/* BELL CHOIR IS A HACK; There may be bugs in it; Use at your own risk */
"Bell Choir" (Conductor and chorus) was done as an experiment for MacHack '92. There are one or two known bugs in the software and incompatibilities (see System Requirements below). It has a conductor which picks the songs (text files) and sends them out to other Macs on the local zone running chorus. You can write your own favorite songs to be played (see section below).
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
It uses Apple Events and some of the new sound manager calls so System 7 is a good thing. Also, you'll need machines with the Sound Chips (2 sound channels).
USAGE
Run conductor on one Macintosh.
Run chorus on any other Macintoshes you wish you join in.
Choose the music on the "conductor" application.
When you click the "play" button, the conductor looks over the local AppleTalk zone for other Macs with "chorus" running. (A desired feature of a future versions is to have the conductor launch the application (chorus).) It then distributes the parts among the machines that it finds--each machine playing just its assigned notes.
To QUIT, press any letter or number on the keyboard.
NOTE: "chorus" must be the name of the application.
A potential problem you might have is that program linking is not on in "Sharing Setup" or that the account you login (guest or an actual account) is not permitted for program linking.
PICKY PROBLEMS
If you hear a Beep (rather than a note), you probably found a bug or an incompatibility. (It's better to beep than to see a bomb!)
Bell Choir does NO checking for system versions and to ensure other characteristics are present (AE, Sound, etc).
There is a memory leak—when members are found and the song is played, some data is not disposed of (the array of AEDescPtrs).
There is no error checking when a song is read in from the file.
WRITING YOUR OWN SONG
The data files are text files which are formatted as follows:
There is NO error checking when the file is read. Note however that returns and extra spaces are permissible at any point in the file. However, you NEED A COMMA as the last character in the file.
midi_frequency can be found in Inside Mac VI or you can compute it yourself by using 60 as Middle C (72 is one octave higher...don't forget the sharps and flats!).
For rests, use 0 as the midi_frequency.
The duration is 2000 units per second.
A late addition to the software (rather than fix the existing bugs) was to add a second voice. In the data files, this is recorded by doing the first voice line in entirety ending with a semi-colon (;) rather than a command. The second voice line follows but ends in a comma.
If you are going to do your own song, I strongly recommend transcribing it in short parts to be sure you have the tempo and notes correct (and then merge them).
One note about the second voice, there is a problem synchronizing the voices (not a network problem, this is a problem on one machine). I'm looking into this but there may not be a fix. What I did was add a rest with a duration 30-50 to the first voice. Also, it works better (sometimes? always?) if the parallel notes are the same duration (the notes run together so just make the first voice's half note into two quarter notes to match the two quarter notes in the second voice).
Conclusion: FUDGE IT! (I like chocolate anyways)
CONCLUSION
There are probably other things that should be in this file but I can't think of them now.
Please send feedback, bugs, ideas, and enhancements to me via e-mail:
brade@umich.edu
I can also be reached at:
Kathleen Brade
108 John Street
Kinde, MI 48445
P.S. New versions may or may not be released. Contact me for details.
Special Thanks to John Ardussi, Jim Reekes, and Mark Smith.
