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Scream Tracker V2.2 /002 <<<<< USERS MANUAL >>>>> (C) 1990 Sami Tammilehto ============================================================================== Contents by reference number: 1 The Scream Tracker enviroment 1.1 The directory structure 1.2 Using the program 1.3 The piano keyboard 1.4 The display 1.5 Machine requirements 1.6 Global commands 2 Instruments 2.1 What are they? 2.2 Instrument disks 2.2.1 What are they? 2.2.2 Creating instrument disks 2.2.3 The instrument disk 99 2.3 Different parameters describing the instrument 3 Setup 3.1 Playing mode and speed 3.2 Scope speed, Timer and EditSnd 3.3 Directories 4 Instrument Library 4.1 What is it? 4.2 Moving around in the instrument library 4.3 The fields in the upper section. 4.4 Commands specific to the Edit Library mode. 4.5 Creating the instrument library 4.5.1 Creating a library manually 4.5.2 Easier creation way 4.5.3 Adding separate samples easily 5 Orders 5.1 What are they? 5.2 Editing orders 5.3 Commands specific to Edit Orders 6 Patterns 6.1 What are they? 6.2 Editing patterns 6.3 Special commands 6.3.1 What are they? 6.3.2 List of commands 7 Sample list 7.1 What is it? 7.2 Test fields and beat testing. 7.3 List of commands 8 Loading, saving and playing songs 8.1 Loading a song/module 8.2 Saving song/module 8.3 Playing songs 8.4 Infopage and status line info 8.5 Scope 8.6 Loading amiga modules 1 The Scream Tracker enviroment 1.1 The directory structure The Scream Tracker is situated in it's own directory, normally C:\ST. Under this parent directory you can find files and directories used by Scream Tracker. The SONG diretory contains the songs and modules for the Scream Tracker. The STINS99 directory acts as an instrument disk, which contains the instruments stored on hard disk. The INS directory is used for caching the instrument disks and the ADD directory is used for adding new samples. 1.2 Using the program When you load the Scream Tracker (by executing ST.EXE) you'll see the startup-screen. From this screen you can go to the main menus by pressing left arrow key. You can toggle menus fast with their hotkeys (the capital letters) or move between them with cursor keys. By pressing enter you can select the menu choice highlighted. The three rightmost menus contain commands specific to Edit Patterns, Edit Samples and Edit Library functions, and the hotkeys shown in them apply only in each of these edit modes, respectively. The other hotkeys can be executed anytime (except in Dos Shell of course). 1.3 The piano keyboard The computers keyboard is divided into 2+ octaves and used to emulate the common piano style keyboard. The octaves are the following: 2 3 5 6 7 9 0 octave 2+: Q W E R T Y U I O P S D G H J octave 1: Z X C V B N M The keyboard is used when testing instruments or entering notes to a pattern. 1.4 The display The display is divided into four parts, of which the first one tells the Scream Tracker version number and username (if ST is registered). The second part of the display is reserved for some often used values, which define the lower pinao keyboard octave, default sample, default volume, songs start tempo, songs name, current pattern, Current channel, Global volume for the song, and finally channel on/off status. The third part, whose background is brown, is the editing area, where all editing of the song is performed. It has several edit screens, of which more is told later. The last part is the bottomline, which acts as a statusline, and displays things like loading, saving, and, while the music is being played, the current position in song. 1.5 Machine requirements The Scream Tracker requires a fast machine. In this caes this means at least an 8Mhz AT. 12Mhz at is suggested, for with slower machines the PC-Speaker will function poorly. Although Covox & SoundBlaster will work with 8Mhz machines with good guality. The machine should NOT be slowed down by 386 specific memory enhancement utilities using the VM86 mode. These include QEMM, 386^MAX and Windows 3. If the sound seems to be too low and it's pitch varies rapidly, the machine has not enough power. The VM86 products should be removed while using ST. Scream Tracker also requires at least CGA to use scope. All other functions use text screens. 1.6 Global commands CTRL-D..This command shells to DOS. Remeber that if you leave the music playing when shelling to dos, it might interfere with programs run there CTRL-W..Save (write) song CTRL-L..Load song CTLR-R..Load (retrieve) module CTRL-A..Load amiga module ALT-F1..Toggle channel 1 on/off ALT-F2..Toggle channel 2 on/off ALT-F3..Toggle channel 3 on/off ALT-F4..Toggle channel 4 on/off SH-F5...Play song. This (as all play commands) also views the infopage SH-F6...Play from current order. The current order is the one the cursor is on in the Edit order mode. F6......Play current patter. The pattern will be looped. CTRL-Z..Play with scope. The scope requires CGA or compatible display and also faster machine than normal playing. F5......Show infopage F8......Stop playing F7......Load instruments from disk. This function is needed if the samples contained in the Edit Samples list are modified. It's not needed if only parameters are changed, only when samples are removed or inserted. F1......Edit Order F2......Edit Patterns F3......Edit Samples F4......Edit Library {.......Decrease global volume by 3 }.......Increase global volume by 3 2 Instruments 2.1 What are they? The instruments are samples, which might be considered to be sort of a record of a real instrument. To play the instrument at different notes, it's speed is altered. Also a few other values can be changed for an instrument. These include possible looping and volume. Also vibrato and other special effects can be used. The instruments are often quite long, about 10K average, so it's best to store most of them on disks. Remark that within this document and the program, the words sample and instrument are both used interchangeably. 2.2 Instrument disks 2.2.1 What are they? The Scream Tracker supports 99 instrument disks, of which number 99 is the harddisk (and 00 undefined). The instrument disks are used to store the samples (and ONLY the actual data, not the parameters). In both the library and edit samples screen you can specify the disk where a particular instrument can be found. When loading an instrument, the ST first looks for it in the cache directory, and if it's not found there, ST will prompt for the correct disk (if it's defined). After you have insterted the correct disk and pressed a key, the ST will also transfer the sample to the cache directory, for faster access. 2.2.2 Creating instrument disks Creating an instrument disk is a straightforward procedure. You simple format a disk and make a following directory into it's root: STINSxx where xx should be replaced with the instrument disk number you are creating. (The samples stored to the disk will then lie in the directory) Do not make several disks with the same number, and remember that disks 00 and 99 should not be made, for the numbers are used for different purposes in ST. 2.2.3 The instrument disk 99 Instrument disk 99 differs from other instrument disk because it's situated in the harddisk. It works just as a normal disk, but it's instruments are NOT cached. It's automatically created when ST is installed. 2.3 Different parameters describing the instrument Instrument parameters are shown in fields inside the ST. The fields are named: File, C2SPD, Ds, Vl, LpBeg, LpEnd. The first field descripbes the filename for the sample. The next one is the speed (in Hz) at which the sample should be played so that it would sound like C2 (mid C). The next field specifies the instrument disk in which the sample can be found. The next value is the default volume, the volume used when not otherwise specified. The last two next fields describe the possible looping of the sample. When the first value is 0 and the last 65535, no looping should be performed. When the values differ from those, the last value defines the byte at which the sample should be halted, and restarted at byte defined by the first value. Inside ST these fields are often followed by Test fields, which can be used for testing the instrument with the piano keyboard. 3 Setup 3.1 Playing mode and speed You have currently four choises of hardware to play songs. The one everyone has, is the PC-Speaker. The other options include SoundBlaster, a PC sound card from Creative Lab's inc. and Covox in LPT1/2. The term Covox means a device simply acting as DA converter in printer port datalines. The other important selection is machine speed. It theoretically specifies how fast your machine is, so that the program can know how good guality sound it can output. Generally 12Mhz is sufficient, so in practice even if you have 33Mhz machine, it's better to keep speed in 12Mhz, for there is practically no quality difference with it and higher speeds. In addition when running sound at lower speed, the machine will work faster while editing songs the same time they are being played. 3.2 Scope speed, Timer and Editsnd The scope option defines a different speed for the scope. It can be set by moving the speed indicator to the speed desired and pressing 'S'. A small 's' will be disblayed next to the speed. The the speed bar can be taken to it's default position. Scope normally MUST be played at lower speed than normal mosuic, for it needs more machine power to draw the dots to screen. Another option is 'Timer' which can be set on or off with ALT-T. If timer is off, dos timer interrupt 8 will be masked off while playing. It generally produces better sounds, especially with PC- Speaker, but makes little difference with Covox or SoundBlaster. The main advantage from keeping the Timer on is the fact DOS clock will run in DOS shell (the machine keeps the time right when playing) and disk drive motors will be stopped in time. (When timer is off, the floppy disk drive motors run on forever after started) The EditSnd option tells the program whether or not play a note when it's written to pattern. It's generally easier to make music when the option is on, but playing notes slow the machine down a bit. 3.3 Directories In setup, you can specify three different directories. The first one is SystemDir. It specifies where ScreamTracker and instrument libraries can be found. ADD and STINS99 directories also lie inside SystemDir. The other directory specified is SongDir. It tells where ST can find your songs and modules. (They can also be loaded from other directory, this only specifies the default one.) The third directory is InsDir, which specifies the instrument disk cache directory. 4 Instrument Library 4.1 What is it? The instrument library is used to store the parameters of instruments. It contains 99 usable sublibraries with 100 instruments each. In practice it means you can define 9900 instruments into the library. The library also provides an easy way to select instruments when making a song. You can write descriptions for each instrument, and then choose the instruments for the song by descriptions. You can also test instruments within the library, but it's often not practical, for most instruments are probably on disks, so you'll have to dig the correct instrument disks for testing... The instrument library also contains a sublibrary called clipboard (#99). Don't mix this clipboard with the one used for copying stuff in the edit patterns mode. The clipboard can be used for transferring and adding instruments to the library. Remark that the clipboard is NOT saved to disk, so it's emptied when you exit the program. 4.2 Moving around in the instrument library To get to the instrument library one must either press F4 or select it from the edit menu. In the menu, the bright block is your cursor, which can be moved with the cursor keys. The screen is also divided into two parts. The lower displaying the sublibraries, and the upper one contents of the current sublibrary (one with grey background on the lower side). You can toggle the sides with TAB key. In the lower side you can edit the names of the sublibraries, and in the upper one, the instruments contained in the instrument library. 4.3 The fields in the upper section. The upper section is divided into multiple fields, containing the information about a sample. The first field from the left is the description field. It (as all text fields in ST) can be edited with only BackSpace. The other fields are same as in edit samples. (see 2.3) 4.4 Commands specific to the Edit Library mode. TAB.....Used for toggling the upper/lower side. The current side is displayed with triangles in the middle left side screen. <,>.....Select previous/next sublibrary. DEL.....Delete current instrument from the library INS.....Make room for a new instrument ALT-M...Move instrument to different disk. The disk will be prompted after selecting this command. The sample will be deleted form the old disk. ALT-C...Copy current sub-library to clipboard. ALT-F...Fill clipboards disk values with the disk value in the first instrument in the clipboard (the one on row 0) ALT-P...Begin place function. Place can only be started in the clipboard. When ALT-P is pressed, the instrument under cursor appears to the middle of the screen. Then the cursor can be moved to a library this instrument should be situated. When pressing enter the instrument will be inserted to cursor. After the instrument is placed, a next instrument in the clipboard will appear to the middle of the screen and can be placed. ALT-P also terminates the place function. When place is in effect, all TEST fields will play the sample which is to be placed. ALT-S...Will skip the instrument currently being placed and selects the next instrument for placing. 4.5 Creating the instrument library 4.5.1 Creating a library manually To simple but hard way to create the library is to copy instruments as you gather them to instrument disks, and then add them to the library by writing their name, description and other parameters. 4.5.2 Easier creation way If you have many modules already, you can exstract the instruments and their parameters from the modules. This can be accomplished by loading a module at a time, and then executing ALT-T from the edit samples mode to copy the instrument information to the clipboard. The ALT-T also saves all the samples in the module to instrument disk 99 (hard disk). After ALT-T has been pressed, one must go to the clipboard in edit library mode, and move, if he want's to, the instruments to other instrument disk, and thus freeing space on the harddisk. This can be accomplished with ALT-M. Then the instruments must be moved to their correct directories with the ALT-P (place) function. 4.5.3 Adding separate samples easily To add a group of samples easily, copy them to the ADD directory. Then execute ALT-A, which will transfer them to instrument disk 99 and copy their names to the clipboard, from where you'll only have to place (move) them. 5 Orders 5.1 What are they? The orders are used to define the order in which the patterns are played. 5.2 Editing orders The get to the diting mode, you must either press F1, or select Orders from Edit menu. The edit orders display is divided into two coluns, the left one specifying the order number, and the right one specifying which pattern to play at that order. 5.3 Commands specific to Edit Orders DEL.....Deletes the order the cursor is on INS.....Makes room for order to the cursor ALT-C...Clears the song/samples. When ALT-C is selected, the program will ask whether samples should be preserved, so you can save the instruments, but clear only the patterns in addition to clearing the entire song. 6 Patterns 6.1 What are they? The patterns describe the actual notes to be played. The music is divided into patterns mainly to make it easier to repeat some parts of it. This can be accomplished by simply playing patterns many times. 6.2 Editing patterns The edit patterns mode can be netered with either F2 or with menus. The screen is divided into 5 main columns, of which the first one specifies the row, and tha last four ones each represent channels (leftmost is number 1, rightmost number 4). Each channel consists of 6 subfields: C#1 02 ∙∙ H08 │ │ │ │ │└Info byte │ │ │ │ └Special command │ │ │ └Volume (∙∙ = default) │ │ └Instrument (∙∙ = last one) │ └Octave (0-4) └Note The note field, as it's name suggests, specifies the note to be played, and the octave field at which octave the note is to be played. The instrument field specifies the instrument used for this sample. It has no effect is note is not specified. It can also be omitted. If so, the last instrument for that channel is used. The next field specifies the volume for an instrument. It can be changed while a note is being played to create volume slide effects. If it's omitted, the default volume for the current instrument is used. The last two fields specify a possible special command. 6.3 Special commands 6.3.1 What are they? The special commands can be used to change the way a note is played and also alter songs order and other things. They consist of a letter secifying the command, and an hexadecimal infobyte. (volume and instrument are decimal). There is one important (and complex) thing one should know about special codes. That is WHEN they are processed. It matters only with codes altering pitch, volume or other things which will be changed softly. For every row, these commands will be run by TEMPO/10-1 times. For example if tempo is 60, the volume slide will be run 5 times, which means that command D02 slides the volume down 5*2=10 units every row. 6.3.2 List of commands A - Tempo. This command sets the tempo for the song. The tempo can be changed anytime, and effects all four channels. The default tempo is 60. B - Jump. This command breaks the current pattern, and jumps to order row specified by the infobyte. It can be used to create a beginning for a song, which is not repeated when the song ends. i.e. it can be jumped over. C - Break. This command breaks the current pattern, and plays the next one in orderlist. D - Slide volume. This command slides volume up/down. If the hi nibble (the left hex digit) is specified, the volume is increased by the amout the digit specifies. If the lo nibble is set, the volume will be decreased. E - Portamento up. This command slides the notes pitch up by a specified amount. F - Portamento down. G - Note Portamento. This command slides to a note. It's most easily clarified by an example: C-2 01 .. .00 On this line, instrument 1 starts playing .. .. .. .00 note C2. E-2 .. .. G05 On this line, note E2 is NOT played, but ... .. .. G05 the pitch is slided by amount of 5 towards ... .. .. G1F the E2 note. Remark that the amount mast again be multiplied with the TEMPO/10-1 told about in the previous chapter. When the pitch reaches the note specified when it was started, the command has no effect. H - Vibrato. This command vibrates the sample, at a speed specified by the hi-nibble (bigger is faster). The lo-nibble specifies the vibrato size. (bigger is more vibrating). I - Tremor. This command rapidly turns the sound on/off. the hi-nibble specifies the time the sample is to be on (subrows, speified by the TEMPO/10-1) and the lo-nibble the time it should be off. The sound is tremored as long as the tremor commands are set. J - Arpeggio. Play chords. Alters the notes pitch fast. Three stages: Note, Note+lo nibble halfnotes, Note+hi nibble halfnotes (NOTE: Arpeggio hasn't been tested with Amiga musics using it (note found) so it probably differs with amiga. K - Volume portamento. Not yet operative. L - Volume vibrato. Not yet operative. 7 Sample list 7.1 What is it? The sample list, as it's name suggests, lists all samples used in the song. It also contains different parameters for all samples (parameters have been described earlier in this document). When instruments are added or deleted from the list, the samples should be reloaded by pressing F7. The fields are same as in Edit Library, with two exceptions. First the description field is not availible, and second, there are two 'Test' fields. You can also edit the song name from sample list by pressing ALT-E. 7.2 Test fields and beat testing. There are two test field after each sample name. By pressing the pianokeyboard keys while in this filed, the sample will be played. The 'Test1' field test the sample in one channel, thus each keypress starting a new note stops the previous note. The 'Test4' field enables you to play multiple notes so that they all play together. This is accomplished by playing the instument in each of the four availible channels, so if first note goes to channel 2, the next one goes to channel 3 and so on. When all channels are used (4 notes played simultaneusly) the next note goes to the first channel and removes the oldest of the 4 notes from playing. There is also an Beat Test (ALT-B) option. In this mode you can easily play multiple instruments and test rythms etc. When in this mode, a text will be displayed and numbers '1'..'9' play samples 1..9 and keys 'A'..'V' samples 10..31. The samples are played at C2. To alter height in beat testing, change the C2SPD field from sample list. 7.3 List of commands <.......Substract 10h from tempo >.......Add 10h to tempo /.......Substract 1 from tempo *.......Add 1 to tempo ALT-E...Edit song name (on upper screen) ALT-S...Save samples to disk(s). Every sample will be saved to the disk named in 'Ds' field. Disk 00 means to cache directory (INS). ALT-O...Save one sample. The sample the cursor is on. ALT-L...Load one sample from disk. As F7, but for the one cursor is on. ALT-B...Beat testing ALT-C...Copy all instrument to library clipboard. ALT-M...Move instrument to different disk ALT-T...Same as ALT-C + moves all instruments to disk 99. ENTER...Pick instrument from library. 8 Loading, saving and playing songs 8.1 Loading a song/module To load a song/module, select Load form main menu, or press either CTRL-R (for module), CTRL-L (for song) or CTRL-A (for amiga module). The use the file selection pad to select the correct file. 8.2 Saving song/module Saving is similar to loading, with one exception. Amiga modules can not be saved. They must be saved as ST modules. 8.3 Playing songs There are many ways to play a song. The simpliest one is pressing F5, which starts song in memory and displays infopage. If song is already being played, the infopage is only redisplayed. To restart song, press SHIFT-F5. There are also two playmodes useful when composing a song. First one is play pattern (F6). It will play the current pattern (the one the cursor is in in the Edit Patterns window) over and over again, until stopped with F8, which will always stop whatever is being played. The another playmode is Play from order (SHIFT-F6) which starts playing from order row the cursor is in in the Edit Order screen. 8.4 Infopage and status line info The infopage is displayed when the song is being played. Infopage can be exited with ESC and recalled with F5. It shows current instrument for each channel and a sort of volume meter for each channel. The meter is not realistic, but paractically works and shows when notes are struck, and at which volume. The statusline will also give information about the music while it's being played. From there you can see the current order row, pattern, row and loops, which tells how many times the song has been played (It doesn't always work, if jump to order command is used.) The statusline also displays the percentage telling how much of the song is played. All information is not displayed when palying patterns. 8.5 Scope There is also alternate 'infopage'. It is a scope display, and you can view it with CTRL-Z (or from menu). It displays the actual (and realistic) curve displaying the data values ouputted to the speaker. It is in fact songs 'waveform' in a way. Mainly the use from scope is purely entertaining. The scoop display requires CGA or compatible graphics display. 8.6 Loading amiga modules The load amiga module command (CTRL-A) prompts for filenames as normal load. It converts amiga modules from MasterSoundTracker, SoundTracker (..V2.4) and NoiseTracker (..V2.0). It requires modules to be unpacked. After the conversion is started, you can see the number of patterns converted in the right hand corner of the screen. On the screens right side will also be dislayed all commands used in the song. The left side will view the amigas 20 char filenames, which sometimes contain a message rather than instrument names. The amiga names will be truncated in the conversion. In the middle of the screen possible errors are shown. Errors mean that something in the module is not recognized by the converter, and doesn't always mean the song won't work. Most often the song works fine, but sometimes little differently than in amiga. It's also possible that the conversion totally failes resulting in something no one can call a song. If you plan to use the instruments in the amiga module, check that the filenames are legal for MS-DOS, before saving them. (The converter removes most illegal names). Especially remember to fill 'empty' names. Normally you can recognize whether or not a sample in sample list is empty by looking at the volume. Amiga files normally have volume 0 in samples not used. ============================================================================== This document, the help file and the Scream Tracker are constantly being enhanced, so it's possible they differ a bit from each other. In case of conflicts the help file is probably correct. And remember, you can't destroy your machine by trying what works. Sami Tammilehto