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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html;CHARSET=iso-8859-1"> <TITLE>Disco User Manual</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <IMG SRC="Images/009.gif" WIDTH="376" HEIGHT="89" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> Written by Aleksi Strandberg. © 2000 The Life In Movement. <A HREF="#General">General</A> | <A HREF="#wiring">Wiring up and recording</A> | <A HREF="#Using">Using Disco</A> | <A HREF="#Library">Music Library</A> | <A HREF="#Preferences">Preferences</A> | <A HREF="#Registration">Registration</A> | <A HREF="#contact">Contact Information</A> <A NAME="General"></A> <CENTER> <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="788"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="458">General Welcome! Thank you for downloading Disco, the best dj mixing software available for Mac. This documentation will tell you all the information you need to know to get started with Disco. As I am classified as a human being this documentation may have some wrting errors, sorry about that. If this documentation gets your mind confused or you don't understand some part of it, feel free to contact me. See <A HREF="#contact">contact information</A> section. <HR> Installation Simply decompress and expand the downloaded file and the installation process is done. Expand the downloaded file using Stuffit Expander by Aladdin Systems. You can find it from <A HREF="Http://www.aladdinsys.com">Http://www.aladdinsys.com</A> <HR> System Requirements Disco requires Apple Macintosh with PowerPC processor, 64 MB of free RAM, MacOS 8 or later and QuickTime 4.1 or later. You can download Quicktime for free at apple's web site at <A HREF="Http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download.">Http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download.</A> <HR> <A NAME="wiring"></A> Wiring Up Configuring MacOS If you have SRS(3D Surround Sound) available then turn it off in "Monitors and sound" control panel. SRS will mix the left and right channel a which makes cuening impossible to use. I also got better sound when turning it off. Note:Usually SRS gets back on after restarting or shutting down computer. Setup 1: Smaller purposes, weddings and stuff... If you are using the software for smaller purposes or you won't need beatmixing or cuening then you can just wire your computer to your amplifier normally. Setup 2: Gotta get the beats matching! Any DJ who wants to beatmix must have cueing function available, atleast if he or she wants to get the beats matching. You wont need any external sound cars in order to cue in Disco. You need to to wire your computer to amplifier. You can split the channels with 3.5 plug and then connect your headphones to one mono out (left) and amplifier to the second (right) with RCA connector. Remember not to put in the left (white) plug in of RCA connector when connecting to amplifier. After this setup you should get clean mono output and prelistening. If you are experiencing leaking (hearing cue channel from the output channel for exampel) then dont hesitate contact me. I can help you to get it working! <HR> Recording Mixes While Disco doesn't have recording function, there are several ways to record your mixes. Wire your computer to an Minidisc, DAT recorder, Tape Deck, CD-R, other computer or any other hardware you may have. If you are recording to other computer, you will need to have software for recording. You can find one from <A HREF="Http://www.hitsquad.com/smm">Shareware Music Machine</A> for example. You may also stream your music to the Internet after, or perhaps during the mix. Depends on the software you have. Software's for streaming can also be found at <A HREF="Http://www.hitsquad.com/smm">Shareware Music Machine</A>.</TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <A NAME="Using"></A> <CENTER> <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="788"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="769">Using Disco <IMG SRC="Images/008.gif" WIDTH="665" HEIGHT="270" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> Player Loading Songs. You can load songs to player by pressing the eject button. You will see the music library dialog. Then just pick song from the list and press the "Load" button. <HR> Playing and pausing song. If you have song loaded in player simply press the play button to start playing it. If the song is already playing you can press play button to pause it. <HR> Setting Cue Points Cue points comes very handy for saving and then quickly jumping to position of song. After you have loaded song to player you can use cue points. Disco has 9 cue points available. You can set cue point by pressing the "Set" button. It will set current position of your song to cue point. If you want to set cue point for a beat for example usually people miss the exact time. You can use nudge backward and forward buttons to set exact cue points. When pressing nudge button the position will increase or decrease one millisecond or by pressing option key 10 millsecond until you release the button. You can edit cue points manually by pressing the "Set" button while the option key is pressed. <HR> Changing Cue Points You can change current cue point with "Prev" and "Next" buttons. <HR> Jumping To Cue Point Press "Jump" button to jump instantly into the current cue point. <HR> Timeline You can use timeline for fast moving to position on the song. It will also display the current position of the song. <HR> Changing Pitch Tuesdays most songs don't have the same BPM. In order to get the beats matching while mixing you will need to increase or decrease the pitch of the song. For example, if the BPM of the song in channel 1 is 147 and the one in channel 2 is 149, you will need either to increase pitch on channel 2 or decrease on channel 1. That's why the pitch shift control is there. You can change the value as much as you can +/- pitch in <A HREF="#Preferences">preferences dialog</A>. <HR> Pitch Bending When you press the bend down or bend up buttons the songs pitch bends to value given in <A HREF="#Preferences">preferences</A> in one second. After releasing the button it will fade back to normal. Bending is very useful when you need to get the beats matching. <HR> Changing Time Display You can change time display to display remaining time or time elapsed by pressing "Change Time Display" button. <HR> Mixer Treble and bass controls Both channels have treble and bass controls. You can control the value from -256 to 256. <HR> Master controls Master volume controls the volume of the master output and balance the balance of the master output. <HR> Crossfader Crossfader is used to mix the two channels. Shortly, left side is channel 1 and right side is channel 2. When the slider is on the left side only channel 1 is on, when the slider is on the right side only channel 2 is on and when the slider is on the middle both channels are on. <HR> Volume Controls Both channels have volume controls for monitoring and cuening. <HR> Changing Level Meters You can change level meters from the menu that will apper to your screen when clicking to meter. This lets you use level meters to set channel volumes sync. <HR> Cueing You can cue the song while the other one is playing. See <A HREF="#General">general</A> section for information how to wire your computer to your amplifier for cuening. You can enable and disable cueing by using the cue button in the middle of the mixer. If you use cueing its recommended to keep cueing enabled all the time during the mix. When cueing is enabled the master comes from the right channel and cue from the left channel. You can cue the channel by pressing the "Cue On/Off" button. <HR> Keyboard Shortcuts There are few keyboard shortcuts available in Disco. Channel 1 Jump To Cue Point = 1 Set Cue Point = 2 Play/Pause = 3 Channel 2 Jump To Cue Point = 4 Set Cue Point = 5 Play/Pause = 6</TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <A NAME="Library"></A> <CENTER> <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="788"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="778" HEIGHT="1896">Music Library <IMG SRC="Images/001.gif" WIDTH="755" HEIGHT="276" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> Its much more easier to load songs in live action if you have organized your library using folders. Adding songs to music library Adding songs to music library is not done in Disco. In Finder there is folder called "Music Library" in the same folder as Disco, if not then create one. All songs you want to use in Disco must be placed inside that folder. But there is a certain structure inside that folder. You cannot add songs directly to the music library folder. You will first need to create category, it could be genre like "Trip-Hop" for example. You can choose category to display from the menu in right top corner. Categories are created as folders in Finder. Songs can be added inside categories but you can also make folders inside the category, for example "My Artist" and then add songs to that folder. If you have made playlist for your mix you could create folder "DJ Newbie's mix vol.1" for example and then add all the songs in playlist to that folder so it would be easy to load songs. In disco you can either display your full category or only part of it. I want to have my music library in external HD or on CD! You can make alias of that folder and move it to inside the main library folder, you can also make alias of single files and folders and drag the aliases to the folders you want. <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="100%"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="50%"><IMG SRC="Images/000.gif" WIDTH="275" HEIGHT="92" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> You can display either part of the your library or the full library.</TD> <TD WIDTH="50%"><IMG SRC="Images/003.gif" WIDTH="181" HEIGHT="221" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> You can change genre from the list. If you add genre that is not yet in the list it will be added.</TD> </TR> </TABLE> <HR> <IMG SRC="Images/002.gif" WIDTH="495" HEIGHT="296" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> Good music library should be organized... Adding information for songs You can see the song information editor, above by clicking the "Get Info..." button in the music library. All information is not available for every song. For example remixes are usually available only in electronic music genre. You can get artist, album, title and remix from your cd cover (You did bought the album?). Genre can be whatever, these days there are thousands of genres such as "Duck Chunk Ambient House", right....so type anything you want here. Note that when you edit the title of the song, Disco will change the name which appears in finder so don't wonder where that song went. Information you have provided for song will be displayed in the music library and in the player display. Counting BPM BPM (Beats per minute) can be counted in Disco. You need to first start playing song you want the bpm to be counted. Then press "Counter" button in song information editor dialog. Disco BPM Counter uses the most common BPM counting technicue. It counts taps during one second and the number of taps is the bpm. You can choose to use also 30 seconds and 15 seconds time then the tap amount will be counted. For example if you set time to 30 seconds then the amount of taps will be doubled. You can tap by either pressing the "Tap" button in the dialog or by pressing space on your keyboard. If you make mistake you can start counting from beginning by pressing "Clear" button. The counting will start after first tap. Remember to set song pitch to 0 before counting BPM. There are also some BPM lists available on the Internet, <A HREF="Http://www.djrhythms.com/">DJ Rhythms</A> for example. <HR> <IMG SRC="Images/004.gif" WIDTH="600" HEIGHT="297" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> Searching songs You can find and import songs from your hard drives directly in Disco. Press the "Search Music" button in music library dialog to display the window seen above. You can find songs by their names or/and Macintosh type codes. In above example I made search for files which contains ".aiff" in their names. After the search is done, you can import song to your music library by first selecting the song from the list and then pressing the "Import" button. In the list next import button you can choose an folder where you would like the song to be imported to. When importing songs Disco will move the file from its original location to music library folder. You can scan files to make sure they work with Disco, but the search takes a lot more time. If the song wont appear to your music library then its not supported by Disco, this can happen if you don't want to scan the files. <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="100%"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="50%"><IMG SRC="Images/005.gif" WIDTH="218" HEIGHT="127" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> You can select folder where you would like the song to be imported. You can also create new directory.</TD> <TD WIDTH="50%"><IMG SRC="Images/006.gif" WIDTH="92" HEIGHT="43" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> If you want faster search then turn off file scanning.</TD> </TR> </TABLE> </TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <A NAME="Preferences"></A> <CENTER> <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="790"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="635">Preferences <IMG SRC="Images/007.gif" WIDTH="635" HEIGHT="388" ALIGN="BOTTOM" BORDER="0"> Autosave If autosave is on, all the settings have been saved every time the given time period is over. This is very useful for example if your computer for some reason (It wasn't me...) crashes, because the position of the song and mixer settings has been restored and you can continue from the position where you was before the crash. <HR> Text font and size Modifies text font and size in the players display and in the help panel. <HR> Chill Out Flavor When using chill out mode the screen will be filled with the color selected here. <HR> Hide menubar when finder is hidden If you have hidden the finder using the "Hide Finder" in edit menu the menubar will be hidden. When you move your cursor near the menubar it will be visible. <HR> Myte system sounds If you have this option enabled Disco will mute the system "beep" sounds. This is because it might be embarrasing to suddenly hear "Eeeaap" effects when mixing for audience. <HR> Touch response The touch response controls only the oval controls. When you have selected "Full" the control value will change as much as your mouse moves in pixels. When you have selected "Medium" you need to move mouse half less than in full and "Minimum" is half less than medium. <HR> Oval control Changes the controlling type of the oval control . If you have selected "Horizontal", moving the cursor to the right will increase and to the left decrease the value of the control. If you have selected "Vertical" moving the cursor up will increase and down decrease the value of the control. <HR> Option key Function of the option key when using control. If you have selected "Snap to" then when pressing the option key while using control will snap the value to minimum, middle, and maximum. It is very handy when you want to reset values in live action. If you have selected "Normal" then the controls will snap by default, and when pressing option key control won't snap. <HR> Max. pitch shift Controls the +/- maximum of the pitch control. If you have selected for example "8 %" then you can decrease or increase 8% of the song pitch. The smaller the maximum value is the more you can control it. <HR> Pitch Bend Controls the value of how much the pitch bend buttons will increase or decrease the song pitch. <HR> Bending Speed The time how much you want bending to take time. <HR> Hide cursor when using control If checked the cursor will be hidden when you use any of the controls.</TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <A NAME="Registration"></A> <CENTER> <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="788"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="458">Registering Disco To register Disco visit the online-registration page using web browser or use the register program included with Disco. The Online-Registration page can be found at <A HREF="http://order.kagi.com/?CSL">http://order.kagi.com/?CSL</A> If you use Register program here's what you need to do: 1) Open the registration program and fill out the form. Enter your name, email address and number of licenses. The form accepts many different payment methods. 2) Send it to Kagi Shareware. You can either email the data generated by the register program or print it and send it via postal mail or fax. After registering you will receive registration code to unlock your copy of Disco. Kagi Shareware Contact Information: Email:sales@kagi.com FAX: +1 510 652 6589 Postal Mail: Kagi 1442-A Walnut Street #392-UMG Berkeley, California 94709-1405 USA</TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <CENTER> <A NAME="contact"></A> <TABLE BORDER="0" WIDTH="788"> <TR> <TD WIDTH="458">Contact Information Support If you experiencing problems when running Disco please contact me. Tell as much details as you can to help me to resolve your problems, but no personal ones =) New Features And Feedback Its always great to get anykind of feedback about Disco. Many users have told me their ideas and have helped me to make this software even better. If you have any ideas or feature request, dont hesitate to contact me. Web site: <A HREF="Http://www.thelifeinmovement.cjb.net">Http://www.thelifeinmovement.cjb.net</A> Email: <A HREF="Mailto:Aleksi.Strandberg@intsys.fi">Aleksi.Strandberg@intsys.fi</A> Postal mail: (I check for bombs before opening) Aleksi Strandberg The Life In Movement Suvilahdenkatu 6 B20 00580 Helsinki Finland</TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> </BODY> </HTML>