THE STATUS BAR, MENU PANEL, MESSAGE LINE, TIMER AND TITLE BAR: THE STATUS BAR: The STATUS BAR is the strip of buttons between the control panels and the BLOCK EDITOR. It displays information about how many blocks are in the song and the number of the block currently in the BLOCK EDITOR. It also controls some editing features and provides a way of selecting new current blocks, songs and instruments. Block Current Current Song Sequence Number Auto Instrument | Index Index Space Number Song Selector | | | | | | | +---------+------+--+-+--+----+--------+--+------------+---+---+-----+ |0001/0003|000/02|12|E|SP|CHRD|::::::::|01|Piano | < | > |01/02| +---------+------+--+-+--+----+--------+--+------------+---+---+-----+ | | | | | | Octave | | Mute Tracks Instrument Multiple | | Name Songs in Edit Mode Selector Chord Mode Memory The Sequence Index consists of two four-digit numbers which show the position of the current block in the Playing Sequence List and the total number of entries in the Play Sequence List. The left number of the Sequence Index is the position of the current entry in the Play Sequence List. Numbers begin with 0001. If the PLAY PANEL is open you can see the Play Sequence List entries. If you click the left mouse button with the mouse cursor on the rightmost digit, the Play Sequence List will scroll down by one. The right mouse button scrolls it up. This does not change the current block in the BLOCK EDITOR. If you click the second or third digits, the changes are by 10 and 100 respectively. The second number of the Sequence Index is the number of entries in the Play Sequence List. Because a song may use a block many times, the number of entries is usually greater than the number of blocks. If, for example, you use a block three times in a song, the Play Sequence List would show them as three separate entries. There can be as many as 256 block numbers on the Play Sequence List. 8 The number on the left of the Block Number Index displays the number of the current block. It also provides a quick way to bring an existing block into the BLOCK EDITOR. Clicking the rightmost digit of the number with the left or right mouse button brings the next or previous block of the song into the BLOCK EDITOR. If there are more than ten blocks in the song, a click on the second digit adds 10 to the number and brings that block into the editor. The number on the right side of the Block Number Index shows the number of the last block. There can be up to 99 blocks in a song. Because block numbering begins with 00, the number of the last block is always one less than the total number of blocks. OCTAVES: Keyboard Octave Numbers indicate which two octaves of the current instrument are available for playing, or inserting into the BLOCK EDITOR, from the Amiga keyboard. The lesser number is the octave number of the bottom row of keys, while the second number is the higher octave and upper row of keys. If you click the number with the left mouse button, the pitch of the instrument raises an octave. Continued clicking on the button loops through the octaves. Although you may select any octave with this button, the number of octaves is a property of the instrument. Because of this, all octaves may not play with all instruments. For a more detailed description of the keyboard layout read the instruction for the BLOCK EDITOR. 9 EDIT MODE SPACE AND CHORD FUNCTIONS: E (Edit Mode), when active, is highlighted in black. If you play notes on the Amiga keyboard with the Edit Mode selected, OctaMED-Pro inserts them into the song at the Edit Cursor position. Line# | Track - Track - +-----+--------------- | 000 | A#1 10000 D#3 50000 | 001 | | | | | +--+ | | | If the Edit Cursor is here, | you can enter control numbers | and arguments from the keyboard. | If the Edit Cursor is here, you can enter notes and instruments from the keyboard. SP (Space) when active, inserts extra spaces between notes as you enter them from the keyboard. You must have one of the ADV. (advance) buttons on the EDIT PANEL selected for this to work. Because you cannot place the Edit Bar on the lines between notes while SP is active, it is usually best to select it when composing or entering music, and deactivate it while editing. CHRD (Chord) turns the chord entering mode on and off. You can also use the CHRD function for MIDI instruments. Instructions for entering chords are in the RANGE PANEL section. MUTING TRACKS: While editing, it is often useful to mute some tracks while listening to others. You may selectively mute tracks by clicking the small Mute Track buttons on the STATUS BAR. The sixteen rectangles represent the sixteen possible tracks. When a rectangle is black, the track it represents is on. When it is in raised relief, the track is muted. 10 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7| +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |8|9|A|B|C|D|E|F| +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Mute Track Buttons You may also toggle tracks off and on by clicking inside the main edit area of the track you want to affect in the BLOCK EDITOR. There are buttons on the RANGE and EDIT PANELS that you may use for the same purpose. Also, the default map for the numeric keypad will mute the tracks. THE CURRENT INSTRUMENT: Instrument Number is the number of the current instrument. The current instrument is the one you can play or enter from the keyboard. You can change the current instrument to another instrument in memory by clicking the instrument number with the left or right mouse button. The maximum number of instruments for a song is 63. Instrument positions are numbered from 01 to 1V. Instrument Name is the file name of the current instrument. MULTIPLE SONGS: OctaMED-Pro can load and save many songs together as one Multi-Module file. Song Selector selects another song from the Multi-Module when there are multiple songs in memory. Clicking the right arrow brings the next song into the edit area. If there is only one song, or the current song is the last song, OctaMED-Pro will offer to add a new song. 11 If you answer "Y" to the MESSAGE LINE prompt, OctaMED-Pro creates a new, empty song. You can add several new, empty songs and avoid the prompt by holding Shift while clicking the right Song Selector arrow. If there are multiple songs in memory,you can move among them with the arrow buttons. If the last song is current, you can delete it by pressing the left arrow while holding the Shift key. OctaMED-Pro will ask for confirmation before deleting it. The Current Song gadget displays the number of the current song. Multiple Songs in Memory indicates how many songs are currently in memory. OctaMED-Pro can maintain up to 99 songs if your computer has enough memory to accommodate them. Multiple songs can be extremely useful when composing. You can design and test sections of a composition in one song and then cut and paste them to another. You can also instruct OctaMEDPlayer to play songs selectively from a multi-module. There is, however, one restriction: all songs must share the same set of instruments. OctaMED-Pro can automatically remap instruments when loading a new song.For example, if there is a song in memory and you click the right arrow gadget, the MESSAGE LINE will ask if you want to "Add a new song (Y/N)?". If you answer "Y", OctaMED-Pro will add an empty one-block song. If you then load a song into that song position, the MESSAGE LINE will ask, "Remap instrument (Y/N)?".If you reply "N", OctaMED-Pro flushes all the previous instruments from memory, and loads the new instruments in the positions where they were saved in the new song. A "Y" reply will cause the new instruments to load into empty instrument positions and preserves the instruments from the first song. Then, OctaMED-Pro will change the instrument numbers of the new song to the remapped positions in the instrument list. 12 When you clear a song or load a new one, if there are unused instruments in memory, OctaMED-Pro offers to flush them from memory.You can save all the songs in memory together as a single Multi-Module. Select MOD0 or MOD1 from the FILE PANEL SAVE: buttons and answer "N" to the "Save only current song" prompt. OctaMED-Pro does not save instruments in the Multi-Module that are unused.The advantage of using Multi-Modules is that there is no duplication of instruments and there is no wait for songs to load. The disadvantage is they monopolize more memory. MENU PANEL: From this panel you can select the various control panels and editors. +-------+-------+ +---------+ | FILES | MISC | | = = = = | < BLOCK EDITOR +-------+-------+ +---------+ | PLAY | VOL | | (notes) | < GRAPHIC NOTATION EDITOR +-------+-------+ +---------+ | INSTR | MIDI | | SYNTH | < SYNTHETIC SOUND EDITOR +-------+-------+ +---------+ | BLOCK | TRANS | | SMPED | < SAMPLE SOUND EDITOR +-------+-------+ +---------+ | EDIT | RANGE | | SLIST | < SAMPLE LIST EDITOR +-------+-------+ +---------+ Panel Buttons Editor Buttons 13 THE TIMER: The TIMER is always available. It is in the upper left corner of the screen. Sometimes the TITLE BAR hides it, but you can toggle it to the front or back by clicking the right mouse button anywhere on the screen. It is occasionally useful to know the length of a song or to know when a certain passage in a song begins or ends. Without any action on your part the TIMER will reset to 00:00 and start timing when a song begins to play. You may use STOP and CONT.SONG on the PLAY PANEL or use keyboard equivalents (Space Bar and Shift-Space Bar) any time and as often as necessary without losing the elapsed time. Clicking on the TIMER will reset it. To time a section of a song, play to the beginning of the section. Then stop the song with the Space Bar. Reset the timer by clicking on it. Click CONT.SONG on the PLAY PANEL. Stop the song when it arrives at the end of the section. The TIMER will now indicate the length of the section in minutes and seconds. THE MESSAGE LINE: At the top left of the screen, OctaMED-Pro displays messages, reports errors, or asks you to make choices when necessary. Most of these choices require entering "Y" or "N" from the keyboard. THE TITLE BAR: You can select the window TITLE BAR by clicking it with the left mouse button. If you use the right mouse button, you can toggle it off and on by clicking anywhere. When the TITLE BAR is visible OctaMED-Pro turns off the BLOCK EDITOR scrolling and the graphic V.U. meters to allow the computer's processor to concentrate on playing the music. This can be useful in certain tasks that require maximum CPU performance. 14