A SIMPLE WAY OF WRITING AND PLAYING MUSIC ON THE ATARI ST ---------------- MAKE MUSIC! Is a program for the Atari ST. There are two versions on the disc: one, "MUSIC.COL", for use with a colour monitor in Medium Resolution: The second, "MUSIC.MON" in High Resolution monochrome. With it you can write a piece of music, using an on- screen keyboard: every note, or chord, you enter is played back to you directly and displayed on a musical stave. You can select the length of each note, as well as the tempo of the whole piece. You can change, add, or delete a note, or chord. At any time, you can play back the whole piece, or the current page by itself. You can write your own harmony, or, by choosing "Auto-Chord", you can let the Computer provide the harmony. MAKE MUSIC! uses the Atari GEM interface to the full; every move is controlled by the Mouse and pictorial images illustrate your various options. A range of drop-down Menus allow you to make the major program choices. Finally, your compositions can be Saved to disc and, later re- Loaded for Playback or Editing. ---------- HANDS-ON LEARNING... The program is very simple to use, even if you don't knopw much about music. Boot your computer, with the disc in place and choose whether you want the colour, or the high resolution display. Using the "Show Info..." option in the Atari File Menu, change the extension of the version you choose from ".COL", or ".MON" to ".PRG". Then double-click on "MUSIC.PRG" and the program will Load using the appropriate resource file. When Loaded, you will see a display with a Menu line at the top; a musical stave, with the usual five lines, across centre screen and a two-octave keyboard, at the bottom. On the right hand side of the keyboard, there is an extra note (green on a colour display) with a kind of squiggle in it. If you read music, you will recognise this as one of the signs for a "rest": this lets you enter a pause, instead of a note. As a start, grab the Mouse, and move the arrow over the keyboard. As soon as it enters the keyboard area, the arrow changes to an ikon of a hand, with finger poised over the keyboard. (The hand, based on extensive research, is modelled on that of Rachmaninov). STRIKE A NEW NOTE... Move the finger over a note and click on the left-hand button. Simultaneously the note you have chosen will sound and a Dialogue Box appear in centre screen, showing a choice of five note lengths. If you don't like the sound of the note you have chosen, you can get rid of it by clicking on the CANCEL box, otherwise click on one of the note lengths, which get shorter as you move from left to right. But before you do that, look at the other little box, with a dot in it. If you click on that, before you click on the note, you will get a note which is half as long again, as the one you choose. Musicians call this a "dotted note". TUNE IN... You clicked on your note? The note stops sounding and appears on the stave, on screen, in the correct position and with the legth you have chosen. Try another one. Be a devil, try three or four: you have written a tune! Depending on the values of the notes you have entered, after a certain number, a vertical line appears across the stave. This is a "Bar Line". A bar of music always contains a fixed number of "beats", or note intervals, depending on the "Time Signature" of the piece (more about that later). MAKE MUSIC! writes in the bar lines for you. If the length of the note you have chosen would carry you over the bar line, the program splits the note in two, to carry it over into the next bar. To show that the two notes are actually played as one, a "tie" - a sort of loop - is drawn in to connect the two. CALLED TO THE BAR... Full scale music can have a great many different "Time Signatures", indicating a variety of beats to the bar; they are usually written as two numbers, one over the other, like "2/4", or "5/8". MAKE MUSIC! limits the choice to two:"4/4", a straightforward march beat and "3/4", which is waltz time. You can choose between them by clicking on either of the values shown in the Style Menu. There is nothing to stop you changing the time signature of a piece of music even after you have written it. It doesn't make any difference to the way it is played, but it can produce a pretty odd looking score. PLAY TIME... To play back your music, move the Mouse over the Program Menu, and select "Play". You will hear what you have written on the stave. It probably sounds a bit thin, with just single notes sounding, so move the Mouse over the Style menu and select "Auto-chord". (if you look at the Menu again, you will find that the selection is now ticked). Now, if you "Play" again you will find that the Computer has suopplied some simple harmony; each note is accompanied by its Natural chord. You can stop "Auto-chord" operating, by clicking on the menu again. IN HARMONY... Perhaps you think the harmony is too loud. Move the Mouse back to the Style Menu and click on "Harmony". Straight away you will hear a chord and see another Dialogue Box, showing a kind of Loudness symbol, with a slider below it. Move your Mouse arrow over the slider and hold down the left button; you will find you can move the slider back and forth and the strength of the chord will vary as it moves. When you have got it as you like it, click on the Tick-box and you will go back to the main display; now, when you play your tune, the harmony will be be set to the volume you chose. DON'T LOSE YOUR TEMPO... What about the speed at which your tune is played? Would it sound better faster? - or slower? Easy: click on "Tempo", in the Style Menu and you get another picture, this time of a kind of Obelisk, which is meant to be a Metronome, the little clockwork machine, with a wagging stick, which Musicians use (or used to use) for keeping time. The program doesn't show the stick wagging, but you can hear it, and by dragging the weight up, or down the stick (much as you did with the harmony slider) you can change the speed of the clicks. Again the Tickbox will get you back to the main display and, when next you play your tune, it will be played at your chosen speed. SAVING TIME... When you have had enough, you can Save your composition to disc, by going to the Program Menu and selecting "Save". This will bring up a standard File selector, with which you can Save the tune, using a suitable GEMDOS name. As a rule, the extension should be ".MUS", as this will be recognised immediately by the program, when you choose the "Load" option (also on the Program Menu), so that you can play your tune again, or modify it by Editing. If you would like to give your piece a more descriptive name before Saving it, one which will be displayed at the top of the screen when the music is Loaded, choose the option "title", from the Program Menu, which will bring up a Dialogue Box in which you can write a name up to 21 characters long. So much for a breathless canter through some of the possibilities available on MAKE MUSIC! A more detailed review, choice by choice, follows... ----------- NOTES & CHORDS As well as the note input, obtainable by clicking the Mouse pointer on the required note, chords may be entered on the stave, as well. There is a choice in the Menus between 12 Major and 7 Minor chords. It is a bit of an exaggeration to call them chords, since the three voices built into the Atari can sound a maximum of three notes at once and even a simple chord should contain four notes; harmony is often much thicker than that. However, in spite of the limitations, the results can give quite a variety of harmonic texture. Chords are entered by clicking on the required chord from the Menu. This will sound the two chord notes. If you now select a note, the full chord will sound and the chord notes will be added to the display in the same position as the melody note. The chord notes are shown in grey, rather than black, to differentiate them from the melody line. Chords are sustained; that is they continue to sound with any subsequent notes you enter, until the chord is changed, or terminated. You can end a chord by selecting End chord from either chord menu. While a chord is active small "=" symbols are displayed in grey along the stave, in the chord note positions, each time another note is entered. The program will not allow you to enter two chords, one after the other; you must enter chord,note,....,chord,note,... and so on. EDITING MUSIC If you want to revise a composition, MAKE MUSIC! allows for this with a suite of editing options. You use them by double-clicking on the stave position, where you want to make an alteration. When you do this, a Dialogue Box appears with a range of option buttons, as well as the usual Cancel Button, in case you change your mind. The buttons are divided between note changes and chord changes, which affect the two classes, independently. ADD NOTE If you click on this, the chosen stave position will be blanked out with a green rectangle and you will be able to choose another note from the keyboard: the Note Selection box will appear, as it does when making a normal entry, so the the duration of the note can be entered as well. As soon as this is done, the new note appears on the stave, immediately after the position you selected, and is incorporated into the melody permanently. CHANGE NOTE Clicking on this operates much in the same way as ADD NOTE, except that the old note at that position is changed for the new one. DELETE NOTE Clicking on this Button simply wipes out the note at the position you chose for editing. The chord options operate very similarly, but are slightly more complicated, in that you have to consider where the chords begin and end. ADD CHORD Clicking here will show the green rectangle, once again, but now you have the choice of selecting a chord from the Menu, rather than a note from the keyboard. Note that you cannot ADD a chord to the start positon of a previous chord: you can only CHANGE a chord, in that case. CHANGE CHORD This operates only on the position where a chord starts, or ends. In either case, you can choose a new chord from the Chord Menus, or you can use the "End chord" option. DELETE CHORD This allows you to delete a chord, while retaining the melody line. It will only operate on the position where a chord starts, or ends. If you click on a "start" position, it deletes both the start and end (if any) of that chord. Any previous active chord will continue to sound. Similarly, if you delete an "end" position, the current chord will continue to sound, until it meets another chord, or the end of the tune. If you make an invalid selection during an editing session, nothing happens; you simply remain with the Edit box, so that you can make a different choice. PAGES The screen display holds a sequence of up to nineteen notes. If you go beyond this number, the screen automatically re- draws itself, starting from the seveteenth note of the previous screen - i.e. it starts with the last two notes you entered. At the same time various other things happen to the display. The top line of the display will tell you you are on Page 2 of 2, while the Horizontal Slider box, at the bottom of screen will re-arrange itself to show a shaded section to the left of screen. If you continue to write music until the screen is full again, the display will update to Page 3, and so on. You can move between the pages of your score, either by clicking on the arrows at either end of the Horizontal Slider box, or by clicking on the shaded parts, or by dragging the clear section of the box to the position you want: in fact, by using the Slider box in the normal GEM way. If you simply enter a new note, while you are on a page other than the last, the display will skip to the last page and add the new note to the end. However, if you choose to Edit a note ,or chord, on an earlier page, the change will be made at the point you select. By selecting "Play page" from the Program menu, you can play back just the page currently showing: The "Play" option will always play the entire composition. ---------- To summarise the various options in the Menus: The "ATARI" Menu MAKE MUSIC! Lists the credits for writing the Program and also gives the Version Number. Any Desk Accessories normally accessible will be available from this Menu. The Program Menu Title Allows you to enter a title for the current piece. Play Plays the entire composition. Play page Plays the current page. Save Allows you to Save to disc any music entered. Load Allows you to Load a composition. New Deletes any music curently in memory and lets you start afresh. Quit Abandons the program and returns to the Desktop. The last three options will give a warning before executing, if you have any music in memory, so that you should not lose your composition unexpectedly. The Chord Menus have already been explained. The Style menu Tempo Displays a Dialogue Box, which lets you change the tempo, or speed of play, of the piece in memory. Harmony This Dialogue Box allows you to adjust the volume of any chord accompaniment to the melody line. Legato Normally there is a slight pause between consecutive notes, when they are played, so that the same note repeated will be heard as two separate sounds. By selecting "Legato" (which will then appear ticked), this pause is omitted, so that the music is played as a continuous stream. Any rests, or pauses, written into the score, will, of course, still be valid. Time Signature Clicking on "3/4", or "4/4" will toggle between the two. The selected time signature appears beside the treble clef, shown on the left of the stave in the screen display. These options will be remembered when a score is Saved, so that they will still be in effect when the composition is Loaded again. Auto-chord Selecting this will make the computer supply simple harmony to a melody line in memory. It will replace any chords already written in the score. Clicking on the option, toggles the operation on and off. ---------- The program has been written to accept up to 1000 entries in a single composition, which should be enough for the average user. More extended compositions are probably not suitable for this type of program in any case, as the limitations of the Atari's sound chip would become too evident. I should be glad to get reports of any bugs, or other difficulties - and also any suggestions for improving the program. ---------- WARNING: There is one bug which, for various reasons, I have not yet been able to eliminate: it concerns Desk Accessories. These are available during the program and the ones I have work perfectly well. However, where the Accessories are contained in GEM windows, they should not be moved, or re-sized. If this is done, they will be overwritten by the main display and disappear. However, they will still remain active, which can produce eerie results. The only solution which does not require mind-boggling extra coding, would be to disable them, But this seems too drastic. John Durst Via Tegolaio Calzolaro di Umbertide (PG) ITALY