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Text File | 1992-10-22 | 12.5 KB | 292 lines

************************* * V O I C E - 6 8 0 * * ------------------- * ************************* By Mark Hanlon. 1991 ish * PUBLIC DOMAIN MESSAGE * * This program is FREE for all. If you have a friend who wants to use it * * just ensure that this instruction file is included. See the end of * * these instructions for a list of required files/directories * YOU WILL NEED: -------------- - A Midi Interface Unit. - A Yamaha PSS-680 Keyboard. - A Pound of Lard. Yumm. This program only supports the PSS-680 home keyboard at the moment. It may work on the PSS-580 and/or the PSS-780 as it is, but I have not had the opportunity to test this. If anybody could help out here, with the Midi Data sheets for example, please do. My address will be found later in this document. COOKING INSTRUCTIONS: --------------------- Go on, double-click on the Voice-680 Icon. That's it, there's the front Control Panel. Looks a bit complicated doesn't it? Don't worry, it's dead easy. Let's talk about the bits from left to right, top to bottom shall we? At the very top is a menu bar. Hold the right mouse button to see it. The MENU. --------- The menu is split into three sections. These are CONTROL, DISK and MIDI. Let's have a look at each in turn. CONTROL ------- ABOUT - Gives my name and address for ideas, donations, extensions, recipes etc. QUIT - No warning! The program instantly closes down and dies. DISK ---- LOAD - Lets you load a voice from disk to memory. SAVE - Lets you save the current voice setting to disk. MIDI ---- GRAB - Enables you to grab a voice from one of the five keyboard banks. You will be asked the number of the bank you wish to store, and then the message 'Waiting For Data' will appear. To transmit the data from the keyboard, simply press the Transmit Channel button on the keyboard twice (so that the LED display is flashing) and then press the Value + key under the display. After 5 seconds the data should be in the computer. SEND - Transmits the current voice settings to the bank shown at the top left of the screen. See below for further instructions. OK, now onto the main screen itself... * BANK: This is the bank number that the voice will be transmitted to when it is sent to the keyboard. It can be changed by clicking on the word itself. * VOICE: Here we have the name of the current voice. This is only used when saving to disk, as the keyboard doesn't store it. * The Asterisk. What asterisk? When you begin the program, there will not be one there. However, under certain circumstanses one will appear. Let me explain. The ASTERISK (*) ---------------- When developing this program, I found it very annoying having to constantly select the menu option to transmit the voice to the keyboard, especially after small changes were made to the sound. So I decided to add an Automatic Transmission feature, represented by an asterisk. When you either GRAB a voice from the keyboard or SEND one to it, an asterisk will appear in the top right-hand corner. This indicates that Auto Transmission is activated. Now, any changes made to the sound with the mouse will instantly be transmitted to the keyboard. A fair amount of data shifting is going on here, but thanks to AMOS and MIDI, it takes only about half a second. When you load a sound from disk, you will see that Auto Transmission is off. It will only be activated when you SEND the data to the keyboard. This is to protect data in the keyboard. If the loaded voice has its BANK set to a number that already contains a good voice in the keyboard, you won't accidentally erase it with the new data. Next we move into the General Control section. This is all nice and simple.. * The S stands for SUSTAIN. Click it on and off. * The V stands for vibrato. Again, click it. * From the V we have VDT (VIBRATO DELAY TIME) and PMS (PULSE MODULATION SENSITIVITY). VDT says how long the note has to be held down before vibrato starts. PMS sets the vibrato depth. * The arrow that points to its tail is FEEDBACK. This is exactly the same as the button on the keyboard itself. * AMS means AMPLITUDE MODULATION SENSITIVITY, and governs how the volume of the sound will 'wobble up and down'! Try it and see, when one of the Amplitude Modulation lights is on (See below). * The final box will take you to the ADSR screen, where the volume envelope can be changed. See later for a full explanation. CARRIER SECTION: ---------------- The carrier is the underlying sound, with no modulation. Change this to alter the general sound type. As with the rest of the program, the best way to understand it is to experiment. * The first box is the FREQUENCY box. This is just the same as on the keyboard itself. * FINE DETUNE is next, and does what it says. * COARSE DETUNE follows, and can be switched only on or off. * The wiggly sound wave is the AMPLITUDE MODULATION ENABLE. This says whether or not the sounds' volume will wobble. The level is set at the AMS gadget in the section above. * Next along is the LEVEL KEY SCALING graph. On page 41 of the PSS-680 Manual you will see a similar graph. The number controls how the volume of the notes change over the range of the keyboard. So, if you want the low end of the keyboard to be loud compared to middle C, set LO to 1 or 2. If you want the top end to be quiet, set HI to 14 or 15. * RKS stands for RATE KEY SCALING. Try it out and listen! * The round knob is the LEVEL control. Here, it sets the general volume of the sound. * Finally, the four boxes. Only one of these can be highlighted at a time. This selects the wave form used by the note. You may choose from SINE, SQUARED SINE, SINE HALF WAVE or SQUARED SINE HALF WAVE. MODULATOR SECTION: ------------------ This is exactly the same as above, but operates on the MODULATION of the sound. The only difference is that the LEVEL control is the Modulation level, and corresponds to the Modulation Level button on the keyboard. ADSR SECTION. ------------- Clicking on the ADSR box at the top right of the screen will take you to another display. Here you control just how the sound develops with time. For example, a piano type sound gradually fades as the note is held, whereas a violin sound should continue for as long as the note is down. Also, the sustain length can be set here, allowing long, ringing vibraphones and bells to be created. Let me work from top to bottom. Please see the simple diagram below for an explanation of the main controls. * AR - Attack Rate. Controls how quickly the sound rises to full volume after a note is held down. * D1R - Decay 1 Rate. Controls how quickly the sound volume drops to the D1L level (see next). * D1L - Decay 1 Level. The level that the sound drops to when the note is held. Here, 0 means no decay from full volume, and 15 means a drop to no volume. This allows you to imitate the initial 'stab' at a note. * D2R - Decay 2 Rate. The rate at which the sound eventually dies to zero, when the note is held. For a sound that doesn't die (eg, a violin) set this to zero. * RR - Release Rate. Here you set the rate at which the sound dies AFTER the key is released. * SRR - Sustain Release Rate. Finally, we set the rate at which a sound with the sustain light on dies. Set to a low value for bells. This value is represented on the graph by the dotted line. The above settings appear twice. The top is the Carrier's envelope; the bottom the Modulator's. Please try it out - you'll soon see what controls what! The two buttons at the bottom are as follows. * MAIN - Returns you to the front Control Screen. * TRANSMIT - Sends the current settings to the keyboard. However, if the asterisk is on, changes will be automatically sent. Please see above if you haven't heard of the asterisk. <--> /\ D1R / \ (Note held...) (D2R=0 here, for / -------------------- a non-decaying / ^ \ sound.) / | D1L \ / | \ /<-AR-> v <-RR->\ HERE'S ONE I MADE EARLIER... ---------------------------- Having read the above you're probably pretty confused. The only way to grasp what the controls do is to try them. For this reason I have supplied a few example sounds on disk in the Voices directory. To load these voices into memory and then to the keyboard, you'll need to use the MENUs, as explained above. Firstly select LOAD from the DISK menu, and double click on a voice. Then select SEND from the MIDI menu and the data will be in the keyboard, ready for you to play with. Now, any changes you make by clicking in the screen will be instantly sent to the keyboard. If you ruin the sound, you can either load it in from disk (or another) or grab a sound from the keyboard. To grab a sound from the Voice List, simply select it (Eg The SINE WAVE - Voice 99 - is a good one to start with) by pressing its number on the keyboard, and then storing this sound in one of the Banks. Then simply GRAB this bank to the screen using the menu option. Easy! MAKE ONE FOR YOUR FRIENDS! -------------------------- This program is free, for anybody to use without charge. (This is to let everybody with a PSS-680 keyboard get the most of their instrument. OK, there are probably only a few of you, but I did read that somebody somewhere wanted a voice editor for the PSS range, so even if only that person is satisfied....) To copy it, you MUST include the following. a) These Instructions. Don't be cruel to your friend! b) The Midi.library in the current LIBS: directory, and the MidiLib_README file. (see credits) c) The voices/ directory and the demo voices. This must be at the top directory of the bootdisk. IE assigned as SYS:voices If the midi.library or sys:voices/ are not found, the program will not run! THE ICING --------- What icing would you like to see? How about a CLI voice transmitter program. Then you could load up your favourite sequencer (Eg Music-x) and from a shell or CLI type something like transmit df0:voices/phaser.680 4 and suddenly keyboard bank 4 holds the created voice.. If there's interest, I'll do it. How about other keyboards? Does this work on the PSS-580? Please tell me somebody! Any more ideas to please the PSS users out there? My address is Mark Hanlon, 43 Dove House Road, Haverhill, Suffolk. England CB9 0BZ During term time 1992-'93 I'll be at Mark Hanlon, Cripps Hall, University Park. Nottingham. England NG7 2QW CREDITS: -------- ---- ---- This program would not exist without AMOS (and the Compiler!) ---- ---- Also, it would not exist without the midi.library written by Bill Barton of Pregnant Badger Music. I have included the MidiLib ReadME file where copyright details appear. These files were obtained from Fish Disk 227. Thanks to you all for your generosity. OK, and thanks to you, Joanne 'Wedge' Edgeley! There you go!