M U S I C C O N S T R U C T I O N S E T Getting Started 1. TO LOAD: Start you disk as you would any other. NOTE: Owners of Atari XL computers must hold down the OPTION key while turning the computer on. You may stop holding the key down when the Electronic Arts logo appears on the screen. 2. TO BEGIN: Press RETURN when the program finishes loading.(If you wait a few seconds instead of pressing RETURN immediately, the music already on the disk will begin playing. Press the SPACEBAR to move the program ahead to the next piece. Press RETURN to begin using the program.) MCS Disk Musical Table of Contents CANON --- Canon in D by Johannes Pachelbel BUMBLE --- Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov INVENT --- Two part Invention No.8 by J.S.Bach TURKEY --- Traditional NEW --- Load this whenever you are constructing music and want to erase what you have done and start over. To Construct Music and Use the Other Controls To pick up notes, etc. so you can drag them onto or off the musical staffs at the top of the screen, simply point at what ever you want to pick up and press RETURN or the button on your joystick. To move the hand, use your joystick or Control/cursor (arrow) key combinations. Pressing RETURN or the joystick button again will set down whatever you're carrying, wherever you're pointing. You turn controls on and off in the same way - pointing at the Piano icon for instance and pressing the button or RETURN will cause the computer to begin playing whatever is in the display. Pressing RETURN or the button again will cause it to stop. IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you only want to use one staff, use the top one. Your music will not play if the bottom staff is used alone. To Change Your Controls You may also control the program with an Atari Touch Pad or a KoalaPad. Simply turn on the Plug icon. (It7s on the lower right, just below the Disk icon.) Then press the SPACEBAR to make different options appear and press RETURN to select the one you want. In addition to the on-screen hand control, The Plug icon will present you with two other sets of choices: 1)muscial range and voice number, 2) printer type. Choosing the four voice, four octave option in the second set cuts the bottom octave from your MCS range and causes every note to be played as though it were written one octave higher. In general we recommend using the 3 voice, 5 octave option. To Play Music To play a piece of music you've constructed or loaded, turn on the Piano. As the music scroll by, the notes will sound when they pass through the area above the small triangular play head (located just above the whole note). If you want to skip ahead or go back to hear a passage again, use the Arrow icons on either side of the Piano to scroll backwards and forwards through the piece. Turning on Home (just below the Piano) sends you back to the piece's beginning. Loading and Saving Music To Load the music already on the MCS disk, turn on the Disk icon (it's just below the Plug), then type LOAD and the name of the selection you want (LOAD BUMBLE, for instance) and press RETURN. When the red disk drive light goes out, press RETURN again. To save music to another disk, place the disk in the drive, then type SAVE followed by the whatever name you want to use (it can be up to 8 characters long) and press RETURN. When your drive stops, remove your files disk, put the MCS disk back in the drive and press RETURN again. To load music from your files disk, follow the same procedures but type LOAD instead of SAVE. IMPORTANT NOTICE: Before you ese a files disk for the first time, you must format it. To do that, simply put the disk in the drive, the type FORMAT and press RETURN. You may use this command anytime you're using your MCS program without disturbing the music in memory. To see a list of what you have on your files disk, type CATALOG and press RETURN. You can save at least 20 pieces on a disk. Cut and Paste Turn on the scissors, place them over a measure and press the number key on the keyboard for the number of measures you want to cut. Pressing 3 for example will cut the measure you're on and the next two measures to the right of it. If you try to cut a group of measures with more notes than the Cut and Paste buffer can handle. You'll hear a beep and the command will not be executed. To put down copies of the last group of measures you cut into the buffer, turn on the paste pot. Place it over the measure which you'd like the buffer music inserted in front of, then press the button on your pointing device or RETURN. Speed, Volume and Sound Controls The five gauges in the center let you control playback speed, volume and sound be using the hand to move the gauge marker up and down. Point to the center of a gauge in the region of a marker, and each push of a button or RETURN will move the marker on notch closer to the end of the finger. SPEED - moving the marker up speeds thing up, moving it down slows them down. (when you're trying to understand how a piece of music works "slow it down" is almost always good advice.) VOLUME - Moving the marker down makes the music louder, moving it uo makes it softer. The left control is for the top staff and the rightis for the bottom one. SOUND - these control let you reorchestrate your music. the left control is for the top staff and the right is for the bottom. Each can be set for any of 13 different instrumental sounds. The following names, listed from the top of the gauge to the bottom, will help you think about each instrumental sound. 1) harpsichord 2) piano 3) flute 4) organ 5) accordion 6) echo 7) bounce 8) vibrato 9) space case 10) bellows 11) slur 12) swallow 13) drums NOTE: Use only with the treble clef to play bass drum. Add an octave raiser and place notes on the highest octave for a snare drum. The Time Signature Control and Beat Counter Setting the Time Signature sets the playback scrolling speed to match the meter a piece is written in. The beat counter (next to the scissors icon) counts along as the music plays. If it finds a measure with too many or too few beats. It changes to inverse video. If the beat counter changes to inverse for a measure but everything looks all right to you, start taking the measure apart a symbol at a time. Chances are you're accidentally put one symbol on top of another and the computer is doing its best to play both what you can see and what you've covered up. The Note Indicator Point at a note (or space or line) and press P ;the appropriate tone will sound and its name will appear in the indicator. To make the Note Indicator automatically sound a new tone and produce a new letter whenever you point at a new line or space, press Control-S. Pressing Control-S again returns the Note Indicator to manual control. When you're carrying a note, pressing P when you're in the area above and below the staffs will produce a helpful line segment. To Transpose Pieces Into Another Key. Pointing at the word Key and pressing RETURN or a button causes key names to scroll by. Pressing it again picks whichever name is visible and computer rewrites the music to fit the new key. If you try to transpose to a key too high or low you'll hear a warning beep and the command will not be carried out. Inverse video means you're moving down the scale from your starting point; regular video, that you're moving up. Note: If you enter a key signature manually (by dragging on sharps or flats one at a time), the Key Change Control will not show the correct key signature until you use it to successfully transpose a another key. Keyboard Shortcuts As you gain experience with your MCS program, you'll find the keyboard helpful even in joystick and Koala modes: Pointing where you'd like a note, rest, clef, etc. to be and pressing the appropriate key will cause it to be done. 1 thru 5 -- 16th notes thru whole notes 6 thru 0 -- 16th rests thru whole rests K and L -- 32nd note and 32nd rest (keyboard only) S -- sharp F -- flat N -- natural D -- dot I -- tie O -- octave raiser T -- treble B -- bass DEL -- erases whatever's being pointed at. SPACEBAR -- puts down another of whatever you put down last. U -- turns the note or tie you're carrying upside down. = -- scrolls forward one measure A,Z,: and ; -- move one notch up, down, left and right H -- sends the hand Home. Q -- sends the hand to another quarter rest in the part collection * -- sends hand to the middle of the composing area. P -- causes the Note Indicator to function CTRL-S -- toggles the Note Indicator between manual and automatic. CTRL-P -- begins printing If You Hear a Beep If you hear a beep when you try a command, one of the following is most likely happening: 1. You're trying to put in a longer piece of music than the program can handle. 2. You're trying to cut more music into the buffer than it can handle. 3. You're trying to put a note on top of a note. 4. You're trying to change to a key that would make some of the notes in your piece either too high or too low for the MCS range. 5. You're trying to use the Change Key Command on a song which has different key signatures in treble and bass clefs or which has some other symbol placed among the accidentals to the left of the double bar. If want to transpose, don't put anything to the left of the double bar except sharps, flats and clefs. 6. You're trying to use the scissors to the left of the double bar. They won't work there. How to Print Your Music If you have an Atari 850 Interface Module and a parallel printer capable of graphics printing, you should bw able to use your MCS program to print copies of the music you construct with it. Once you've told the program about the printer you're using pressing CTRL-P will cause it to start printing the measures on the screen at the time. After 2 1/2 measures the printer will stop. Pressing any key will cause another 2 1/2 measures to be printed. Press ESC to stop printing. To tell your MCS program about the printer, turn on the Plug icon and press RETURN until the word "printer" appears on te screen. Next look at the short list below to see if your printer is there. If it is, type the sequence next to it exactly and then press RETURN. If your printer isn't in the list, skip ahead to the next paragraph to learn how to find the code you need. C-Itoh 8510 -- simply press RETURN and the code will be entered automatically. Okidata with Okigraph dot-addressable graphics --- c???????cn?????? Epson -- @Ag?????m@Kaa???E [An uncapitalized letter means type the charatcter while holding the CRTL key. '@' symbol means press ESC twice for this character.] The codes you enter tell your printer four things: 1) to do 7/72 of an inch line feeds (also called line spacing); 2) to use unidirectional print if it normally prints bidirectionally; 3) to set the vertical spacing (17cpi, also called compressed print mode, will work best; 4) to set graphic mode to 256 dots. When you find the codes you need in your printer manual (or get them from whoever sold you your printer) type codes 1),2) and 3) first. If they don't total 8 characters add enough ?'s to bring the total to 8, then type in 4) and add enough ?'s to fill the line out to a total of 16 characters. Next, if you have an Epson printer or one which does graphics like the Epson (most Significant Bit on Top), type E. Then press RETURN to complete the process. T H E E N D