MORE-MultiMedia/mmultimedia.iso/composd/composd.doc

Text File | 1992-03-07 | 43KB | 865 lines

                           Renaissance '92
                              presents

                          Composer 669 v1.1
                           (c) 1992, Tran

                         The first 8 channel
                       digital composer/player
                             for the PC.


Disclaimer:

  Composer 669 is Copyright 1992 by the author Tran (a.k.a. Tomasz Pytel).
  You are free to distribute the unregistered version of this composer and its
  documentation in any maner you choose. Including uploading it to BBSs,
  distributing through a software house, or including in any commercial
  package, provided that all the files are included and nothing has been
  modified. No fee may be charged for the composer itself other than the cost
  of the media on which it is distributed and any other small misc details the
  total of which shall not exceed $5.00. (This does not include the fee for
  the commercial product if any). This software is provided AS-IS. The author
  of this software will not be liable for any damages caused in any manner by
  the use of this software. By using Composer 669 you agree to all these
  terms.


Contents:

  1-A   -       Introduction
  1-B   -       Requirements
  1-B-1 -       Memory

  2-A   -       General overview
  2-B   -       Composer colors
  2-C   -       Configuration file
  2-D   -       Directories
  2-E   -       Command line options
  2-F   -       List of keys

  3-A   -       Instruments
  3-A-1 -       Loading and saving them
  3-A-2 -       Instrument loops
  3-B   -       The song message
  3-C   -       The status bars
  3-D   -       The musical keyboard
  3-E   -       SBPro mixer

  4-A   -       Patterns
  4-A-1 -       Pattern tempo
  4-A-2 -       Order list
  4-A-3 -       Pattern breaks
  4-B   -       Toggling channels on/off
  4-C   -       Notes
  4-D   -       Special commands
  4-E   -       Blocks

  5-A   -       Playing songs
  5-B   -       Tracking songs
  5-C   -       Saving and loading songs

  6-A   -       Misc
  6-B   -       Renaissance


Note: All values in the composer are in hexadecimal unless otherwise
  specified. If you do not know hexadecimal, dont worry. You will pick it up
  very quickly just by looking at the number bars in the composer.


1-A. Introduction.

  Composer 669 is an 8 channel digital music composer/player. Thats right,
  digital. It uses digital samples as instruments in music pieces and mixes
  the output in real time, 8 channels into 1 on a mono system, and 8 channels
  into 2 on a stereo system. This results in much higher quality music than
  FM, and since the music is stored as instruments and notes, it takes up much
  less space than a full track digital music piece. Things like this have
  existed before, mostly on Amiga systems, and mostly in 4 channel versions.
  But lately, the technique of real time digital mixing has found its way to
  the PC world. This is the first player for the PC that gives you 8 channels
  to work with. The quality of the music you can create with this composer is
  very good to approaching professional level.


1-B. Requirements.

  To run this composer you must have the following hardware:
    1) A 386 or better computer.
    2) 2 megz RAM. (1408k extended).
    3) A VGA card.
    4) A Sound Blaster or a Sound Blaster Pro sound card. (On an SB you will
        get mono music, on an SBPro you will get stereo).
    5) DOS 3.0 or above.

  When you run this composer, you must not have any memory managers or any
  other programs that run the system in V86 mode, and you must not have DOS
  loaded high. The best configuration would be a clean system, but you can
  experiment to see what TSRs and device drivers you can have in memory.

1-B-1. Memory.

  This composer requires you to have at least 2 megz RAM in your system, if
  you have more it will not be used. This is done to ensure that all 699
  musics can be played on all systems. But dont worry, you will probably
  never even fill up the first half of the 1408k assigned for samples. You
  must also have 640k base memory in your system, not a k less! If the
  composer tells you that you do not have enough low memory in the system, it
  is because of 1 of 2 reasons:
    1) You actually do not have enough free memory. (But on a 640k system,
        even with lots of TSRs, this is highly unlikely).
    2) Your system reports that you do not have 640k. If you know you have
        640k, then this is caused by one of 2 things:
         1) You have your BIOS scratch RAM option set to number 2 in your
             CMOS. Run your setup program and set it to 1 if this is the case.
         2) You have a virus in your system which locates itself in your
             Top-of-Memory. A virus would be doing this because no other type
             of program, to my knowledge, does this. A friend of mine ran the
             program and it told him he did not have enough low memory, so he
             scanned his system and found he'd been infected with the Stoned
             virus.


Note: Before going on any further, if you have not yet ran the program, then
  read the file BUG.DOC and then run the DEMO batch file. You may have to
  clear up your bootup configuration. After seeing what you just got, return
  to this doc and read it.


2-A. General overview.

  Composer 669 lets you create and play 8 channel digital musics. Each music
  can have up to 64 instruments using a maximum of 1408k memory. The max
  size of each sample (the words instrument and sample will be used
  interchangably in this doc) is 1 meg. Each music can have up to 128
  patterns, a pattern a small chunk of music and it will be explained in more
  detail later in this doc. Each pattern is made up of 64 rows, each of which
  can contain a note to be played on each of the 8 channels. Instruments
  are loaded and saved as pure digital files, and you can also load and save
  .VOC files as instruments. The composer runs in VGA 80x50 text mode, and I
  tried to fit as much information as possible onto the screen. You will do
  almost all your editing on this screen. All the commands in the composer are
  usually available in 1 keystroke. The mixing and output is done at 12kHz.


2-B. Composer colors.

  The color setup of the composer can be changed to whatever you like. At any
  one time there are 8 color sets for you to switch among instantly, and any
  color in any of these sets can be changed to anything you like. To edit the
  composer colors, hit ALT-F10 from the main screen. A window will appear
  with the 8 color sets you have to choose from, with the currently selected
  set highlighted. If you are running the composer for the first time, you
  will have the 8 default color sets to choose from. To change the active
  color set, press up and down on the cursor keypad, the colors will be
  changed instantly to those of the set you have selected. You can change any
  color in any of the sets. Do this by using the left and right arrow keys to
  move the pointer on the right to the color you wish to change. Then you can
  change that color by using the keypad keys 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and 9. You can
  select the RGB values for that color. The values range from 0 (none) to
  3F (full) value for the red, green, and blue components of the color. You
  can also change the name of the active color set by pressing SPACE or ENTER
  and then typing in a new name. Press ESC to exit color editing. But if you
  want the changes you made to remain for the next time you run the composer,
  you must save the configuration file by pressing ALT-F11.


2-C. Configuration file.

  The composer will run with or without a configuration file. You can create
  this file by pressing ALT-F11 on the main screen of the composer. This file
  will be created in whatever directory the composer is in, this may or may
  not be the same directory you are running it from. Every time the composer
  is started, it looks for this configuratin fil