Aminet 1 (Walnut Creek)/Aminet - June 1993 [Walnut Creek].iso/aminet/biz/demo/ftm_demo.lha/Read me!

Text File | 1992-06-05 | 7KB | 189 lines

                  Welcome to

                FACE THE MUSIC

        The ultimate eight-channel music composer tool
                for the AMIGA!


               Written by: Jörg Schmidt

                Copyright © 1990, 1991

                 MAXON Computer GmbH
                 Schwalbacher Str. 52
                   W-6236 Eschborn
                       GERMANY
                 Tel. [phone]
                 Fax. [phone]




1. This Disk

    This is a freely distributable demo version of FACE THE MUSIC (FTM).
    It may be used by anyone, as long as the contents of this disk remains
    the same and this message stays intact. This is NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN, all
    rights are reserved by MAXON Computer. Commercial Re-distribution only
    with the written permission of the copyright holder. And finally: Don't
    feed your cat with this disk!

    The demo version lacks the disk write functions, so you can't save
    any songs etc. Most menus/gadgets were translated from German to English
    to give you an overview of the program's functions.

    The height of the working window was reduced from PAL (256 raster
    lines) to fit to the american NTSC video standard (200 lines).

    However, since all Amigas with Big Fat Agnus 8372 (those with at
    least one Meg chip ram) are able to display both PAL and NTSC sized
    screens, the international version of FTM will open the right screen
    size automatically (in the the german version was no need for this).

    Instead of songs and seperate sampled sound files to work with, this
    disk contains only demo song-files with their samples included. Most of
    them require a one-meg machine to load.



2. The design of FACE THE MUSIC

    FTM was designed to get the very best out of the Amiga's built-
    in sound hardware. The story began as the author realized, that, although
    the amiga sound capabilities were already quite good, it was definitely
    not possible to get a sound out of the amiga that really comes near the
    sound of natural music.

    The reasons are:

    · Only four voices: Natural sounding music requires much more voices
      than the amiga offers. Or can anyone put a constant drum beat, a
      percussion line, the chords (at least thre voices!), a bass section
      and finally the melody in just four audio channels?

    · Nearly no sound effects. OK, you can use every second channel to
      modulate the next one, but then finally you have only two channels
      left!

    FTM finally overcomes this problems:

    · It offers true eight channel sound ON EVERY AMIGA WITHOUT ANY
          HARDWARE ADD-ONS! This is done by mixing each two tracks together
          and putting them out on one hardware channel. The ultra-fast
      algorithm works in real time, and this nearly without losing any
          quality.

    · There is a complete built-in sound effect language (SEL) to realize
      nearly any sound effect you can imagine: You're not - as in other
      composing tools - forced to use a certain amount of given sound
      effects (like vibrato, portamento etc.), and if you know them all,
      they start limiting your creativity or just become boring.

      Up to 63 Effects can be created with the built-in effect editor.
      Each effect can manipulate the sound of each track, of course
      in real time. The commands of the sound effect language (SEL)
      allow complete control over pitch and volume, you can influence
      what sound should be played at what time, and how long etc. Four
      LFO's per track allow synthesizer-like sounds on every Amiga!
      Some of the more than 60 commands even allow you to program
      conditioned branches, loops etc. The possibilities are unlimited!

      To get an idea of how the sound effect language works, load a song
      from disk and look at the effects via the effect editor (click on
      the corresponding gadgets). You can also load additional effects
      (in the pulldown menus).

        Eight channels and the own sound effect language finally offer the
    freedom required for the best possible sound on the amiga. Just listen
    to the demo songs in the drawer "FTM-Songs" and you'll know what we
    mean...



3. Additional features of FACE THE MUSIC

    · Loads up to 63 IFF- or "Raw"-sampled-sounds. If available, as much
      sounds as possible are loaded into fastmem.

    · You can load your old "Soundtracker" Songs to improve them to
      eight-channel-plus-sound-effects.

    · Superfast, fully Intuition-programmed multitasking song-editor.
      The song is shown as eight parallel tracks, the notes are displayed
      as their corresponding letters (very easy to use, esp. for beginners).

    · Comfortable block functions to edit the song in a way you thought
      only word processors could work.

    · Nearly all functions can be reached by mouse AND keyboard.

    · Comfortable file handling using a special designed file requester:
      As support for harddisk users, you have full access to all preset
      path names (for example, FTM manages eight sample search pathes).
      A file delete option is included, too.

    · Beginners can select the key they wish to compose in. The Amiga (resp.
      MIDI) keyboard will be remapped to fit the key, so that the user never
      needs to use the "black piano keys" (half-tones).

    · To try out a melody or just make some noise manually, one can always
      steal some tracks from the (currently playing) song by switching them
      off. Then those are free for your live performance (the cursor must be
      located on one of the switched off tracks). You can play up to eight
      voices at one time!

    · The real-time record mode allows you to enter the tracks of the
      song by playing live (with Metronome).

    · Every input works from the standard Amiga keyboard and/or from
      external MIDI equipment.

    · Up to 63 different sound effects can be written in the build-in sound
      effect language. They're saved together with the song, but can also be
      stored on disk seperately.

    · You can choose, if the Songs should be saved without sampled sounds
      (good for harddisk users, because they have fast access to all their
      sounds) or together with the sounds in one file (good for floppy
      users, who don't need to be a disk jokey to load a song).

    · The external player program "PlayFTM" allows to play songs from
      CLI (via command line), Workbench (by double-clicking) or to use
      them from your own Assembler, C or BASIC programs. Playing from your
      programming language offers full control over song parameters like
      start, end, speed etc.

    · The manual includes a beginner's introduction on techniques of
      composing pop songs, i.e. no musical knowledge is needed to begin
      with FTM.

    · Works on ALL Amigas, i.e. also on A3000 and/or Kickstart 2.0

    · Much, much more we forgot here...



4. Example Songs

    First of all, CONNECT YOUR AMIGA TO A HIFI-AMPLIFIER!

    To just listen to some songs, boot the disk, start "FACE THE MUSIC"
    by double-clicking on its icon, then select "Load song/module" from the
    leftmost ("Project") menu. After loaded, start the song by clicking on
    the "START" gadget.

    Alternatively, you can enter the "FTM-Songs" directory and start the
    songs directly from Workbench by double-clicking on their icons.



5. And now...HAVE FUN!


                8-)