Creating Your First MOD


Creating a MOD is not a difficult process, but there are several steps that are equally important.

First select "New" from the File menu, or click the left-most picture on the Music Desktop. You will be asked how many voices (or tracks) you want your song to contain. You can change the number of voices at any time. Next, open the Instruments and Sequence windows by selecting them in the Windows menu. Select the Instruments window so you'll be ready for the first major step:

    Handling instruments
    Writing the music
    Configuring the sequence table

Handling instruments:

What makes MODs so powerful is their instruments can be anything! An instrument is simply a sound that is played at different pitches to create music. This means that anything from normal musical instruments to speech and even sound effects can be used as instruments in your MOD.

You can either import instruments from system sound files or record them using the microphone that came with your computer.

To import instruments from sound files, click the left-most button at the top of the Instruments window, or choose "Import Instruments" from the Instruments menu. You will then see an enhanced open dialog. MacMod Pro allows you to import several instruments at a time by clicking "Add" to add each file without closing the dialog. You can also play a sound file from this dialog. When you have imported all the files you want, click "Done."

To record an instrument, select a numbered instrument slot in the Instruments window. Then choose "Record" from the Instruments menu. A dialog will appear with buttons to record, stop, play, and pause. A bar at the bottom measures how long in seconds the recorded sound is. When you are finished recording, press "Save."

Instrument slots that contain an instrument are labeled in blue and have a at the left.

Next, you may want to change an instrument's name, volume, etc. Select an instrument and press Return, or choose "Get Info" from the Edit menu. A dialog will appear with spaces to enter the selected instrument's name, volume, finetune, and looping info.

The finetune adjusts the instrument's pitch by very small increments. Zero is centered, and increasingly negative numbers lower the pitch while larger positive numbers raise the pitch.

The looping handles the way an instrument is played. The part of the instrument designated by the loop start and size (in bytes) will be repeated. This is useful for string instruments that are made to carry out their sound.

To play the instrument with the looping info, click the speaker button in the top-left corner of the Instrument Info dialog.

Finally, you can modify an instrument in other ways such as adding an echo, smoothing the instrument's sound, etc. Select an instrument and choose "Edit" from the Instruments menu. The Instrument Editor will appear displaying the selected instrument's waveform. You can select all (by double-clicking) or part of the instrument. Then press the arrow beside "filter" label to display a list of available instrument effects. You can also cut and paste between instruments. The cut, copy, paste, and clear buttons use the current Clipboard.


Writing the music:

All MODs are broken into small parts called patterns. Each pattern contains 64 lines. At each line, you can place a note for each voice in your song. Each note consists of three parts, the pitch, instrument, and any effects.

You must select an instrument to play the note. However, MacMod Pro is quite flexible. If you forget to select an instrument for a note, the last instrument used in that voice will be played.

The Effects let you alter the way a note is played.

You will need to select an editor to use for creating your song. You can switch back and forth between editors, but it isn't recommended.

To begin writing the music, choose "Editor" from the Windows menu to display the Editor window. Use the popup menu at the upper-left of the window to select either the Digital or Staff editor. Read the help section on the editor you chose to understand how it works. When you get to the end of a pattern and wish to add another pattern to your song, choose "Add Pattern" from the Patterns menu.


Configuring the sequence table:

This can be the most difficult step to understand, but the idea is simple. Select the Sequence window to begin using the sequence table. You will see a table of 128 numbered slots like in the Instruments window. This is the table MacMod Pro follows when playing your song, so it can also be referred to as the "pattern play-list." Each slot tells MacMod Pro which pattern to play at that time. So if you have a song that contains four patterns, and you want to play pattern 1 first, then pattern 2, etc. Your table would look like this:



To fill in a slot in the sequence table, click the button to the left of the slot. A menu will appear listing all the patterns in your song. Simply select one and release the mouse button. For more help with this, see the Sequence Table section.

Congratulations!
    You are now ready to save your first MOD!
    Remember to check that you did not leave any gaps in the sequence (playing) table.