot and paste the instrument in the clipboard.
To import instruments that are saved in a library, choose "Add Instruments" from the Instruments menu. You can add all your instruments at once by using the "Add" button. When you are done loading instruments, click "Done" and the instruments will be available in the Instruments window.
Unfortunately, creating good music data is entirely up to you. With practice, it will become easier. A typical song contains a melody, a counter-melody, a bass line, and percussion (drums.)
You can speed up MacMod Pro in several ways. First, choosing 22kHz playback instead of 44kHz in the preferences can dramatically increase the performance while a song is playing. Likewise, turning off the reverb, stereo delay, and follow playback features will help on slower machines.
In general, the more windows you have open in MacMod Pro, the slower the program will run. Try not to open too many digital editor windows. The number of songs open in MacMod Pro does not affect the speed of the program, although it greatly affects to amount of memory available.
To get the best sound when playing songs, be sure to set the preferences for song playing. If your computer supports stereo, you'll want to make sure that option is selected. Stereo delay helps to make the sound more ambient and enhances the stereo effect.
We recommend purchasing external speakers for your computer. A three piece system (which includes a subwoofer) is probably the most you will want. You can also purcase some good quality headphones to dramatically increase sound quality.
Sometimes songs can become corrupted. If you experience problems opening a song, try holding down the option key while opening the song. This tells MacMod Pro to ignore the data that is saved at the end of the song by MacMod Pro to remember settings, bookmarks, etc.
The preview feature on the open dialog can save time. If you have a library of songs (there are many CD's full of MOD files available) you can use this feature to find the songs that you like faster. Try using the Auto-Preview feature which previews a song when it is selected.