Getting Started --------------- Tunesmith is a very powerful program, with an almost overwhelming number of features, keypresses, modes, and so on. Most of those features are not needed to write simple tunes, though -- Tunesmith is quite easy to get started with. The purpose of this document is to describe the basic commands and structure of the program, and even to offer a few suggestions on how to write a tune; once you've got a feel for how things work you can check out the quick reference or (gasp!) read the manual, to learn about the more advanced features. Topics covered: o Designing an instrument o Using the music editor o Macro manager o Using macros o Saving and playing a tune o Writing good tunes Designing an instrument ----------------------- Keys that will be used: F3 Enter instrument editor F1 Enter note editor +/- Change values; shift to change by large amounts space Toggle bits g Toggle gate bit shift-s Save instrument A song isn't much without an instrument, so that's a good place to start: press F3 to enter the instrument editor. This is where instruments are designed (naturally!) -- in fact it just lets you play around with SID, and see+hear the result. To get started, use the cursor keys to move down to "sustain", and use the +/- keys to select a sustain value of 15. Then use the cursor keys to move over to the sawtooth waveform, and press the space bar to select it. Press 'g' to toggle the gate bit, which turns the note on. Uh-oh, no sound is being generated! That is probably because the frequency is set to zero: move down to "frequency" and using shift + or shift - try increasing the frequency -- voila! Once you've got a sound you like, press "Shift-s" to save the instrument. Save this one as instrument 0. Up to 14 instruments may be designed in this way. Now it's time to write a song! If you do something that locks up SID, change stuff back and reset the TEST bit (and perhaps the GATE bit too). Using the music editor ---------------------- Keys used: cursor keys Navigate shift-w Set volume shift-i Select instrument shift-z Restart song CTRL-p Play song a-y, a#-l# Notes F7 Disk menu To enter the music editor, press F1. The three columns are of course the music data fields for voice 1, voice 2, and voice 3. The cursor keys are used to navigate. It's awfully nice to be able to actually hear music when its being played, so the player ought to be told to turn up the volume. Press shift-w to select a "set volume" instruction. The cursor should be flashing in the action box, waiting for you to enter a number. Enter "15", or just press return to accept the default value of 15. Now that voice could really use an instrument, and that one just designed will do nicely. Press shift-i to set an instrument, and enter "0" as the instrument number. There should now be two instructions on the screen -- VOL (set volume) and LIN (load instrument). Now it's time to enter in some notes. The keyboard has already been set up to enter notes in a particular way. Press "a" to select the note A, press "a#" to select an A#, and so on. After selecting a note, the action box should say "?Oct", meaning it is waiting for you to enter an octave, so enter an octave between 0 and 7. Finally, you need to enter in a duration. I have set it up so that "1" corresponds to whole notes, "2" corresponds to half notes, "4" corresponds to quarter notes, and so on. Press one of the number keys -- "4" is a good choice. Plop! The editor should insert a line and move you on to it. If you think three keys per note is rather a lot, you are right. At any time you can hit RETURN or any other editing key to accept the current values; the + and - keys also come in handy here, and you might also try the single-keypress mode with shift-1 (!). Naturally the manual and quick reference have more info. After entering in a few other notes, the field needs to be ended. Either press "shift-s" to enter a "stop" code, or press "shift-z" to enter a "restart player" code (I recommend shift-z). If all is well, the moment of truth has arrived: press CTRL-p to play the song! Press CTRL-p again to stop the song. CTRL-p always plays the song from the very beginning. Naturally, the cursor keys are used to navigate around the field data. There are some other useful editing features: C=-x, -c, -p Cut and paste < > Navigate quickly through fields HOME Set bookmark C=-HOME Return to bookmark insert/delete What you expect C=-+, C=-- Double/halve tempo if playing tune The last two are very useful for "fast-forwarding" through tunes, as they don't permanently change the tempo. Just entering notes is OK, but to access the real power of the player macros are needed. Macro Manager ------------- Keys: F5 Enter macro manager. return Edit macro r/s Exit macro editor c Compile macro What are macros exactly? Macros are little programs which are written and then compiled, which can then be called by the player to modify the sound, or to talk to outside programs, and things like that. Lucky for you I have included some useful macros with the program, so there isn't any need to go writing some from scratch. From the macro manager, press F7 to access the disk menu. Load one of the sample macro files. If all goes well, you will be back in the macro manager, and several names will be printed on the screen -- these are all macros. To see what a macro looks like, select one with the cursor and press RETURN -- this will put you in the text editor. To exit the editor, press CTRL-backarrow or run/stop. Most of the example macros are documented. Before being used, macros must be compiled. From the macro manager, press "c" to compile all macros. If all goes well a "compilation successful" message will appear -- the macros are now a part of the music player! To see how macros are used, we need to go back to the music player (using F1). Using macros ------------ Keys used: shift-6 Change status display shift-l Activate local macro shift-v Load local variable shift-2 Change macro field display Usually you'll just have to look at the macro and the tune it is used in to learn how to use it. By playing around a little (especially with the corresponding tune), most macros become pretty easy to use. What is important to know is that some macros need extra information -- how fast an arpeggio should be, for example. This is usually done by using variables, which the player can load values to. From the editor, press shift-6 to change the status display, until it displays the various macro names. The player must be told to start up a macro: shift-l is used to activate a local macro. Once activated, it will keep on going until it is deactivated (using C=-l)! So first try a simple macro, like vibrato. Go up to some notes and press INSERT to insert a new line. Then use shift-l to insert an "Activate local macro" instruction, and enter the macro number. The message bar should now read "Activate local 0 Vibrato 1" or something similar. Now try playing the song again, using CTRL-p, and listen to what happens! The arpeggio macros are similar, but need a parameter passed to them to tell them how fast to play. Local variable #7 is used for this purpose. Press shift-v (for "v"ariable) and the action box should change to read "?Var#" -- press 7, and then enter a value of 2 or 3. The message bar should now read "L7=4". Now activate the macro using shift-l, and again use CTRL-p to try it out! Cool, huh! Try different values for the speed, and see what happens. Also, try pressing shift-2, to toggle the way in which macros are displayed in the fields. It actually doesn't matter if the variable was loaded before activating the macro or after, just as long as it is before the next note. To deactivate the macros, use C=-l. Saving and playing a tune ------------------------- From the editor, press F7 to access the disk menu. From here you can load and save tunes -- try loading one of the sample tunes. Once a tune is saved, it can be played from outside the editor. From BASIC, you can just load it up ,8,1 and type SYS 4102. To play a tune from ML, see the reference manual (or playvars). Writing good tunes ------------------ Now, I'm not so pretentious as to suggest that there is some "method" of writing music. That is not the purpose of this section. But there are things that set the great compositions apart from the merely amatuer, or adequate, tunes, and my purpose in this section is to suggest some ideas, and how to get started if you've never written a tune before. Always remember: *anyone* can write music. Writing _good_ music is another matter :), but, as with most things, stick with it and things will become easier with practice and experience. Don't worry about writing a masterpiece on the first try -- just treat each tune as an opportunity to learn something new, and you'll do just fine, and grow in the process. And remember that the main point is to have FUN! So, to write a good tune, you need to do just two things. The first thing to do is to come up with an idea: a melody, a harmony, a rhythm, a riff, a chord progression, even a sound. You can think up original ideas, or you can use an idea from another tune. The latter is actually very common, much more than you might think. For example, many songs with totally different melodies have the same chord progressions. Sometimes melodies are taken and changed around. And sometimes people do a straight cover tune of a favorite composer. (On a related subject, most professional musiscans begin by imitating their favorite performers). Once you have a good idea, the next step is to develop it. A song that is just a single, simple idea gets really boring really fast -- like talking to a guy who midlessly dwells on some trivial little idea, or reading a book that says the same thing over and over. A good tune develops the underlying ideas, opens up new directions, lets them grow. How do you go about developing a musical idea, anyways? There are all kinds of things people do. One of the best ways to learn is to listen carefully to music, and pay attention to what that particular composer or performer does. Sometimes it means taking a melody and playing it backwards, or upside down, or rearranged, or offset by a beat, or transposed, or any number of things. Sometimes it means improvising new ideas (say, a melody or a riff) on top of an established idea (perhaps a chord progression or rhythm). Sometimes it means distilling an idea to its essence, and developing that essence in a logical way (perhaps you started with a melody of three rising notes and two fast falling notes). And sometimes it just means, well, taking the musical statement, and realizing that it suggests a new idea, but that they together make it possibile for this new idea over here, and .... It's tempting to plop down a bunch of disconnected ideas, but this invariably turns out bad, sounding turgid and forced. The important thing is that the idea develops and grows naturally, to wherever it eventually leads. This second step is the hard part, and the one which really separates the wheat from the chaff. It is also where you really get to express yourself, to show that you can not only come up with an idea, but to _do_ something with it. The really great composers and musicians -- the Mozarts, the Beatles, the Thelonius Monks -- can not only come up with a great idea and develop it, they can even make something great out of absolutely nothing -- to construct a great big cathedral of a tune out of a little bird song they heard, or the rhythm made by a cart rolling down a street. And moreover they do it so cleverly and naturally that you might not even notice unless you're paying attention. The tune flows so naturally and logically as to seem almost obvious, as if it couldn't be written any other way, and speaks to you, engages you in conversation, at some fundamental level. So, that should get you started. I hope you found this helpful or stimulating, and I hope you can put it to good use. Each tune becomes easier with practice and experience, and as they build a solid foundation you will be writing fine tunes in no time. I believe you will find it to be a rewarding experience. SLJ 8/27/98