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S M I T H S I D
Program by Doreen Horne
Text by Fender Tucker
I don't like to start a docs file
off with apologies but in this case,
it's appropriate. I'm sorry the
results of this program aren't
better; I'm sorry that Doreen had to
work in the dark on this project;
and I'm sorry that SONGSMITH isn't
more powerful.
Now that that's out of the way,
here's some background: Years back
Craig Chamberlain and others
developed a music system for the SID
chip and now it's loosely called SID
music. You can recognize the files
because they end with ".mus". Around
the same time, Joe Garrett wrote a
music program called SONGSMITH for
LOADSTAR. Its files begin with "m."
and "w."
SID (and its editor, SID EDITOR)
was supported for many years by
Chamberlain and others and soon
there was an "enhanced" SID, which
was very powerful and popular. In
fact, "SID songs" became the standard
song format in the C-64/128 world.
You'll find thousands of songs in
that format, hundreds of which were
published on LOADSTAR.
SONGSMITH, however, was never
really finished properly. Joe Garrett
died in an automobile accident
shortly before I came to the Tower
and it was left to me to wrap it up.
It worked fine but it had some
limitations that made it much less
powerful than SID. For instance, it
doesn't support triplets or notes
that are "tied" (extend across a
measure border).
But SONGSMITH has several things
going for it. It's fast and easy to
work with, and uses a traditional
treble and bass clef which most
musicians are familiar with. SID uses
a more computerish command line
interface.
So I have no apologies for the
hundreds of SONGSMITH sets we sold
over the past ten years. It's a good
package; it just doesn't produce
music as complicated or textured as
SID does.
Then around 1988 Scott Resh and
Debbie Cruz came up with SIDSMITH, a
utility that converts SONGSMITH songs
into SID songs. It works great and
was published on LOADSTAR #79, as well
as on all copies of SONGSMITH sold
since 1989 or so. It allowed
musicians to use the "easy" features
of SONGSMITH to get the song entered.
Then they could convert to SID and
use SID EDITOR to add grace notes and
little things that SID supports but
SONGSMITH doesn't.
But the question always remained:
is there any way to convert SID to
SONGSMITH? I once wrote, "It can't be
done. There are too many features of
SID that SONGSMITH simply will never
emulate." Everyone seemed to accept
my answer until recently, when Lee
Novak needed some SONGSMITH songs for
a big program he's writing. He
figured that if he had a SID to
SONGSMITH converter (in other words,
a SMITHSID) he'd have access to all
those SID songs online and elsewhere.
So I asked a few issues back if
anyone was interested in writing a
SMITHSID that would convert SID songs
to SONGSMITH format. Doreen Horne of
Australia heard the call and sent me
the program we now call SMITHSID.
But Doreen didn't have SONGSMITH.
All she had were some back issues of
LOADSTAR that had jukeboxes of songs
written with SONGSMITH. So she had to
"reverse engineer" the "m." and "w."
files without really knowing how
they'd work with the SONGSMITH
editor. I sent her a copy of
SONGSMITH but it never got there.
Perhaps it ran into a typhoon?
Little things like typhoons don't
bother Doreen, though, so here is a
modern, Jeff Jonesish utility that
will do the impossible: it will
convert sophisticated SID songs into
simple SONGSMITH songs...with only a
few, admittedly major, quirks.
[SMITHSID]
[{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}]
When you boot SMITHSID the first
thing you do is set the source and
destination drives. If you have just
one drive, set them both to that
drive.
The source drive will hold a disk
with SID songs, which end in ".mus".
The destination disk should have at
least as many blocks free as the
files you're converting. SONGSMITH
files are about the same size as
their SID counterparts, but there's an
extra 1-block "w." file which holds
the ADSR values and other timbre
information.
Then you get a scrolling directory
of the source disk. You can select
all of the files or just some of
them. Or you can select only one. Use
the CRSR keys and RETURN to make your
selections. You can select in any
order but the files will be converted
in the order they are in on the
source disk. When done selecting,
press SPACE.
The conversion will start
immediately. If you've got a SuperCPU
it won't take long at all; otherwise
it will take up to a minute for a
medium size file. When done you get
the option to do another disk, play
the last song converted, or quit to
LOADSTAR if there's a LS disk in an
active drive.
That's it! Doreen wrote me some
notes about the things that can go
wrong, and there are quite a few. The
music will [not] sound as good in
SONGSMITH format as it did in SID,
especially if there are a lot of
enhanced sounds in the original SID
file. In fact, some songs may sound
simply awful! But they should load
into SONGSMITH where you can try to
make them sound better. Some other
songs will sound almost as good as
the original.
[NOTE:] When using two drives, you
can convert a batch of songs at one
time without any further keypresses
from you. However, when using one
drive, even if you are converting
onto the same disk, you are prompted
to insert the SOURCE, then the
DESTINATION disk for each file. So if
you're using one drive, you must stay
by your computer to press keys
between each conversion.
[THE FUTURE OF SONGSMITH]
[{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}{SHIFT-*}]
I have the BASIC source code to
SONGSMITH and I'm sure I could do a
much better job than I did back in
1988. You could too. I plan to put
the source code to SONGSMITH, along
with detailed instructions on how to
compile it -- it must be compiled
with the Abacus C-64 Compiler -- on
an upcoming LOADSTAR hoping that
maybe Lee Novak or some other
programming wiz will look into it.
Who knows? Maybe triplets and tied
notes won't be a problem to add.
Doreen says that reverse engineering
is fun, and I tend to believe what
she says.
Of course, an enhanced SONGSMITH
will probably make both SIDSMITH and
SMITHSID no longer work, but that's
progress.
The main thing is that C-64/128
programmers need an easy way to add
interrupt-driven music to their
programs. The Europeople have some
excellent players and editors for
that Euro-sound. Some of them are in
the public domain. SID PLAYER is
considered in the public domain but
not SID EDITOR. As far as SONGSMITH
is concerned, any LOADSTARite can use
the ML player that comes with it as
they wish.
So the tools are out there. Now
we have another one, SMITHSID.
Programmers, if music be the food of
love (or if it enhances your program),
let it play on.
FT
[DAVE'S REPORT:] Lee Novak did an
upgrade on SONGSMITH with QuickSmith.
It still doesn't do ties, but the
mouse interface is excellent. We will
be re-publishing QuickSmith in an
upcoming issue.
Doreen Horne passed away in 1999, just
after completing her D81 - 1581
conversion program. Her expertise,
especially in low-level programming
has been missed ever since.
DMM