Large Pack of OldSkool DOS MOD Trackers/trjoy094.zip/TRACKJOY.DOC

Text File | 1995-01-09 | 94KB | 1,961 lines

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ TRACKJOY - Gravis Ultrasound Tracker                                      │
│ Copyright (c) 1994, 1995 Tomi R. Joy                                      │
│ (c) 1994, 1995 Roots Software Corporation                                 │
│ All rights reserved                                                       │
│ Programming & Documentation: Tomi R. Joy                                  │
│                                                                           │
│ Trackjoy music composition software, version 0.94ß                        │
│                                                                           │
│ DOCUMENTATION                                                             │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

WARNINGS
────────

        ■ This version is in fact Trackjoy 0.94ß, in other words it is
          *not* the final release 1.00. The documentation probably won't
          change much when I release 1.00, but bear in mind that some
          changes may be on the way.

          More importantly, Trackjoy may well have severe bugs and even
          functions that are not yet supported properly or at all. So be
          careful.

          And to end the warning, remember that this document is also a
          beta version. It doesn't cover eveything and is a bit wonky.

        ■ Trackjoy has no warranty. The author of the software
          ("Trackjoy" and "Instrument Maker") provide no warranty
          whatsoever and in absolutely no account shall the author be
          liable for damages caused by the use of the mentioned software
          or any other product.

        ■ Some parts of this documentation (not to mention the program)
          were not made strictly seriously.

YOUR LICENSE
────────────

          In contradiction to the provious sentance, this part of the
          documentation (the Licence) *was* made strictly seriously. As
          I hope you have noticed, Trackjoy is not a shareware program,
          nor is it public domain. You can load and use it freely for
          any period of time but ONLY in accordance with the following
          license:

          The copyright and ownership of the software ("RS Trackjoy",
          "Trackjoy Instrument Maker") and all associated files and
          example music remains with the author. Although you are not
          required to make a payment for use of the software, you are
          still using it under license from the author. Trackjoy has
          *not* been released to public domain.

          If you plan to redistribute it in any other than the original
          form or include it in any commercial package (even if the
          program and associated files are not modified), you need a
          *seperate* written agreement from the author. Modifications
          for private use are allowed as long as there is no danger of a
          modified copy being distributed.

          By keeping a copy of any part of the Trackjoy software,
          in any form ─ machine-readable or otherwise ─ you agree to
          be bound by the terms of this license.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

        ■ The philosophy behind this agreement is firstly of a "Share
          and Enjoy" kind, and secondly of a kind which pertains to my
          personal idea that this program is nothing like perfect, and
          I've enjoyed making it (at least some of the time), and I am
          not willing to make other people feel guilty for not dishing
          up for it. I may be really old-fashioned, but I still believe
          in giving things to people and I don't think we should think
          of everything in terms of profit, and besides, I really can't
          be bothered to handle any big registering deals right now.

          This reminds me of the other part of the Trackjoy philosophy,
          which is that people don't like reading completely impersonal
          technical manuals (such as Microsoft GW-BASIC 3.22, User's
          manual...) to learn how to use a program or gadget. I have
          made a real effort to liven this document up for you.

DISCLAIMER OF THINGOMYJIG: All characters in this document are purely
                           imaginary and have no relation whatsoever to
                           any person, dead or alive ─ or both.

Now that you have got over your initial shock, we can begin: Welcome to
the world of Trackers and the Gravis Ultrasound Card. And thank you ever
so much for downloading Trackjoy. I honestly hope you find it a *joy* to
use.


CONTENTS
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
*** NOTE: To find a topic listed below, you can search for the label in
          brackets. When searching for topics in this way, always add a
          full stop in *front* of the label. For example, if the label
          was [switches], you would search for ".switches" (without the
          double quotes, of course).


                                                                    LABEL
1. Command list for quick reference............................... [list]
   (This list is displayed by Trackjoy Help)

2. What is Trackjoy............................................... [what]
   ─ Music on the PC
   ─ "Trackers"
   ─ GUS and wave-table "synthesis"
   ─ Special features of Trackjoy

3. Editing........................................................ [edit]
   ─ About patterns, rows, notes etc.
   ─ About samples
   ─ The Pattern Allocation window
   ─ Editing Patterns
   ─ Tools
   ─ Editing Order
   ─ Editing Song Information

4. The Sample Manager......................................... [samplman]

5. Saving and Loading........................................... [fileio]
   ─ File Selection pad

6. Configuring Trackjoy......................................... [config]
   ─ Screen setup
   ─ Sample directories
   ─ General
   ─ GUS settings

7. About memory................................................. [memory]

8. Tips and recommendations....................................... [tips]

9. Trackjoy FAQ.................................................... [FAQ]

10. Trackjoy Frequently Reported Bugs (FRB) List................... [FRB]

11. Trackjoy: The Next Version.................................... [next]

12. About programming, support and the author..................... [prog]

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1. Command list for quick reference                                    .list
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

  A blank in either column means the command can't be invoked in that way
  An asterisk (*) means the command is available through the main menu

  ■ There is no guarantee that all keys that actually do something
    (useful) are listed here. Most of the tested and fairly reliable
    functions, however, can be found in this list. Parts of the
    list can be brought up in Trackjoy's editing screen with the
    Ctrl and Alt keys held down, and the above list can be found
    in Trackjoy's help system.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
2. What is Trackjoy?                                                 .what
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────


Music on the PC
───────────────

Producing music ─ or indeed, any sound at all ─ on the PC is a problem.
Or rather, producing a *sound* is easy enough, but producing anything
even remotely similar to a musical sound is almost impossible. This is
because all a standard PC clone is equipped with is a small low-fidelity
speaker, often called a PC-squeaker, PC-beeper or something equivalent.
The speaker is driven by a timer or one-bit I/O port making possible
only two states, on or off. The only way to play digital sound effects
thorugh the PC beeper is to use a crude bit-stream approach, which is
really hard on the CPU.

This PC-ear-radicator is barely capable of producing a beep, and
therefore that's what it is usually used for in games and other
entertainment software. Also, it of course beeps at you whenever
it thinks it appropriate or when it is likely to annoy you most.

Other brands of computer (Commodore, Apple Macintosh) at least support
*some* kind of sound, generally in form of a simple DAC and a more
advanced sample playback system in Amiga computers.




Trackers
────────


Until quite recently practically the only way to avoid these disgusting
square-wave beeps (and protect your poor ears) was to buy a synthesizer
card, such as an Adlib or SoundBlaster, which support FM (Frequency
Modulation) Synthesis. However, a cheaper alternative was also
invented. It was the PC tracker.

Trackers are programs which play music with pieces of recorded sound ─
samples. Samples are blocks of bytes or words, whose values represent
an input voltage or eventually the air pressure to create at any given
time. By playing the sample back quickly through a digital/analog
converter (DAC), you can produce quite lifelike sounds on a PC.
With "lifelike" I certainly don't mean the beeper, but with a
real (or fake) DAC it can be done. Actually, all this tracker business
started from the Amiga, and that's where the .MOD format comes from.

But that wasn't the clever bit ─ this is: You can build quite an
acceptable ─ if 8-bit sound is what you call acceptable ─ DAC out of a
pile of resistors. This heap of mangled wires ─ and evil-looking
componets that look as if they migh be from the alien planet Gluntgavar
XII ─ is referred to as a Covox. To build one, get eight resistors with
the resistances x * 2^n ohms, with n from 1 to 8, stick them into your
parallel printer port, and voilà! It works! When adjusted well with an
oscilloscope, it sounds better than an SB 1.0! Actually I built a
ten-bit covox in stead of an 8-bit one, and that sounded even better.
At least, I *imagine* it did...

Because you obviously want to use several frequencies and channels when
making music, trackers have to do a lot of work to mix, stretch and
shrink the samples into shape. Normally this kind of work is comletely
left to an integrated circuit called a DSP, which is short for Digital
Signal Processor or a completely dedicated hard-coded chip, which
brings the cost down. DSPs are optimised to perform simple operations
like addition and multiplication really fast enabling operations such
as filtering and mixing or Fourier transforms at very high sampling
rates, and are generally capable of doing things approximately ten
times faster than a general-purpose processor. However, PCs aren't
normally equipped with DSPs, so the 80x86 processor has to do
everything.

A tracker program also has to look after the music track (pattern).
With this added overhead and the time consumed in mixing, it is
a very big effort to make a routine that sounds even almost as
good as a GUS. Even increasing the amount of bits in the output won't
help alone, without a method called anti-aliasing or interpolation to
avoid some really annoying distortion. On the other hand, anti-aliasing
takes so long that up till recently it was never found in players,
and even now interpolative mixing engines require fast machines
and highly optimised assembly language coding.

This is why very few standard MOD trackers sound clear. Even with
16-bit audio cards and software anti-aliasing, you often hear more
high-frequency noise than with a GUS, which is also equipped with
filter designs.

Most of these problems are wiped away with cards like the Gravis
Ultrasound, WaveBlaster and SoundBlaster AWE 32. The Ultrasound is quite
a neat piece of work (except for the rather nasty defects, which I have
listed in TECH.DOC), equipped with 256 to 1024 k of DRAM, built-in
filters and anti-aliasing. It also supports 16-bit audio data. The
result is that it plays even 8-bit samples amazingly clearly by first
stretching them into 16-bit samples and then anti-aliasing them.




The GUS and wave-table synthesis
────────────────────────────────


The Gravis Ultrasound card resembles the tracker method of making sounds
very, very closely. The only practical difference is that the Ultrasound
lets you get on with other things by doing all the dirty work itself.
The programmer only needs to load the samples into the GUS and then do a
few quick writes to I/O ports to play them.

The Gravis Ultrasound method of making sounds is called wave-table
synthesis. This simply means that the sample can be played from any
place at any frequency with a uni- or bidirectional loop set up at any
place in the sample. The frequency and volume can be modified during
playback. This is all that goes into wave-table synthesis if we are
talking about the GUS. With proper samples, however, it sounds
surprisingly good. Still, I would have some reservations about calling
this 'synthesis', because nothing is actually synthesized. Rather, I
would call the GUS a sample playback board.




Special features of Trackjoy
────────────────────────────


The most important special feature of Trackjoy is that its pattern
structure is not fixed. When the majority of other trackers use 64-row
patterns with fixed or variable width, Trackjoy can have patterns from 1
to 255 rows in length and their width can vary from one to seventeen. (A
fun joke is to make a 1-channel-1-row piece of music, sounds great!) In
addition to this, all the channels in a pattern needn't be of the same
type. In stead, there are three channel types: FULL for full note,
instrument, volume and special effect data, STRIPPED for the note,
instrument and volume and GLOBAL, which controls the playing of the
whole pattern.

Another weird Trackjoy feature is its interrupt interface. If you're not
a programmer, you will be thinking: "Hmmm... what on Earth is an
interrupt interface?"

Well, the answer is that if you're not a programmer, you don't *want* to
know. If you are, you can read about it in TECH.DOC. In any case, it is
an interface between Trackjoy and any other program that supports the
interface, and it lets progras synchronize themselves with Trackjoy and
pass commands to Trackjoy.

You see, programmers actually *like* playing about with interrupts and
cryptic hexadecimal command numbers moved into the AL register. As
Calvin (or Hobbes) would no doubt say, this is really GROSS. Yechh!





───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
3. Editing                                                         .edit
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

About patterns, rows, notes etc.
────────────────────────────────


In Trackjoy music is stored in a data structure called a pattern. A
pattern consists of channels, which are divided into rows. Since a
picture can tell a lot more than a thousand words (depending of course
on resolution and image size... not to mention compression!), here is a
picture of a small pattern (it looks almost exactly the same in
Trackjoy, and ─ due to Trackjoy's very flexible pattern format ─ could
actually be created (three channels and nine rows)!) (Yechh I hate
all these brackets):



                            ┌─Stripped channel
     Full channel─┐         │                ┌────Global channel
     ─────────────┴────── ──┴─────── ────────┴────
    █C-1 04 100 · ··· ···█C-1 02 100█070 · ··· ···█
    █∙∙∙ ∙∙ ∙∙∙ · ··· ···█∙∙∙ ∙∙ ∙∙∙█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█
    █∙∙∙ ∙∙ ∙∙∙ · ··· ···█G-2 01 077█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█ <── separating block
    █C-1 ∙∙ ∙∙∙ R 040 ···█G-2 ∙∙ ∙∙∙█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█
    █D#1 ∙∙ ∙∙∙ · ··· ···█C-1 03 100█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█
    █F-1 ∙∙ ∙∙∙ · ··· ···█∙∙∙ ∙∙ ∙∙∙█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█
    █F-1 ∙∙ ∙∙∙ · ··· ···█G-2 01 077█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█
    █F-1 ∙∙ ∙∙∙ · ··· ···█G-2 ∙∙ ∙∙∙█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█
    █∙∙∙ ∙∙ ∙∙∙ · ··· ···█C-1 02 100█∙∙∙ · ··· ···█
      │  │   │  │  │   │   │  │   │   │  │  │   │
      │  │   │  │  │   └───│──│───│───│──│──│───┴──── Special effect param. #2
      │  │   │  │  │       │  │   │   │  │  │
      │  │   │  │  └───────│──│───│───│──│──┴──────── Special effect param. #1
      │  │   │  │          │  │   │   │  │
      │  │   │  └──────────│──│───│───│──┴─────────── Special effect
      │  │   │             │  │   │   │
      │  │   └─────────────│──│───┴───┴────────────── Volume
      │  │                 │  │
      │  └─────────────────│──┴────────────────────── Instrument / MXX
      │                    │
      └────────────────────┴───────────────────────── Note


FULL channels are the most flexible and also most storage-consuming
channel type. Full channels consist of a note (C-0, C#0, D-0...), an
instument number (00 - 63), a volume value (000-254), a special
command byte (U, D, R, L, s, p...) and two numerical or note
parameters for the special command. Each note in a full channel can
be controlled as fully as Trackjoy's player engine can allow. Each of
the fields consumes one byte of memory, so a note takes six bytes.

The instrument number is special in that some of the values exceeding
63 are used for special purposes. These are called the MXX commands,
because they are defined as PLAY_M99 (Play Mode 99), STOP_M98 (Stop Mode
98) and so on. More about these in a moment.

STRIPPED channels are just like full channels, but they have been
stripped of the special command information for memory saving purposes.
A stripped channel note takes three bytes of storage space. MXX commands
naturally work also in stripped channels.

*** TIP: The stripped channel is the most common channel type. You
         should use it instead of full channels if you don't
         particularly need any special commands. (This applies
         particularly to percussion channels.) Indeed, when you start
         Trackjoy, it defaults to a pattern of eight stripped channels
         with 64 rows.

GLOBAL channels also resemble full channels, only they don't have the
note or insturument data. They have the volume and special command
fields and take four bytes of data per cell (note). Global channels
control how the whole pattern plays: tempo, pitch, volume, jumps etc.
Because you only need one global contoller channel, Trackjoy only allows
you to have one of them per pattern.

When a particular field of any cell has dots in it (either the big
ASCII-249 dots ("∙") or the smaller ASCII-250 ("·") dots.), it means
that location is empty. In Trackjoy, the unsigned byte value 255 (FFh)
means empty. This is why volume can only range from 0 to 254, since a
byte can hold 256 values and one of them is needed to mean EMPTY and one
for zero. Empty fields never affect the music in any way.



Tools
═════

One of the things that make Trackjoy so incredibly marvelous is its
unique set of pattern editing tools. They are all designed to make music
score editing as easy and fast as possible and therefore allowing you to
concentrate fully on the musical side. Actually, there is even some
truth in this, at least for my own part. Without proper editing tools
entering music in Trackjoy gets so slow that nobody can be expected to
make a piece more than sixty-four rows long.


1. The block
────────────

      Copying

      Trackjoy has a flexible block handling system. You can select a
      block any length and any width withing a pattern. Do this by
      positioning the cursor on the left-hand top corner of the block
      you want to use. Then press Alt-F4 (like in Word Pervert) and
      extend the block down and right with the arrow keys. If you want
      to copy the block elsewhere, press Alt-C. Pressing Alt-C will
      unmark the block, because it seems to be unlikely that you will
      need to do something to the block right after copying. The 'A'
      (for "alloacted") flag will appear in Trackjoy's bottom status
      line. To unmark the block, press Alt-F4 again.

      Pasting

      Pasting the block is done by repositioning the cursor at the new
      location for a the block. This can of course be in any pattern. If
      you have an allocated block in memory, press Alt-P to paste (Alt-N
      to do a transparent paste, where only empty space is overwritten
      from the buffer). Trackjoy will copy the data to the new location.
      If the block was too big to fully fit in the new location, only
      part of it will be copied.

      Cutting (Zapping)

      To cut a block, which in Trackjoy is the same as Zapping, press
      Ctrl-Z when you have selected a block. The block will first be
      copied to the cut/copy/paste buffer and then the selected region
      will be cleared. The rest of the pattern is left unchanged. If no
      block is selected, Ctrl-Z zaps the current channel (undo with
      Paste).

      Freeing the block

      To free an allocated block without using it, press Alt-F.

      You needn't always allocate (which means the same as copy ─ with
      Alt-C) a block to make use of it. The Transpose commands and
      Pattern Editing Tools both simply use the *coordinates* of the
      block. They don't need an allocated copy of it. When you use these
      commands, simply mark the block with Alt-F4 and execute the
      command. After it has finnished, unmark the block by pressing
      Alt-F4 again, unless of course you want to do more with it.

      You can also write and read blocks to/from disk. In this way it's
      possible to transfer passages of music between songs or modules ─
      providing the sample numbers are compatible, which, I admit,
      doesn't happen too often... To write a block, mark it and copy it
      to memory (with Alt-C). Then press Alt-W, type in a name for the
      block (Trackjoy will force the .BLK extension) and press Enter. To
      load a block, press Alt-R, and select a .BLK file with the file
      selection pad. The you can paste it with Alt-P.

      Trackjoy also supports two quick block copying commands. They
      don't even mark the block, they simply copy it straight into
      memory. They are Alt-T for coping the whole pattern into memory
      and Alt-L for copying a channel.


2. The Advance value
────────────────────


      Normally when you enter notes into a pattern, the cursor is moved
      down one step. In some circumstances it is necessary to jump more
      than one step after entering a note. To make this as easy as
      possible, you can adjust how much Trackjoy advances the cursor
      after entering a note. Alt-A decreases the advancer and Alt-S
      increases it (a zero-advance is also allowed). You can see the
      value in the bottom status line.

      This feature is particularly handy when you want to enter a
      complex rhythm in every other note cell in order to enter fast
      notes in an other channel. You would simply set the advancer to 2
      and enter the notes.

      Another use is when you enter bass drums or snares into a pattern.
      They often come at regular intervals and are very easy to enter
      with a moderately large advance value (6, 8, 12 or 16, for
      example). A somewhat more sophisticated method for doing this is
      by using Incremental Line Evaluation, described a little later on.
      By the way, if you enter drum tracks like this, do yourself a
      favour and give each note a different volume. Drum tracks sound
      *much* better with some dynamics.


3. The Field Editing Tools
──────────────────────────

      This is one of the features you are not going to want to use.

      The Field Editing Tools command invoked with F3 is a general
      purpose command for doing just about anything to a pattern. It
      works by letting you select the exact object you want to change
      and by letting you specify the conditions on which it modifies the
      object. This is done with a total of six different selectors,
      making it possible to use this command in a staggering total of
      6,480 unique ways ─ and that is *not* counting the extra
      parameters.

      All the selectors are used by moving in them with the arrow keys.
      Select an item with Space, cancel with Esc and accept with Enter.
      'E' toggles the "Process EMPTY fields?" option, 'L' the "Evaluate
      line numbers" option.

      The first selector defines which field you want to be processed.
      They are the note, instrument, volume and special effect
      parameters. When you select one of these, that field will be
      affacted when you continue with the command.

      The next selector selects a *field* to evaluate. This means that
      the field you select with this selector will be compared to a
      the value of your choice. The options are the same as in the
      previous selector.

      The third selector sets the condition on which a field in a note
      cell will be affected. The options are Equal to, Greater than,
      Smaller than, Not equal to and None. F1 lets you enter a value (a
      number or note, depending on the state of the second selector) for
      the comparison. "None" means that nothing is tested, and every
      field is modified.

      The next (fourth) selector specifies the general object to use. It
      can be the whole current pattern, the current channel or the
      block. Note that the block need not be allocated for this purpose,
      but it must be selected, ie. visible on the screen, when you press
      F3.

      The last actual selector is for selecting the operation to do on a
      field. The options are Set to value, Decrease by, Increase by and
      Scale to a percentage.

      The "Evaluate line numbers" option enables you to create a huge
      variety of rhythms with two simple parameters. The parameters are
      called Incr for Increment and Decz for Decision (not decrement).
      The idea here is that an internal counter is incremented by <Incr>
      on every processed line. If the counter exceeds <Decz>, then the
      line at which this happens evaluates to true, in other cases it
      evaluates to false. In the case that it is true, <Decz> is
      subtracted from the counter. The algorithm resembles an
      incremental line drawing algorithm very closely.

      *** HOW it works
               In a computing language the algorithm looks like this:

               Incr = ?, Decz = ?, Counter = 0, State : integers;

               Loop_top:

               Counter = Counter + Incr;
               if Counter > Decz then
                        State = TRUE,
                        Counter = Counter - Decz;
               else
                        State = FALSE;

               goto Loop_top;

               This may help you to understand how line evaluation
               works.

      Example: Supposing you want to enter a note in every other
               position with this command. You would set Incr to 1 and
               Decz to 2, so that when the counter has been incremented
               twice, a note is entered.

               To enter seven notes and one blank repeatedly, you would
               use the Incr 7 and Decz 8. The best way to work these out
               is by trying it for yourself.

      Remember to switch "Process empty fields" to ON and set the
      "Evaluate..." field to "None", if you want to enter notes in
      EMPTY fields in the pattern with Incremental Line Evaluation.


      Summary:
      ────────

      The field defined in selector number two (under "Evaluate") is
      compared against the value entered with F1 (under "Condition")
      using the condition defined in selector number three
      ("Condition"). If it evaluates to true, then the field selected in
      selector number one ("Field") will be modified in the way
      specified in selector number five. The object to modify is chosen
      with selector number four.

      "Process EMPTY fields?" is to protect empty fields against
      modification. Generally you don't want to set them to anything
      else. But if you do, set this toggle to "Yes" with 'E', and also
      empty fields will be affected just as others are. Remember that
      the value of "EMPTY" is 0xFF or 255. Incrementing it will make
      the field's value wrap, since 255 is the largest value that will
      fit into a byte.

      The selectors in Field Editing Tools are sticky, which means they
      will remember the places where they were left to save you the
      bother of entering all the information every time you press F3.


Inserting and Deleting
──────────────────────

      The Insert and Delete commands affect all the fields in the
      current cell. Delete will pull anything below the current position
      up and destroy the note under the cursor, Insert will push
      everything it down and fill the gap with empty fields. The Insert
      and Delete keys can be used to do this, or you can use Alt-I and
      Alt-D. Alt-I is nice if you want the keyboard to repeat the
      command ─ the Insert key won't repeat. Alt-D is for consistency
      with Alt-I.


5. <Note Delete> key
────────────────────


      The NoteDel key is used to set fields to empty. By default, this
      is the character <'>, because it's suitably near to the arrow keys
      (on Finnish keyboards ;-) and can be easily used with your right
      hand. <NoteDel> will advance the cursor as much as defined with
      the Advance value.

      Use the Global Setup screen to reconfigure your <NoteDel> key.


#if TRACKJOY_VERSION_!=0.94B
6. Chord modes
──────────────

      Chord modes are one of the greatest time and nerve savers Trackjoy
      offers. Chord modes allow you to enter up to eight predefined
      notes with one keypress. The idea is that you can first configure
      up to 10 chords (each containing a maximum of eight notes),
      then select the appropriate channels and easily enter the chords.

      *** NOTE: I made this feature, because it can be very annoying to
                enter hundreds of individual notes to chords, when it
                could be done a lot more easily. Tracker-people usually
                use "chord instruments" to solve the problem of getting
                chords into music, but since Trackjoy supports up to 16
                channels, it's much better to enter each note of the
                chord individually.

      You set chord modes up through the Chord mode window or with
      Alt-B. The chord mode configuration box can be invoked through the
      main menu (Chord Modes...). You will be presented with a window at
      the top of which there is a 16-position selector. On the left side
      is a note table.

      The selector is operated with the Left & Right arrow keys and
      selects channels. When the cursor is on a channel number, press
      Space to select or deselect it. The selected channels will be used
      by the chord modes when you switch to chord mode in the pattern
      editing window. Note that pressing the "Toggle chord mode" key
      in the editing screen will also let you choose chord channels.

      There are ten 8-note tables available. One of them is always
      diplayed on the left of the window. To change the active table,
      press any key from Alt-1 to Alt-8. Alt-1 selects table #0, Alt-2
      table #1 ─ and so on. If the table has any notes in it, and there
      is a sample loaded (in Sample Manager) and selected (in this
      window), the notes will all be played. To change the sample to
      play, use the 'Q' and 'W' keys.

      The easiest way to enter a new chord is to press Enter, play the
      notes on the keyboard and press Enter again. The notes will be
      played as you enter them. The other way to enter notes it to press
      a key from 1 to 8 and type in the name of the note.

      When you have configured the chords and selected the channels to
      use, you can go and enter chords into a pattern. To switch to
      chord mode, press Alt-B. When you are in chord mode, a 'C' is
      displayed in the Trackjoy information flags on the bottom line.

      To change chords, press a key from Alt-1 to Alt-0. Then simply
      play with the keyboard. Trackjoy adds the note you type to the
      notes in the table, writes them into the pattern and plays them at
      you. You must still enter sample numbers and volumes for the very
      first notes of a chord with new values ─ just like you do when you
      have entered them seperately.
#endif /* This function was disabled for the moment, but you will
          get it once I get all the nasty bugs fixed. */


6. Multichannel mode
────────────────────

      Multichannel mode simply means that after entering a note into a
      channel, the cursor will go to the next channel whose chord mode
      setting is on, and that is where the next note is put. The advance
      value is obviously still used as it would normally be. Note that
      in chord mode the Backspace key works as you would expect, ie. it
      still goes to the last note entered. The arrow keys are not
      affected by Multichannel mode.


      ■ To set multichannel mode on, press Alt-B,M.
        (To set chord mode on, press Alt-B,C.)
        To swith one of these modes off, press Alt-B,Anything.
        (Alt-B,M for instance, can be entered either as <Alt-B><M>
        or <Alt-B><Alt-M>, so it doesn't matter wheter you
        hold Alt down or not after the 'b'.)


About samples
─────────────

The first version of Trackjoy (0.90ß ─ 1.00) really supports only two
types of samples: eight and sixteen bit samples. In practise Sample
Manager does allow you to load five types of sample ─ raw PC 8-bit,
Amiga 8-bit and 16-bit and two headered formats, the Scream Tracker III
instruments and Trackjoy's own instrument format. If you load a sample
in PC 8-bit format, it will automatically be converted to the Amiga
(signed) format, because that's the only format that the Gravis
Ultrasound understands.

Trackjoy version 1.00 lets you loop samples. This means repeatedly
playing any part of a sample forwards or backwards. It's a very useful
feature when you need instruments for chords (strings, for example).
Normal PC trackers support an unidirectional loop, but since the GUS
supports looping both ways, Trackjoy will naturally let you use this
feature. With certain samples a bidirectional loop is the only
non-clicking alternative.

It is quite often worth looping a sample, since in that way you can have
it on as long as you like. When you want to turn it off, just enter a
STOP_M98 (F7) command in the instrument field of stripped and full
channels. An other handy way of playing looped samples is with the FC
command, which tells Trackjoy to simply change the frequency of a
sample, not play it again, so a looped sample ─ ie., one that doesn't
end ─ is suited for this method. To release the loop and let the sample
stop as it would if it had no loop, enter a RL command (94) in the
instrument field.

Looking for the beginning and end for the loop can be very difficult in
some samples. Perhaps the easiest way to find them ─ if they can be
found at all ─ is to load the into a sample editor and simply find two
similar waves in it. Write the offsets of the wave crests down and enter
the values into Sample Manager. Even with this method you may hear
annoying clicking or throbbing, and it may be difficult to get rid of,
but by trying with both looping directions you may find a good setup.



The Pattern Allocation window
─────────────────────────────

When you first start Trackjoy, you should immediately find yourself in
the pattern editing screen with a 8-channel 64-row pattern.

When you need more patterns, use F2 or one of the other allocation
commands to allocate them. The pattern allocation window looks a mess,
but it's possible that you'll learn to use it. This might be a bit
difficult to believe, but the Pattern Allocation Window is used to...
allocate patterns. In other words, you tell it the width and length of a
pattern ─ and tell it what type each channel should be ─ and it will see
if you have enough memory. If you have, and press Enter, Trackjoy will
allocate memory for the pattern, clear it (ie. set all the bytes to
EMPTY, or 255) and set it up for use.

─ The pattern number is displayed in the top left corner

─ Pattern width (channels) simply means the number of channels (0-17)
  You modify this number with the Right and Left arrow keys.

─ Rows means the length of the pattern (0 to 255) Press 'R' to modify
  this. You are presented with a menu, with the options 12, 16, 24, 32,
  48, 64, 96, 128, 192 Other and Cancel. The numbers are a quick way of
  selecting some of the most common pattern sizes (all divisible by
  four, most by eight, quite few by sixteen and some by both three and
  four, which just about covers most needs.) If you want something
  really wacky, like 17 (and I bet your song will sound neat!), just
  choose Other and type in the number. Remember that you mustn't exceed
  255. (One reason for the 255-row limitation is that it is important
  that pattern size won't be more than 64 kilobytes. Going over that
  makes things really difficult on if you wish to stay compatible with
  the good ol' scum-64k-segment-'286.)

  ─ Memory needed for pattern: Trackjoy calculates this for you and
                               warns if there isn't enough memory.
                               Formula for pattern size:

                               (number_of_FULL_channels * 6 +
                               number_of_STRIPPED_channels * 3 +
                               number_of_GLOBAL_chanmels * 4)
                               * number_of_rows

                               The result is in bytes.

  ─ Memory needed for image:   This is calculated because when Trackjoy
                               shows a pattern on the screen (and you
                               can move in it), it first creates an
                               image of the whole pattern in memory.
                               If the pattern is long, this can take
                               over 100 kilobytes, so you might run
                               out of memory.

                               Formula for image size:

                               (number_of_FULL_chans * 21 +
                               number_of_STRIPPED_chans * 11 +
                               number_of_GLOBAL_chans * 14)
                               * number_of_rows * 2


On the same line as the pattern number is also the channel number. You
can increase or decrease it within the limits of the current number of
channels. Do this with the Up and Down arrow keys.

*** NOTE: The first channel is always channel 0. Thus, the number of the
          last channel is one less than the actual number of channels.
          This is a typical computerism, and makes things easier for the
          programmer.

To change the type of the channel whose number is displayed, press 'F'
for Full, 'S' for Stripped or 'G' for Global. (Lower case will of course
do fine everywhere in Trackjoy, but capitals look nicer in text). When
everything is OK, press Enter to accept. If you are allocating some
other than the first pattern (which is allocated after starting Trackjoy
or after a "New" command), you can cancel with the Esc key.

*** TIP: Often when composing, you will be using the same channel setup
         in several patterns. Instead of always tediously entering the
         type for each channel, go to the pattern whose setup you want
         to use and choose the Duplicate (Ctrl-Something) command. It
         copies the setup from the current pattern and inserts it in the
         pattern allocator. If you want the pattern unchanged, simply
         press Enter.

         If you chose Duplicate (OK, OK, it's Ctrl-D), a message about
         this feature will appear at the bottom of the pattern allocator
         window.



Editing Patterns
────────────────


Actually writing down music is fairly easy. However, you must take
these steps before you can be sure to hear notes when you press
F6 (play pattern). Makes you wonder whether you want to make
anything after all, doesn't it...

A. You must have a sample selected and loaded in Sample Manager.

B. Enter a note with the keyboard.

*** NOTE: Some PC trackers require that you enter the instrument
          and volume for each note in the pattern, and indeed these
          programs set the fields for you when you enter notes.
          In Trackjoy, however, there is no need to do this ─
          unless otherwise specified, it will always default to the
          previous instrument and volume when playing.

          There is also another good reason for this: the MXX
          commands (to which I will get in a moment), which would
          otherwise mess up the instrument setup.


Notes are entered into the pattern with the keyboard as if it were a
piano keyboard. In the default configuration, the piano keyboard is set
up as follows:

    "zxcvbn" octave:               "qwerty" octave

      S D    G  H J                   2 3    5  6 7
    █▌ █ ▐█▐█ ▐▌ █ ▐█               █▌ █ ▐█▐█ ▐▌ █ ▐█
    █▌ █ ▐█▐█ ▐▌ █ ▐█               █▌ █ ▐█▐█ ▐▌ █ ▐█
    ██▐█▌██▐█▌██▐█▌██               ██▐█▌██▐█▌██▐█▌██
    ██▐█▌██▐█▌██▐█▌██               ██▐█▌██▐█▌██▐█▌██
    Z  X C  V B  N  M ...           Q  W E  R  T Y U ...

Both octaves can be extended slightly in both directions, giving a
maxmimum range of C-0 to F-2 at a time.

When you enter a note, Trackjoy will play it at you with the most recent
defined instrument in the channel. If you haven't defined an instrument,
Trackjoy can't play anything, and indeed, you should pray that it
doesn't.

When you need a different octave, use the grey '/' and '*' keys to set
the octave. In this way you can easily get as high as you like.

The instrument is selected by moving the cursor into the second field of
full and stripped channels and by typing in the sample number, which can
be found in the Sample Manager. Actual sample numbers can range from 0
to 63, but this field can contain other information, too.



MXX Commands
────────────

MXX commands can be entered into the instrument field with the function
keys F7 and F8. They are "PLAY_M99", "STOP_M98", "DETUNE_M96" etc.
PLAY_M99 is entered with F7. When a note has this value (99) after
it, Trackjoy won't start the sample again from its beginning. It
simply changes the frequency to the new note. This gives many
instruments a completely different tone, and can be useful in many
situations.

STOP_M98 is entered with F8. This command is very simple: it simply
stops a voice. It was made simply to avoid the bother of entering
zero-volume notes to stop voices. It's also handy for staccato.

The note's volume is entered just as the instument. Volume can range
from 0 to 254, is linear and is in relation to the current master
volume. The default volume is 100.

*** TIP: If you need a crescendo or diminuendo or anyhing else to do
         with *changing* the volume, don't go to the bother of entering
         individual note volumes. Instead, use Ctrl-V to interpolate all
         the volumes between the end volumes.




Editing Order
─────────────

To successfully play a piece of music, Trackjoy needs to know what
order to play the patterns in. This is what the order table is for.
Each order item contains a single byte, whose number represents an
absolute pattern number. When Trackjoy plays a song and gets to the
end of a pattern, it checks for the next one in the order table.

You edit the order table by simply selecting "Edit order" from the
"Editor" menu (or type Ctrl-O). Then type in the pattern numbers,
separated by commas. Any illegalities (ie., something like "25 A 24")
are converted to zeroes. Remember that you can only have 128 patterns.

To finish editing, simply press Enter. After you have entered at least
one pattern number in the table, you can play your song with F5 (play
song) as well as single patterns with F6 (play pattern).




Editing Song Information
────────────────────────


Trackjoy has the Song Information window (Ctrl-W) for defining the
default values and for entering the name, composer and comment for a
song. The numerical information consists of default tempo, master volume
and transpose. The pitch bend function supported by Trackjoy is not
defined through this window.

In addition to enabling the user to give his/her song a reasonably long
(up to 80 bytes) song name, the composer's name (80 bytes) and a comment
(80 bytes) can be added to a song. This is simply for adding silly
comments, weird messages and *useless* copyright notices to songs.

The keys for editing all the data in this window are listed at the base
of the window. It's all very easy and straight forward.

*** NOTE: Trackjoy uses the same line input routine in many places.
          The routine can handle up to 1-kilobyte strings.
          The keys to use are: Left & Right arrow keys,
                               Home, End,
                               Backspace, Delete,
                               Insert,
                               Enter and Escape to cancel.
          If the length of the line exceeds the length of the input
          area, the text will simply scroll away as much as necessary.



───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 4. The Sample Manager                                            .samplman
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────


If you asked me to tell you the truth: Where did I get that stupid name
from? ─ I would be forced to admit that it came from that rather
obnoxious and sickening piece of software-engineered shit, Windows.
Yuck!

Anyhow, I christened it Sample Manager, so Sample Manager it will be,
whatever bad luck it may bring it. Now let's get to the point.

Trackjoy uses samples for instruments. Sample Manager's job is to let
you edit some basic instrument parameters. It will let you do the
following: Select a sample from a directory, give it a name and
description, enter a frequency and volume, plus clear a sample. It
will also let you tune the sample to the same frequency as all the
other samples, and set up the loop locations for the sample, if
needed.

*** TIP: I very strongly recommend that you do tune all your melodic
         samples to the same frequency. In addition to making composing
         much easier, it ensures better sound quality, because if
         you do tune a sample, you are likely to tune it as close as
         your musicality allows.

         Apparently some Amiga trackers don't let you tune the samples.
         Consequently, if the samples have different note frequency/
         digitizing frequency ratios, they have to be transposed by
         the composer. This would seem to me a very serious defect.

         Trackjoy, by the way, offers one of the fastest and easiest
         sample tuning interfaces around anywhere.

         More notes on the subject of keeping the JOY (Trackjoy
         modules and songs) format as good as possible can be found
         in "8. Tips and recommendations" [tips].


When you press F1 in the pattern editing area, the Sample Manager screen
will appear. You will see a menu-like selector bar, which can be situated
on any of the 64 sample entries. The normal procedure for loading a sample
is to simply press Enter and use the File Selector to pick a file.
(For more information on the File Selector, see "5. Saving and Loading",
[fileio].)

When you have selected a file, you must tell Trackjoy what type it is.
Trackjoy supports three types of file, which are the PC8 (PC 8-bit
unsigned), A8 (Amiga 8-bit signed) and 16 (16-bit unsigned, back-words).
The type mostly used is PC8, which can be selected by typing 'p'. Amiga
8-bit is selected with 'a' and 16-bit samples with 's'.

After selecting the file type you can load the sample into your Gravis
with F1 (load sample). After that you will usually want to test and tune
it. Press F2 (tune). A dialog box with information about the sample will
appear. You can play the sample with the keyboard.

The tune dialog box also offers the following commands:

      F1 ─ Switch multichannel mode on or off
           In multichannel mode the sample will be played through one
           channel at a time. In this mode you can actually play chords,
           because the keyboard always sends one key after an other if
           you press them down together. It usually works quite well.

      F2 ─ Set up loops:

           The looping window consists of the following information:
             ─ Looping state (on or off)
             ─ Looping direction (uni- or bidirectional)
             ─ Sample beginning and end

             Looping mode (on or off) is toggled with the 'L' key.
             Direction is toggled with 'D'.
             Both the end and beginning locations can be either
             entered as numbers or adjusted with the arrow keys
             in increments of 1. 'B' lets you enter the beginning
             location, 'E' the end. The Up & Down arrow keys adjust
             the beginning of the loop, Left & Right adjust the
             end. Escape quits the dialog box.

             *** NOTE: If you're using a bidirectional loop and the
                       absolute offset of the current sample is
                       zero, the loop beginning must always be greater
                       than zero, something like four. This is because
                       if you have 1MB of DRAM installed, the Gravis
                       will otherwise jump right to the end of RAM,
                       and play the uninitialized muck there.

Arrows Left & Right ─ Subtract or add a semitone (approx. 0,59 %) to
                      the frequency.

Arrows Down & Up ─ Subtract or add an octave to the frequency.

   F3 & F4 ─ These fine-tune the sample frequency. Use these after you
             have roughly tuned the sample with the Left and Right
             arrow keys.

        F5 ─ Divide keyboard in two. This is a good way of tuning samples.
             You can assign any sample to the base (or "zxcvbn" octave)
             and play it with the sample you are tuning. This is by far
             the easiest way of tuning. The original sample plays with
             the treble ("qwerty") octave.

Alt-Q & Alt-W & F6
           ─ Change sample volume. This adjusts the relative volume
             of a sample. All pattern volumes are multiplied by this
             value and then divided by 256. In other words, the maximum
             volume is 256.

   F7 & F8 ─ Same as F3 and F4, except that they affect the base octave,
             if you have divided the keyboard with F5.

  F9 & F10 ─ Change number of multichannels. This changes the number of
             channels Trackjoy will use if you are in multichannel mode
             invoked by F1 in this dialog box. For instance, if the
             value is four, Trackjoy will use the channels 0, 1, 2, 3
             and then 0 again.

Alt-A & Alt-S
           ─ Change global volume. Changes Trackjoy's global volume and
             therefore affects both playing in Sample Manager and
             playing a song.



If you want to type in a new filename for the sample in Sample Manager's
sample list window (not in the tuning box), press F3. Then type in or
edit the name (max. 12 characters) and press Enter. The description can
be similarly edited by pressing F4.

F5 is used to remove a sample entry (it is not completely removed or
deleted, because this would cause all your sample values to get mixed if
you deleted an entry between others and all the following sample entries
were shifted up by one). When you press F5 and 'y' to confirm, the entry
is cleared and the memory used by it is freed for use by new samples.
You may need this feature when you use particularly large samples for
sound effect purposes and suddenly run out of GUS memory.

F6 is meant for quickly setting the sample frequency. It's useful when
you either know what the frequency should be, or if you have a lot of
samples with the same frequency, and you don't want to tune each with
the arrow keys, F3 an F4.

F7 is for typing in the samples's volume. F8 is for testing beats (/ and
* to transpose, a-z and 0-9 play the samples).

F9 is for saving a sample. Trackjoy will ask for the save format and a
directory and then save your sample. To save all the samples, press
Shift-F9 and enter the format for the first sample. The others will be
saved in the same format. Shift-F1 reloads all the samples just as if
you were loading a song.

Escape exits the Sample Manager dialog box. If you were able to play the
sample in the "Tune" dialog box, it is ready for use in the song. The
sample number is entered in the second (2-character) field in a note in
Full and Stripped channels. Global channels, of course, have no sample
numbers.

        ■ Outside the tuning dialog box (unless you have configured
          Trackjoy otherwise), all playing samples will be stopped after
          a specified delay. This is the Auto-Don't-Panic feature which
          helps you when you temporarily forget how to stop some
          annoying and loud sound that was left on. In the pattern
          editing screen Ctrl-M will mute all channels and Shift-Enter
          will do that plus stop playing, if anything was playing at the
          time.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
5. Saving and Loading                                             [.fileio]
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────


Trackjoy supports only one actual file format: the TRACKJOY music file
format, which comes as songs and modules, just like STMs, for example.
Songs have the extension .tjs (Trackjoy song) and modules the extension
.joy, because .tjm was much too obvious, and anyway, it's more concise
and neater and somehow... er... cooler. You would *never* guess how I
invented it. (The file extension doesn't really matter, because whatever
it is, Trackjoy will know wheter the file is a song or a module.)

Songs are otherwise exactly like modules, but they don't contain
samples. I ─ for instance ─ keep practically all music as songs and have
the samples in my nine sample directories (nine is too many, really).
Only when I want to transfer a song to a friend or anyone who might not
have all the samples used in the song, would I write it as a module.

The TRACKJOY file format (for a description, see TECH.DOC) was designed
for a very high degree of flexibility. The format is a tag-based system,
which makes supporting future versions, even with structural changes,
very easy. A TRACKJOY file can legally contain information that Trackjoy
cares nothing about.


Saving
──────

Saving a song is simple enough: Open the File menu, and select the
command you want. If you want to save your piece as a song, select "Save
as song", if you want it as a module, select "Save as module". Trackjoy
will ask for a file name. Whatever you try to enter as the extension,
Trackjoy will out-extend you, and force it to the appropriate one, ie.
TJS for songs or JOY for modules. Trackjoy will gas for a bit about
saving patterns and samples. Then it will tell you how many bytes it
saved, which can rise to hundreds of kilobytes with very large modules.



Loading ─ File selecton pad
───────────────────────────

Loading is done with the that cool File Selection Pad (stolen from
another program of mine called ANSIJOY). The file selection pad reads
the current directory and displays some of the directories and files in
the window on the right. You can move in this window and select a file
or directory. When you select a directory, it will become the new
default directory, and TJ will read it for you. Selecting a file with
Enter immediately starts loading it.

If you need to change the file mask, press F2, and type in the new mask.
The lowercase letters a-z will give you the files beginning with that
letter. If you need to change to a different drive and/or directory,
press F1 and enter the new drive and/or directory. Uppercase letters
select drives, 1-9 select sample directories, F3 gets you the song
directory, F4 sets the mask to *.TJS and F5 set is to *.JOY. Typing a
backslash takes you to the current drive's root.

Loading modules is easy enough, because all needed data really resides
in the module file, but loading songs can be trickier. Of course, the
only reason to have songs at all is to be able to use the same samples
in many songs without using monstrous amounts of disk space. In songs,
samples are simply referred to by file name, and it's up to Trackjoy to
find them.

The first way to find a sample is to look in the instrument cache, whose
functioning you don't really notice except as a significant increase in
loading efficiency. If the file name can be found in the cache, then
Trackjoy immediately knows which sample directory it is in, and loading
can be done moderately fast. If, on the other hand, the sample is rarely
used, its name might not be in the cache, and at this point Trackjoy
will first search the current directory and then all the user-defined
sample directories. If the sample is found in one of them, it is loaded
and it and its directory are stored in the cache for faster loading in
the future. If the sample is nowhere to be found, Trackjoy will just
skip it, and you can try to load it afterwards. You can always press Esc
during loading to skip the rest of the samples, if you notice Trackjoy
isn't finding any of them (you might hear a lot of hard disk grinding
going on with each sample, as Trackjoy searches the directories without
finding anything. If you hate this, you can press Esc and not care about
the samples, although you will hate that as well. :)

If you change the directory settings or if you have samples of the
same name (typical examples might be something like two different
samples both called SNARE2) in several directories, the cache can
"learn" to load the wrong sample. To get over this, delete the cache
file TRACKJOY.IC, preferably rename one of the samples which have the
same name, and restart Trackjoy, because otherwise it will always load
the sample in a directory higher in the list. (You can also directly
edit the cache file with any binary editor. Each entry takes 16 bytes,
and the fourteenth byte in each entry is the number of the sample
directory. The first directory is number zero.)




──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
6. Configuring Trackjoy                                        [.config]
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Trackjoy naturally lets you configure the way some of its features
function. The following is a list of the different things you can
control.


1. The directory setup window
─────────────────────────────


Enter Trackjoy's working directories here. The first 10 entries are your
sample directories and the last one is the song directory. When loading
songs, Trackjoy will search for a sample in all the sample directories,
so that you can have much better organization of sound samples than with
only one directory. If you have the instrument name caching system
activated (it will automatically activate if you have enough memory and
don't specify the /c command line parameter), every time you load a
song, the directories of the loaded samples are stored, and next time
you load the same samples, Trackjoy will fetch them straight from their
correct directories. This speeds up song loading considerably, and saves
your hard disk.

The song directory is the place Trackjoy songs and modules are retrieved
from, by default.




2. Global setup options
───────────────────────


These options control Trackjoy's general behaviour.

The only thing that isn't quite self-explanatory is the timed damping
system. This systems stops all playing voices, when not in playing mode,
after the specified interval *in clock ticks*, which come at roughly
18.2 times a second. To specify a delay time of, say, 3 seconds, specify
3 s * 18.2 ticks/s = 54.6 ticks. Trackjoy will not accept floating point
values, so you could round that up to 55, if you really care about
precision... I have found out that a damping time of 1 second is
actually quite OK, even though it sounds short. To ensure that your
sample tweaking in the Sample Manager tuning box isn't disturbed by
timed damping, set "Disallow damping inside tuning box" to "Yes".

Oh yes, and for the really twisted minds out there, you can force
Trackjoy to go on playing a song even though another one is being
loaded. This can create some interesting and exciting effects, and will
clear itself as soon as the new song is fully loaded and a pattern
change as occurred. This is a totally unnecessary "feature".

Hate the messages that ask you whether your work is saved and whether
you *really* want to exit this lovely program? Well, switch them off,
then!

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
7. About memory                                                [.memory]
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Trackjoy uses two types of memory: your PC's main memory and the Gravis
Ultrasound's on-board DRAM. As far as main memory is concerned, Trackjoy
behaves in a very conventional way and can use any memory that it can
allocate from DOS. It doesn't use EMS or XMS memory, and knows nothing
about protected mode.

The Gravis Ultrasound card can have from 256k to 1MB of RAM on-board.
Trackjoy will access all of it if needed. Many modules should fit into
256k quite easily, and if you have 1MB you will almost never be short of
memory. However, particularly when you start using bulky 16-bit samples,
which are of course twice as long as their 8-bit equivalents, you may
have a memory problem with only 256k installed. I've seen people asking
why bother to get more than 256k on their Gravis, but in my opinion
having at least 512k with Trackjoy is pretty important.

In normal circumstances you should not have to worry about running out
of main memory, which generally happens only if you have other programs
in memory. Trackjoy doesn't behave very well (but luckily also not
terribly badly) when there isn't enough memory about, so I recommend you
don't use it if you have other programs loaded and think there might not
be enough memory. Trackjoy loads samples directly from disk to the
Ultrasound's DRAM (via system memory, of course), so they will never eat
up any of your main memory.

If you want to save memory, use a pattern that is optimized for the
music it contains, ie., don't use a full channel if you can use a
stripped one. Many other Trackers offer a "Break Pattern" command to
stop a pattern in mid-way, but Trackjoy doesn't. After all, it's much
better to simply resize the pattern to the length you want.

Here are a few things that might happen if you have really little memory
free:

    ■ When you start Trackjoy, the instrument cache size will be pretty
      small, something like 5 kilobytes. The cache might also be
      disabled completely due to too low memory. (You can force Trackjoy
      to disable the cache by specifying the /c command line switch)

    ■ Trackjoy might report a push_page() error. Trackjoy uses a page
      stacking system to store the current page before a new dialog box
      is displayed so that the box can later be removed by popping the
      pushed page back to the screen. Each pushed page uses four
      kilobytes of main memory, and if you don't have enough memory,
      this system will fail. Getting this message is not fatal, but it
      will result in a messy screen, and acts as a low memory warning.

    ■ Failure to allocate pattern. If memory is really low, the Pattern
      Allocation box will write <- NOT ENOUGH MEMORY in bright red after
      the number of bytes it has calculated your pattern will consume
      together with its screen image. Interestingly enough, you may
      sometimes be able to allocate a pattern even if you get this
      message. You have been warned, though.

    ■ Pattern image memory allocation failure (fatal). This one is
      nasty, because it means you have to restart Trackjoy. In a low
      memory situation you may see a warning about not having enough
      memory for the pattern image, after you have allocated a new
      pattern. You have the choice of either simply aborting, continuing
      or saving & aborting. Don't choose continue, because your computer
      will hang. Choose one of the abort options. (Just don't ask why I
      left that continue option there anyway.)

    ■ Sample Manager won't open. Sample Manager requires a few kilobytes
      for the text and numeric information displayed in the sample
      selection window. If the required block can't be allocated, then
      Sample Manager won't open at all.

    ■ Sample loading or saving complains about small up/download
      buffers. Very short disk I/O buffers tend to slow data transfers
      down quite badly, so Trackjoy warns you if it can only allocate
      less than 16k for the up/download buffer.

    ■ Nasty things happen saving or loading songs, like the dreaded "Not
      enough memory for rotation buffer" error, which I hope you don't
      see. Just kidding... but seriously, Trackjoy can hang when saving
      songs with really low memory. (For a pattern Trackjoy temporarily
      needs a buffer 2.5 times the size of the pattern currently begin
      saved.)

      *** In any situations such as these, save your work as soon as
          possible under a different name than the one you had previously.
          Then restart Trackjoy with more free memory than previously.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
8. Tips & recommendations                                          [.tips]
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

There are some things you might want to know before you start using
Trackjoy.


Pattern structure
─────────────────


The first and perhaps most important, and in which Trackjoy differs from
other trackers, is the pattern format. As was mentioned before, Trackjoy
has a variable-length, dynamic pattern structure, which allows patterns
of exactly the size you want. Each channel also has its own format, so
that as little memory as possible is used.

Trackjoy has this property to save memory. If all patterns were 64 rows
by 16 channels, memory usage would be quite unreasonable. It should
perhaps be pointed out that internally Trackjoy uses a single byte for
each field in a channel, which makes programming much easier and adds
extra resolution to volume and parameter values, although it also means
a slight increase in pattern size. However, by using the appropriate
type of pattern and channel for each occasion, this size increase can be
compensated for. Anyway, it isn't felt on disk, since Trackjoy
compresses patterns.

An other typical feature of Trackjoy is that you can dynamically delete
and insert patterns and thus have them in more or less the order in
which you want to play them, which simply makes everything more
straight forward. You can naturally also resize patterns, which is a
very important and useful feature.





Dynamics
────────


With dynamics I mean your note volumes. The first thing to notice in
Trackjoy is that you have almost four times as much "dynamic space" in
your volumes as in MOD type trackers. Trackjoy volumes range from 0 to
254 (the reason for this queer number was explained in an earlier
chapter), which means better dynamics response than in standard MIDI
systems.

Music with absolutely no or very few volume changes is very boring.
This is why I particularly encourage you to use volume changes as much
as possible, in order to simulate the way in which a real musician
plays his or her instrument.

Because musical phrases often start with a volume lower than that
reached somewhere in mid-phrase, the beginning volume in a Trackjoy
pattern should not be the full 254, unless you are sure that the first
note is the loudest one. I usually begin with a round 100, although
sometimes I go as low down as 20 or 30. Thus, later on, if I want to
add dynamics to the channel in question, there is numerical space
available, and I don't have to scale all the other volumes down. I
haven't noticed any deterioration in sound quality even when moderately
low volumes are used and the amplifier volume is turned up accordingly.

It is usually easiest to use more or less the same default volume for
each sample. If one of your samples is too loud compard to the others,
simply turn its volume down in the sample tuning dialog box (F6) in
stead of scaling all the volumes in the patterns. This will save you a
lot of work particularly if you decide to have the sample louder again
afterwards, or change it to a quieter one.





About using samples with Trackjoy
─────────────────────────────────


There are some important points about using samples in Trackjoy, some
of them related to the way the Gravis Ultrasound hardware works.
Although there is obviously no Trackjoy Police to make sure you obey
the "rules" introduced in this manual, you usually get better-sounding
results by following them.

The first point is about tuning your all your samples with a definite
pitch to the same frequency. Many trackers either don't give you any
interface at all for doing this, or else the only way to tune samples
is to enter the frequencies by number, which can be a very tedious
process. As mentioned earlier in the Sample Manager section, it is
likely that if you do take a little time to tune your samples, you are
going to tune them as close to each other as your musicality or pitch
detection capabilities allow. As a result, your music will sound a lot
better. Also, if different samples give different pitches with the same
Trackjoy note, you are going to be *really* confused if you suddenly
want to change one sample to another, if it happens to have a different
pitch.

I might evern recommend that you try to tune your samples to absolute
pitch, ie., that the Trackjoy note 'C-4', for instance, actually has
the frequency of 263 Hz, or half of that, or twice that. Doing this
might make changing samples easier, if you save your samples in
headered format and do tune them all to absolute pitch. (Pressing
Backspace in the tuning box will give you 'A-4' (443 Hz) through the PC
speaker, for reference. The official 'A-4' seems to be 440 Hz, but
some pesky musicians (H. Joy again) seem to be annoyed about this, come
whining to me and insist that A-4 be at least 442 Hz. So, Trackjoy
conforms to this "standard"...)

When you tune all your samples to the same frequency, use only one
sample as reference and tune all the others to the same frequency as
this one. This is because if you tune every sample according to the
previous sample in the list, the error introduced at each tuning will
gradually build up so that in the end the first and last samples might
be badly out of tune. For some odd reason, the errors simply don't
cancel each other out, although you might think so... In any case, use
some clear, mid-range instrument for reference, as mid-range frequencies
are easiest to detect accurately. Clean sine wave usually isn't the best
reference wave form, since it contains none of harmonics that help us
detect pitch.




Sample resolution & digitizing frequency
────────────────────────────────────────


An other point that will affect sound quality is sample resolution and
digitizing frequency. Firstly, Trackjoy supports 8- and 16-bit samples.
In practise, the only difference between these is that a song made with
8-bit samples will always have a degree of noisiness which is absent
when using 16-bit versions of the same samples. Quantizing to 8-bit
resolution is always going to cause a degree of quantizing noise, and
the better your audio system, the more you are going to be aware of
this. How much you are aware of the quantization hiss depends on the
sample.

Another big problem is digitizing frequency. Obviously your general
sample quality is going to improve if you raise the digitizing
frequency, and you this is particularly applies to sounds with a lot of
information in the high-frequency bands. The first sampling rule is the
Nyqvist theorem, which states the digitizing frequency must be at least
twice the frequency to be digitized, and even this is the *absolute*
bottom limit.

The real problem is when you have a moderately high sound, for instance
about 1 kHz, which you digitize at 8 kHz. You might think this is quite
enough, and in a way you'd be right, but if you want to play this
sample at a really *low* frequency, you are going to have two problems.
The first is that the Ultrasound's internal frequency contolling
register's accuracy is limited. This register has the property that if
it has the value 1000, it will play exactly every sample in its memory,
no jumping over samples, no interpolation between samples. But with
really low frequencies, Trackjoy might be feeding the Ultrasound values
like 100 or even 20, and at this accuracy (with only integer values)
the notes are going to be hopelessly out of pitch, and it sounds
terrible.

The other problem at low frequencies is that the Ultrasound might be
interpolating something aroud 50 new points (frequency contol register
= 20) between two actual samples in memory, and the interpolated points
are, with the Ultrasound, on a straight line. Now a straight line is
much better than a gigantic step, which is what you would get if you
didn't even try to guess what might really be between two samples, but
it isn't the best alternative. The best alternative is to use a rounded
curve between each set of three samples, which, in effect, makes the
wave a continuous function. (Any three adjacent samples can be shown to
always lie on a curve of the form ax^3+bx^2+cx+d. When a, b, c (and d)
have been computed, the in-between samples can be calculated at great
precision resulting in a very good approximation of the real thing. Takes
a lot of MFLOPS, though.) This method will almost totally do away with
the annoying high-frequency distortion introduced by linear
interpolation, but it is also computationally expensive, and that is
probably why the Ultrasound doesn't do it. But you really can hear the
distortion with most samples if you play them at a low enough frequency.

The solution: if you possibly can, use samples digitized at 22 kHz or
more, particularly if you have more than 256k on your Ultrasound. If
you want noise-free samples, digitize at 22.05 to 44.1 kHz 16-bit from
a CD-player (a 22 kHz recording at 16-bit resolution usually sounds
better than a 44 kHz recoring at 8-bit resolution, alhough they consume
the same amount of storage space. Again, this depends greatly on the
type of sound you are digitizing).




More about samples: "chord samples"
───────────────────────────────────

A typical feature of all the tracker business is the use of a huge
variety of "block" and "chord" samples. With block samples I mean all
kinds of orchestral hits, guitar riffs, drum comps and the like. With
chord samples I mean samples which contain more than one note at a
time.

The basic rule is that you may go ahead with chord samples if you like
as far as the nonexistent TJ-Police are concernced. Using them (not the
police, the samples) has both advantages and disadvantages. The
advantages are that entering music with them is fairly easy, and you
save channels, and fading such chords in and out is easy. The
disadvantages are that you use more memory (if you need more than one
type of chord), your chord setups are obviously limited, finding
non-clicking looping points for the sample(s) can be very difficult, you
lose control of individual voices in the chord, and changing to a
different sound means loading new ─ and musically equivalent ─ samples
for each seperate chord in your song (often three or more samples). All
in all, if you can, I recommend building chords from one sample as
individual notes, if you don't have a good reason ─ such as a
great-sounding chord samples ─ not to.





Chip samples
────────────


Chip (tight-looped) samples are what you get when your sample loop
length equals the sample's desired wavelength. You can make a chip from
any sample simply by specifying the loop points, say, 200 samples
apart or in any case so that the loop will be repeated tens, hundreds
or thousands of times a second in stead of once a second or once in
three seconds. When you enable looping and play the sample, you will
get a very clean and distinct voice, which however quickly gets very
boring and irritating. Chip instruments suit some kinds of music very
well, but the more the music is supposed to resemble (ha ha ha) real
acoustic music, the more you should avoid chips.

The human mind is very finicky about too much repetition, and that's
why chip instruments never sound very pleasing, just as plain sine wave
sounds pretty ghastly after a while despite all of its mathematical
correctness and beauty. On the other hand, random or pseudo-random
elements and continuous changes in sound spectrum at fairly low rates
make sounds worth listening to. My advice is that you should generally
avoid chips, and loop several kilobytes of each sample rather than a
few hundred bytes. But if you do use a chip, adding vibrato and/or
tremolo in addition to plenty of volume changes can make them sound
acceptable.

The issue in this whole computer music scene is after all about what we
really like, and what we enjoy, not about some boring computer programs
or bits of electronics. Do you agree?



Summary: using samples in Trackjoy
──────────────────────────────────

       ■ Always use the best available samples
         If you use 8-bit samples, preferably
         make them from 16-bit originals.

       ■ Do a lot of digitizing yourself

       ■ Try to use at least some new samples
         in each song

       ■ If possible, use 16-bit samples

       ■ Use as high a sampling frequency as possible

       ■ Make a reasonable trade-off between sample resolution,
         digitizing frequency and Ultrasound memory
         (22 kHz 16-bit is pretty good for all memory
         configurations)

       ■ Use volume-maximised samples (conversion utilities
         will maximise your samples' volumes)

       ■ Use chord samples if you have good ones

       ■ Tune your melodic samples with each other as well as you can
         (tuning percussive samples is not a bad idea either)

       ■ If being able to change samples quickly is important, tune all
         your samples to absolute pitch and save them in headered
         format.

       ■ Use plenty of looping if you find good looping points

       ■ Avoid using too many chip samples as melodic instruments


And by the way, the above are *only* suggestions (ie. no need to get
annoyed by what the old Trackjoy author is babbling about!) like this
whole chapter, but going by them most of the time has made my music
sound better than it did before. You are of course completely free to do
as you please.



A few words about you stereo equipment
──────────────────────────────────────


It may seem obvious that you should use a high-quality stereo system
with your sound card, but composing computer music makes this even more
important. For one thing, listening to poor-quality audio equipment can
make you quite annoyed because nothing seems to sound really good and
your music seems terribly messy and dull.

The basic problem with bad audio equipment is that you will be
constantly re-equalising your music to sound good on that system. What
happens to me is that I compose a TJ-song with two really lousy
speakers and pretty rotten amplifier, because, totally in contradiction
to what I'm writing, I haven't got round to purchasing a proper system.
Then when I record the song on tape and listen to it with proper
speakers and a high-end amplifier, I notice all the bass sounds are
terribly loud and fuzzy and the treble parts hiss at me like three
big, slimy & green snakes.

I would also like to remind you that the engineering quality of stereo
equipment really *does* matter. Differences between amplifiers are
surprisingly obvious, and they are also audible and measurable (with
test signals more complex than sine wave ─ it's funny how you start
hearing new sounds on CDs when you get a better power amplifier), and
even speaker cables really do make a difference. Don't put all talk
about cables, least significant bits, oversampling or amplifier power
supplies aside as high-end-rubbish.

A final comment on using Trackjoy with your stero equipment: Try to
limit the maximum software output volume Trackjoy can give (Max. master
volume = 256). With too loud volumes the Ultrasound starts distorting
samples. I presume the internal pre-amp can't quite cope with the full
output voltage of the DAC. So this is actually not an audio equipment
problem.




─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
9. Trackjoy FAQ                                                    [.FAQ]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Q: How come you have an FAQ even though this is the first release?
A: So that I could make a dumb moron like you look stupid.

Q: What does FRB mean?
A: It stands for the Fairly Ravenous Beast that's going to eat you.

Q: Why did you just lie to me?
A: Uh, did I lie? Oh well: So that I'd have more entries in this FAQ.

Q: What does "Örörörörör" mean?
A: Read TECH.DOC

Q: That didn't help. What now?
A: Örörörör! Does somebody actually care?

Q: No.
A: That was a question, right?

Q: Do you ever feel stupid inventing all the questions and answers yourself?
A: No, but I bet you feel stupid reading them.

Q: How are you going to answer Frequently Asked Stupid Questions, like
   this one?
A: Örörörörörörörö!

■ More entries will be added when people actually start asking
questions ─ frequently.


─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
10. Trackjoy Frequenctly Reported Bugs (FRB) List                  [.FRB]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Q: Why is this list so short?
A: Because Trackjoy is such a bugfree program.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11. Trackjoy: The Next Version                                     [.TNV]
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────


What the next release will contain depends partially on the amount of
bugs that are found, and how serious they are. If some really nasty bugs
are found, I will try to fix them in a few days after they are reported,
and call the fix-versions 0.95ß to 0.99ß. When we get to 1.0ß, Trackjoy
should also support everything version 1.0 will support (all special
commands). After most of the bad and annoying bugs in that version are
corrected, I will release the final version 1.0.

Version 1.0 should include:

■ New special commands:   Tremolo, Note delay, Retrig, Stereo "rotation",
                          Stop all voices, Dynamic volume ramping and
                          Note portamento and Trill (possibly).

■ All colours configurable (new colour selection system)

■ Palette restoring

■ More configurable keys

■ More block manipulation commands

■ Better chord enetering systems

■ Real-time recording will be fully supported (even now, it works fairly
  well. This is 'undocumented', since it's not entirely reliable, but
  pressing Ctrl-F1 will activate REC mode, so that when you are editing
  the pattern that is currently playing, the cursor will follow the row
  that's playing.)

■ Obviously implementations of all your *good* ideas, which you will
  have to e-mail to me, since I am not currently connected to the
  telepathy network.


If I continue the Trackjoy project, version 1.1 should have mouse
support (with one of those nice graphical mouse cursors in text mode)
and enhanced text mode (neater boxes and fonts etc.), perhaps with
additional screen lines and support for larger screen modes such as 132
x 44 or 100x40. And perhaps even a system where you are allowed to enter
the BIOS text video mode, plus the screen size (unless it can reliably
be read from the BIOS memory area), which would mean support for unknown
video modes.

Another thing that might become available is another interrupt system,
this time enabling writing drivers for Trackjoy. If I manage to get
over my hatred for Creative Labs' foul AWE32 developer "information"
package, I might support the AWE32 through a driver like this, although
this is very uncertain at the moment. In any case, if anybody is
interested in building an interrupt-driven driver for Trackjoy, please
contact me, and I'll try to speed this thing up.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
12. About programming, support and the author                     [.prog]
   + The reason why TJ for Win will never be
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────


Programming
───────────


If you are interested in reading or writing the file formats Trackjoy
uses, which I very much doubt, insult :) the technical documentation
(TECH.DOC) and when you can't make head or tail of that, me. For
information on Scream Tracker III formats, see ST3's technical
documentation included in the ST3 package. For information on me, read
"About the author".



Product Support
───────────────


Ha! Ha ha ha! Product Support? Heh. At the moment, at least, there
definitely is no such thing as official product support for Trackjoy. If
you manage to get a message my way, that's already a lot. I will
probably continue developing Trackjoy, fixing bugs and re-editing the
documentation, so you may see some new versions appearing now and then.
But really: don't expect too much.




Trackjoy for Windows
────────────────────


Trackjoy for Windows??? Yechh... what a revolting idea. No, but
seriously, there is definitley *never* going to be a Trackjoy for
Windows, and there are several totally magnificent reasons for this.
The first is that I hate Windows. I think it's the biggest and nastiest
and grossest disease the PC World ever contracted, and programming in
it isn't my idea of fun. Then there are a number of technical points.
1) There simply isn't any *point* in making a program like this in
Windows, 2) Nobody should be expected to wait for tens of seconds to be
able to use Trackjoy (unless you are one of those people who spend most
of their time in Windows, in which case I can only be sorry for you),
3) Trackjoy is likely to run a lot better and faster in DOS and 4) I
hate making programs that look exactly the same as hundreds of others.
Besides, what does joy have to do with Windows?

So you now realise that it is a complete waste of time wanting a
Trackjoy for Windows (Yeah, I know, it would probably be called
something gross like WinJoy...)



About the author
────────────────


This is what you have been waiting for. Yeah, Trackjoy has an author,
who is also the author of this great document, ie. me. I'm called Tomi
R. Joy and I live in Finland in a city called Vantaa right next to
Helsinki just a couple of kilometres from the airport. I've been
programming for around four years now, starting with BASIC and then
moving to C and assembler mix. Not very surprisingly, perhaps, I use a
lot of my spare time playing the piano and the computer keyboard.

Some of you will be wanting to know what kind of monster made all this
rotware. Uh... oh... Well ─ I'm cool, that's what I'm like! What did you
expect ;) Besides being cool in general, I like being cool in a
multitude of specific ways. For instance, I don't believe in the army,
nor in atheism or agnosticism, but in love, life and what you get when
you subtract the first three from everything. I'm both Finnish and
English, and that is probably why I insist on spelling things in the
good old British way, ie. "colour", "metre" and "through".


═══ The Greetings ═════════════════════════════════════════════════════

My greetings go to ─ naturally in summamutikka order ─ Markku Kuparinen
of SQR (Örörörörörö ör rör rö!), Mikko Viertola (Drop dead, Fleischman),
Mirja Kuparinen (who's going to hate me for this), Eeva Tidenberg, Harri
"Tomi, I found a new bug in Trackjoy" Joy (he leaves bug reports in my
autoexec.bat file!) and everybody at Helsinki DOK, who have been
*absolutely* wonderful to me for over a year now.

═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════


How to contact Trackjoy's author by snail-mail or e-mail
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

My snail-mail address is

Tomi Joy
Veromihentie 6    /* A word of warning: this means "taxman's road" */
01510 Vantaa
Finland

*** Until October 1995 my e-mail address is
    [e-mail]

I love real paper letters, but I like e-mail as well, of course. You
don't need a good reason to write. Sending a post-card, letter or
e-mail is not obligatory. Sending money is not wanted or encouraged. (If
you want to make a donation, a brand new 32-bit C++ compiler will do
nicely ;-)

By the way, I you write, please do so in English, Finnish, simple French
and if you *really* must, in simple Swedish. But please don't expect me
to answer in French or Swedish, unless you are prepared to read
something *so* gross that you will *never* be yourself again. And no, I
will *not* accept any Klingon.

I will be pleased to answer questions about Trackjoy or any other of my
»products» and listen to complaints, praises and development tips with
everybody, so feel free to contact me.

│ Muuten... Jos olet suomenkielinen: Jos tapeeksi ihmisiä ihan väkisin
│ tarttee suomenkielisen version tästä manuaalista, niin voinen tehdä
│ tärkeimmistä kohdista jonkinlaisen suomennoksen. Ohjelman
│ suomentaminen on sitten ihan toinen (lue: mahdoton) homma, kun kaikki
│ tekstit on xprintf():tty ruudulle, ettekä te kai sellaista kaipaakaan.

One more thing. As a user, please remember that I, as a freeware
programmer, am not dependent on "support" from users. If you dislike my
program, you may complain, but please do not flame. However, even if
some moron tries (unsuccesfully) to flame me, I will probably just
ignore him, and the chances are that you will still get new versions.
And by the way, all flamers will be listed on the Trackjoy Black List,
distributed with future versions of the program.


────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Trackjoy user's manual               *** The old Babbler finally shut up ***
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────