You've been introduced to the Sidplayer, which plays songs. You've even seen some of the ele ments of music. But in order to play your own songs or tunes, you have to create them.
That's what the€pSi^^fe for. It's ^
and debug up to three voices of a song. The program contains features which make music editing easy. Since there are so many features and the program can appear rather intimidating the first time you use it, be assured that you'll see exactly how each feature works.
Using the Sid Editor
To use the Editor, £>k% a^^iE^s&feittto-port 2 and select the Sid Editor from the menu. The EDITOR.OBJ file automatically loads and the screen blanks while the program initializes. (If you want to copy EDITOR to another disk, you must also copy the file EDITOR.OBJ, the machine language portion of EDITOR.) The Sid Editor is a graphically complex program, using redefined characters, sprites, and raster scan interrupts, so it takes awhile to initialize. When the program is ready, it displays a main menu.
1) PLAY MUSIC 2) EDIT MUSIC 3) LOAD MUSIC FILE 4) SAVE MUSIC FILE 5) DISK DIRECTORY or
<—( 5) (NOT AVAILABLE)
! J 6) QUIT
f—{ EDIT Music
Press the 2 key to Wkst0W®M:,
^fi Th dl h
y y
. The display changes to show the editing screen.
["I The first thing you'll notice is that it's divided into differ ent levels. The top level shows the current voice number and the amount of free memory remaining. The next level displays r""j the current key signature and tells whether the measure
fea-.-» ture is on or off. The level below that has one of the three ac cidental symbols highlighted.
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Chapter 5
The next level is the main level, where notes are selected.
The main level displays the current pitch in three different forms: as a note on the grand staff, as a piano key, and as a letter and octane number. The current duration is indicated by a symbol and a! word. The level below this main level is used for entering rests and ties. The bottom level contains a box in which entered notes appear.
i'M*thFiRam4w^/ this is the method for using the
joystick: ,
1. Push the stick up^
2. Push the tkl^
the current p&ek?the current^fea$i©n.
and release the
While you're in the main level, pushing the stick up or down changes the pitch. The quarter note on the grand staff moves, the next key on the piano is indicated, and the written
display changes. A^iodfcei^soc^ pushing
the joystick.
u u
u
The Sidplayer Editor.
u
Take a moment to enter a few notes. Just selecf a pitch and press the joystick button. A note1appeafrtev*«'bo)f in-the b4dhd*4tehjft. The jagfe, looks like a quarter note, the current duration, and has the notejaame and
^3ieta.ve>5mjfiabejvrwritteivabQ,ve it. As you enter more notes, each one displays in the box—all notes scroll to the left to make room for the next.
110
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U
U
Sidplayer
If you press the button without changing the pitch, the entered note is set at the same pitch as the previous note.
To change the duration, push the stick left or right. Notice that aU duration ateo^ ^^|$;.^ev^pji^' second note. Now press the button. The note which shows in the box is in the current pitch, but it has a new duration.
For the moment, ignore the^HKEf^^ marked fF Now that you've entered a few notes, you might like to
hear your musical creation. ReMmWTftriffaM*^^
i#feto^terffe^rh press the 1 key for PLAY, fol
l h h h
g^ p y
lowed by the RETURN key to play the voice. When the voice is through, the program waits for a new selection from the main menu.
To continue editing, press the 2 key to select EDIT and then the 1 key to choose voice 1 again. The display switches back to the editing screen, and the notes that you've entered appear in the same position as before.
As notes are entered, the previous notes are scrolled to the left. Since the botfom-4^^
notes have to scroll off the screen. Sometimes you'll want to scroll those notes back onto the screen to review them.*Si2f@fl-ing ean be done^ma
Press the cursor key on the left (ignore the up and down l&g). All the notes scroll to the right. The note which scrolled off the screen appears at the left edge, and the most recently entered note moves back into the box. Every time you press this cursor key, the notes scroll one position.
As the notes move, the current pitch and duration change to reflect each note which appears. You can scroll as far as you want. Scrolling stops when you come to the beginning of the r""| voice.
Press the cursor key on the right to scroll in the opposite direction. Scrolling stops at the end of the voice.
J—] Replacing notes. It's easy to correct a mistake made while entering notes. Use the cursor keys to scroll the notes until the one which needs to be changed appears in the box. Select the j—1 correct pitch and duration and press the button. The old note
is replaced with the new one. You can then scroll back to the end of the voice and continue entering notes.
j"—J ,-Jisseft. If you miss a note and need to insert'one, scroll the notes until the insertion point is reached. The note in the
r~! in
Chapter 5
box will be to the right of the inserted note. Next,(§n&ss Si^B3teilfSl/^lii The note in the box and all notes to its right scroll to the right, ^^j^g%Jbla^ in which you can en
ter a note.
If necessary, you can insert several blanks. The only thing you cannot do while blanks exist is scroll or return to main
menu. Ym ro^fe^ ,
before adding new notes at the end. | )
Delete. To get rid of an extra note or blank, just press the DEL key (the unshifted^II^I^Et key). The note or blank in the box is deleted, and the notes to its right scroll to the left to fill in the gap.
When deleting notes, remember that the keyboard is buff ered for up to ten keystrokes. If you press the DEL key a sec ond time, before the Editor is finished deleting the first note, a second note will also be deleted.
Clear. The clear feature is used when you want to delete This allows you to delete several notes at once. Press
,SfeHii*»6M^/HOME. Since clearing can be disastrous when done accidentally, themte<em<m&mta&<m, prompt. Press the Y key to erase the note currently in the box and all the notes to its right, or hit the N key to cancel the clear.
By scrolling to the beginning of the voice and using SHIFT-CLR/HOME, you can erase the entire voice.
Mo*4ftg^4he4^^ To move
to the beginning or end of a voice, use^the;to€^
aiftf^irrespectively. Pressing SHIFT-f1 will immediately take you to the beginning of the voice. Likewise, pressing SHIFT-f3 takes you to the end of the voice.
Accidentals. Figure 5-12 shows three symbols, called