Welcome to the exciting world of computer music making! The Hybrid Music 5000 Synthesiser is your gateway to a fascinating adventure of discovery in music and sound.

The Music 5000 package turns your BBC Micro into a computerised music production studio - with the help of four different studio departments, you can take a piece of music all the way from a sheet score, an idea of your own, or one of the supplied examples, through arranging, playing and 'live' mix-down to a finished performance complete with realistic instruments and studio effects.

The Synthesiser unit is a powerful stereo digital synthesiser capable of a vast range of sounds that includes natural-sounding, synthesiser-type, and new abstract instruments - up to eight different ones playing together. You can make your own instruments by modifying any of the standard selection, or designing new ones from scratch, choosing from hundreds of waveforms, envelopes and sound control settings.

The Music 5000 is controlled through AMPLE (it stands for Advanced Music Production Language and Environment), the most powerful music language ever created for a microcomputer. Its heart is the AMPLE Nucleus ROM - this provides all the basic functions for programming and playing music, including a built-in computer music notation and interfaces to system extensions. On top of this is Studio 5000 - an advanced and easy-to-use environment of integrated editors, menus, and control modules in which you work to build music and design sounds.

This manual has been carefully written for the beginner to computer music. The Tutorial Section takes you through the process of entering, editing, arranging, mixing, and performing musical pieces, and selecting, modifying and designing the musical instruments that the players will use. For further information on any subject you turn to the Reference Section, where descriptions of all the commands, symbols and controls are laid out in an easy-to-access form.

But it doesn't end there. AMPLE is also a full-spec programming language of enormous flexibility - to the standard date and control structures are added advanced music programming features such as concurrency and random access to the time domain. Those who are prepared to delve into this side of the system are rewarded with the power to create computer-controlled music, custom music notations, new special effects, interactive musical machines... all the way up to user interfaces and new languages. In fact, Nucleus and Studio 5000 are themselves almost entirely written in AMPLE! Though all these programming facilities are present in the standard system, they are beyond the scope of this Guide - they are catered for by a separate manual: the AMPLE Programmer's Guide.

And finally, we come to expansion. From the ground up, AMPLE is designed for expansion - the Nucleus ROM already incorporates system interfaces that allow further hardware units to be added in a completely integrated fashion, complete with matching Studio 5000-style software. The most important of these is the Music 4000 Keyboad, a high-quality four-octave music keyboard that adds an amazing range of keyboard performance, recording and music input facilities to your existing system.

If you have returned your User Registration slip to us, we can send you full information of other, future developments as soon as it is available.

You should have a system set up as described in the Installation Instructions, including a system disc or cassette created from the issue disc or cassette supplied. Turn on your computer system, Music 5000 and amplifier, and continue.

To start the system from disc, place the system disc in the top drive (drive 0) and press and release BREAK while holding down SHIFT.

To start the system from cassette, load the cassette into the recorder at the start of side 1 and enter:

CHAIN""

Set the recorder to 'play', and follow any further screen directions.

After a moment, you will see the AMPLE Nucleus sign-on message on the screen, and the system will continue to load. When this is complete, the Studio 5000 Main Menu will appear.

If the menu fails to appear, refer to the Installation Instructions supplied with the package.

A variety of example pieces are supplied, ready for you to play. To see the selection, press f9 (the right-most red key - take care not to press its near-neighbour BREAK). The 'Jukebox' will load and display a menu of pieces. This is the first of three menus - to page through them all, you simply press the RETURN key.

To play a piece from a menu, press the DOWN key (one of the arrow keys on the right of the keyboard) to move the green stripe (the menu cursor) down to the piece you want. If you go past, press UP to get back. When you've positioned the cursor, press RETURN - the piece will automatically load, present its title display, and begin to play.

You can return to the Jukebox menu at any time by pressing f9 again.

To return to the Main Menu from a Jukebox menu or from a piece, press f0, marked 'MAIN' on the '%' line of the function key strip.

When using AMPLE, the computer keyboard works much as you would expect, with a few exceptions.

Most of the time you work in an Editor, where the keys have their own special functions (described later on, and summarised in the chapter 'Editor controls'). Editors respond to lower-case letters, so you should leave the CAPS LOCK light off.

When typing commands, you use the SHIFT key as normal to enter upper-case letters. You use DELETE to remoke mistakes and RETURN to end each command line.

You should never need to press BREAK, and it is a bad idea to do so. If your computer has a BREAK lock, make sure it is engaged. If you should press BREAK by mistake when working on a program, you should save it straight-away and then restart the system.

The function keys provide the commonly-used commands shown on the key strip on the '%' (bottom) line. You can use the corresponding key instead of the command wherever you need it at the end of a line.

The Main Menu is the Control Centre of the system. Therough it, you access the Studio 5000 Editors, the 'departments' of the studio, and key functions like loading, saving and placing pieces.

IMAGE MISSING

To select an option, you use the UP and DOWN keys to position the menu cursor, then press RETURN. Some options return to the menu, while others exit it entirely. To call the Main Menu back, just press f0.

Here's a run-down of the options on the Main Menu (they are fully described later on):

In addition to the Main Menu, AMPLE has a large set of direct commands. These include the menu options (the simpler ones actually show their commands when selected) and further command-only functions. The chapter 'AMPLE Commands' lists the most important ones.

Commands are entered at the '%' prompt, which appears in the command area of the Main Menu. You switch to the command area from the Main Menu by either selecting 'Commands', or pressing TAB. To get back to menu mode, hit TAB again. This convention applies throughout the system - TAB always goes to command mode and back again.

You always press RETURN at the end of a command line to enter it. Except in special cases, you can put more than one command on a line, but put spaces between them to avoid confusion. You must type commands in upper or lower case as specified. You can abbreviate most of them with a dot but try the abbreviation before relying on it.

Any command line starting with a '*' is sent to the Operating System, so you enter '*' commands in the usual way.

You will inevitably come across error messages - announcements starting with '!' that appear when the system cannot carry out your requests. Often, the problem will be obvious - when not, look the message up in the chapter 'Errors' for an explanation.

As in other computer languages, the complete sequence of AMPLE instructions to do a particular job is called a program. In AMPLE, this job is usually playing a piece of music.

There is one program in memory at all times, even if it is a clear, empty program. The program can be saved to disc or cassette using the Menu option (or the equivalent command) and reloaded in a similar way later on. When you load a program, it replaces the one in memory.

The basic unit of an AMPLE program is the word. Each word has a small job of its own (you can look on it as a sub-program) and is created, edited, and if necessary deleted independently of others. AMPLE commands and instructions are also words, so to make a distinction, we call words in the program user words. System word names are in upper case, and user word names are largely lower case, so there is rarely any confusion.

The complete sequence of instructions in a word is called its definition. They can be anything from musical notes to sound settings. When you build a piece of music, all the information you enter through the various Editors - musical parts, instrument designs, mix controls etc. - is stored as user words, and therefore becomes part of the program.

You can always view the word contents (or definition) in the form of computer program text, even if it is a staff score, for example. This means that you can make, print and type-in complete piece listings, directly at the keyboard (See the command WRITE).

AMPLE words are more than just storage devices, because each one can be used as an instruction in a new word, just like an AMPLE system word. For example, you could create common musical sections as individual words, and then arrange them in sequence in a further word to make the complete part. In this respect, words are like procedures in other languages, but they are much more versatile: a word could be anything from a new musical symbol to a command to play the complete piece.

One of the most important features of a computer music system is 'concurrency' - the ability to do more than one thing at the same time. This lets you play musical parts in parallel and, most importantly, control the music from the keyboard at the same time. AMPLE is fully concurrent, offering up to 10 parallel players (musical parts) plus the master plater than runs the keyboard and screen.

In an ordinary computer language such as BASIC, when you enter RUN to run the program, the system goes away and does not accept commands until it is finished. In AMPLE, RUN starts the program running and then returns control immediately; the system continues to accept commands while the program runs. This means that:

• the music plays 'in the background' while you continue to work
• you can control and visually monitor the music as it plays
• you have a menu option and command to stop the program
• an error in the music may interrupt you at the keyboard

This last happens only if there is a fatal fault in the music, but this could occur right in the middle of you typing a command.

Editors are AMPLE's 'user interfaces'. Each one is a self-contained application program designed for a particular stage of the music creation process.

When you select an Editor from the menu, it takes control to provide a command mode with extra commands specific to the editor, and its own edit mode. You switch between these with TAB. In edit mode, you enter and edit data, for example music on the staff. For some jobs, you can edit 'live' (while the music is playing). You use command mode to store and recall the data as words, rather lke files stored and recalled from BASIC. The words are then combined at a later stage to make a complete piece.

The three editors are:

You can return to the menu from any Editor's command mode by pressing f0.

Studio 5000 exists as a set of modules - integrated system programs which are loaded into memory either permanently when the system starts, or, as in the case of Editors, just when required. Modules are held under directory 'M' on the system disc.

Editor modules loading is carried out automatically by the Main Menu. On disc systems, the modules must be on the current drive or the drive specified for modules (see the chapter 'Further use of AMPLE'). On cassette systems, you must follow loading instructions when they appear.

To make module loading quicker, you can note that tape counter positions for the three Editor modules, and wind to these points to load them.

The Main Menu keeps each Editor module until another editor is selected, but discards it to make room on each of the 'Run program', 'Load program' and 'New program' options. You can avoid it being discarded by using the direct command versions of these options (displayed on selection), but this may leave insufficient memory for large programs.

'Mixing' is the creation of the final sound of a piece by combining each of the musical voices in the score with instruments and sound settings, and setting overall parameters such as tempo and tuning. You can start using the system straight-away by mixing selected example pieces.

The Mixing Desk is one of the most exciting 'departments' in the Studio. It is a simulation of a real studio mixing desk with volume faders, stereo pan knobs, visual monitors, etc, all of which work on the music while it plays, in real time. Being part of a completely computerised studio, it also gives you control over parameters impossible on a real mixing desk, including instrument selection, tempo, overall, tuning and tape-recorder style pause and fast wind.

Before calling-up the Mixing Desk, we'll listen to an example piece to try it out with Select 'load program' from the Main Menu, and enter: manor (RETURN) Select the 'Run program' option to start the music playing. To call-up the Mixing Desk, select it from the menu. After a moment, the Mixing Desk screen will appear with a blank command area at the bottom. To display the full screen, press TAB. Most of the screen is taken up with eight identical columns of controls, one for each of the eight voices. At the top of the screen, there are two groups of overall controls, one of them contained inside a box on the right. This display may look daunting at first, but you will soon understand how it works. If you press TAB again, the command window re-appears. TAB switches between command mode, where you enter commands at the '%' prompt, and edit mode, where you adjust mixing desk controls on the full screen. You can return to the Main Menu by pressing f0 in command mode.

To start the example piece playing, make sure you are in edit mode (the full graphics screen) by pressing TAB if necessary, and press the 'r' key. The title appears, the music starts, and the controls and settings change to the mix of the piece.

Notice the voice numbers 1 to 8, each with the name of its instrument lined up above. As the music plays, you'll see:

• at top right, the beat counter counting up like a tape counter
• at top centre, a bar moving left to right, monitoring the load
• two thirds down, eight gate monitors blinking along with the music on the eight voices

The items that show on the Mixing Desk while 'manor' plays are as follows:

IMAGE MISSING

We can easily experiment with the controls when the music has finished.

First let's try the cursor (a solid magenta bar): you use the normal cursor keys to move this to the control you want to change. You can put it on an instrument, below a voice number, or on one of the controls in the top left of the screen. With the cursor below a voice number, you can play a note on it by pressing RETURN - try it now on each of the voices.

To adjust a control, you use the cursor keys in combination with the SHIFT key. To move the volume fader up or down, press SHIFT-UP or SHIFT-DOWN, and press RETURN to hear the new volume. To move the stereo position, use SHIFT-LEFT and SHIFT-RIGHT - the pan knob above the fader will rotate accordingly.

Now try adjusting levels 'live' on the music - press 'r' to start, and move through the voices with LEFT and RIGHT, setting the volumes and pans to your taste. You might like to make the tune on voice 3 a bit quieter, or move all the organ voices (4 to 7) off to one side.

You can easily change instruments while the music plays, rather like sneaking up to a player and quickly switching his instrument in the middle of playing. To change an instrument, move the cursor to it and press SHIFT. The instrument menu appears with the names of all available instruments and a flashing block cursor on the instrument currently in use on this voice. With SHIFT still down, use the normal cursor keys to move the block cursor to a different instrument, and then release it to select that instrument.

You could change the 'brassbow' that plays the tune on voice 3 to 'Wha', a human voice sound, or replace 'elecorgan' on voices 4 - 7 with 'Organ', a grand church organ. You may want to re-balance the volumes to suit the new instruments.

You could either work through the alternative instruments on the playing music, or wait until it finishes and try them out 'in solo' with the RETURN key. Those instruments with upper-case initials are preset instruments (built-in to the system) whereas those with all lower-case letters are part of the program for this piece.

The piece always starts with he same mix, even if you changed some of the settings the previous time it played, because the mix is stored as a word in the program. To replace this mix with one of your own, you use the command MAKE.

When you've settled on a mix that you want to keep, press TAB to switch to command mode, and enter:

MAKE (RETURN)

Some AMPLE mix instructions appear on the screen as the settings of the desk are stored as a word, replacing the previous definition. Now when you press 'r' to run the music (don't forget to go back to edit mode), it will play with your mix.

To save your re-mixed version of 'Manor' return to the Main Menu by pressing f0 in command mode, and use the 'Save program' option. Choose a different name from 'manor' to avoid replacing the original.

To return to the old version, reload the piece using the 'Load program' option on the Main Menu.

Since in our studio the players are computerised as well as the Mixing Desk, we can change the overall tempo and tuning as easily as volume and pan. Tempo and tune are at the top of the screen - you can reach them with the cursor by moving up from any voice.

The tempo number is in crotchets per minute. To change it by single units, you use the SHIFT-UP and SHIFT-DOWN keys, and to change it by tens you use SHIFT-LEFT and SHIFT-RIGHT.

The tune number is in crotchets per minute. To change it by single units, you use the SHIFT-UP and SHIFT-DOWN keys, and to change it by tens you use SHIFT-LEFT and SHIFT-RIGHT.

The tune number is in sixteenth-semitone units, measured from the normal tuning at zero, so for example -192 is down by one octave. To adjust it, you use the SHIFT cursor keys just like tempo.

After adjusting either tempo or tune, you can instantly return it to the value it had when you moved to it by pressing COPY.

MAKE stores the tempo and tune settings along with the voice controls, so they are re-called automatically when the piece is played.

The box in the top right corner of the screen contains session controls - ones that help in mixing and are deliberately not stored as part of the mix. The first two are 'pause' and 'fast'.

Pause and Fast are rather like tape recorder controls: 'pause' stops the music temporarily and 'fast' fast winds through it.

The space bar controls 'pause' - pressing it once puts the music on pause, shown by the ON PAUSE indication in the box. Pressing it again takes the pause off. While the music is paused, you can adjust controls and use the RETURN key as normal - this makes pause useful for detailed examinations of instants in the music. Also in the paused condition, pressing '/' will step the music on a beat at a time.

The 'f' key controls 'fast' - when you press this, the music runs at top speed until you release it. 'Pause' takes precedence over 'fast'.

The other session control is group. This groups all voices on the same player together so that they are adjusted as one - if you adjust a setting on one, they all change. Pressing 'g' toggles between 'ON group' and 'OFF group' (the normal state). You can demonstrate this on the organ voices of 'Manor', using it to make them all louder or softer together. The vocies are not permanently grouped - you could set the volumes together as described, and then return to 'OFF GROUP' to spread the voices across the stereo field.

When group is ON, RETURN plays the whole group of voices. You can still play individual voices by using the number keys 1 to 8: they work just like RETURN but on their respective voices only.

You can tell which voices will be grouped by looking at the 'player-voice' number for a given Mixing Desk voice - this is the two-digit number above the instrument names. The first digit is the player number, and the second digit the number of the voice in that player. A group includes all voices on the same player.

The Mixing Desk lets you keep different mixes in the same program and recall them while the music is running.

To keep a new mix in addition to the main one, we make it as a separate word under a different name. At the top left of the screen, you'll find the message 'editing "mix"' - 'mix' is the name of the main mix. To set the name to something else, you use the NAME command, entered in command mode, with the new name enclosed in double quotes before it, for example:

"mix2" NAME               % (the space is optional)

You now enter MAKE as before to create mix2. When you go back to edit mode, you will see 'editing "mix2"' at the top.

To call up your alternative mix, you simply enter its name as a command:

mix2

To switch back to the original, you enter 'mix' in the same way.

Try creating a few different mixes and switching between them. The names should be 'mix' with a single digit on the end. Note that the piece always starts with the mix called just 'mix'.

In a later chapter, we will see how to call-up mixes automatically on cues in the music.

When you made 'mix2' as a word, it was added to the list of user words. This is called the user dictionary. You can display this list with the command

SHOW

You'll see the names of all the words in the program, arranged in alphabetical order. Some of them are musical sections, some are instruments, and in the middle, under 'm', you should find your mixes.

You can remove any mix word that you don't need any more with the DELETE command (don't confuse this with the DELETE key); DELETE takes the word name in the same way as NAME, for example:

"mix3"DELETE

You can check the dictionary with SHOW to check the word has gone.

'Manor' is one of the simplest example pieces as far as mixing is concerned - it has just one mix which stays fixed throughout the piece. Some of the others do all sorts of things while they play - switch instruments, move sounds, bring them in and out: all these changes are stored as separate mixes, called up on cue by the program. Each time a new mix appears, its name pops-up in the 'editing' message and the controls automatically switch to their new settings, even if you were in the middle of moving one of them at the time!

Spend some time on the Mixing Desk, playing other example pieces, and creating your own re-mixed versions. You may see items that you don't recognise, like controls in brackets: just ignore these for now. With any luck, you'll soon feel familiar with the Desk and be ready to mix your own pieces when the time comes.

That's it on the Mixing Desk for the moment. We will come back to it in the chapter 'Building Pieces'.

Now we come to the musical information itself - the 'score' part of a complete performance. In this chapter we will look at the most familiar form of score available in AMPLE - staff notation.

Using the Staff Editor, you enter single-part tunes or chords by typing the notes and other symbols of conventional notation on to a staff. You can then have the music play directly from the staff, or make it into an AMPLE word from where it can be played on command.

To create a multi-part piece, you enter each section of the music as a separate word and later, using another editor, assemble these section words to build the complete piece. Parts, repeats, alternatives, introductions, etc. are all catered for at the building stage, leaving the staff free for the details of the notes themselves.

Before starting this session, save the existing program if you want to keep it, and select 'New Program' from the menu (or enter the command NEW) to start afresh. This makes sure the words you make don't get muddled up with those of a left-over program. (In the future when you are adding words to an existing program to build a complete piece, you will call-up the Staff Editor without clearing the program.)

To start this session, select 'Ready system' from the menu (or enter the command READY). This stops any program that is playing, frees all the voices and additional memory in use, and makes some important initial settings.

Select 'Staff Editor' from the main menu. After a moment, the Staff Editor screen appears, leaving the % prompt near the bottom of the screen. You are now in the Staff Editor's command mode, from where you can type commands as normal.

To enter and edit music, you press TAB to enter edit mode - the command mode cursor disappears and an edit mode cursor (a solid block) appears above the staff. Pressing TAB again returns you to command mode.

Remember that TAB switches you between command mode, in which you enter commands at the % prompt in a window at the bottom of the screen, and edit mode, in which you work on the staff.

To return to the main menu, make sure you are in command mode and press f0.

Make sure you are in edit mode, and that the CAPS LOCK light is off.

The screen shows the large double staff on which you put symbols, with space above it for additional musical instructions. The '[' and ']' characters mark the start and end of the music on the staff - at the moment, there is none. The cursor indicates the item you are working on, and the point at which new symbols are inserted.

RETURN enters a note, so try pressing it now. The cursor moves to the right, ready for another note.

You can alter this note by first moving the cursor to it (directly above it). Do this by pressing the LEFT key. You can change its pitch with the SHIFT-UP and SHIFT-DOWN keys - hold SHIFT and press UP or DOWN to make the note move up or down the staff.

If the cursor changes from the normal block to a line, you have pressed unshifted UP by mistake. We'll see what this is for later - press unshifted DOWN to restore the block cursor.

To change the length of the note, use the SHIFT-LEFT and SHIFT-RIGHT keys - these change to the next shorter or longer of the standard note lengths, demisemiquaver to semibreve. (These is also a special length shown as a stem-less note - we will look at this later.)

If you press RETURN on this changed note, an identical note is inserted before it, moving the original note to the right. This is how you enter a string of notes. Think of the note you are on as a musical paintbrush - you set it to the pitch and length for the note you want, then press RETURN to 'paint' that note onto the staff and move the 'brush' on to the next position.

The DELETE key removes the note before the cursor - if you 'paint on' the wrong note, use this to remove it, and try again.

Now we will try an example tune. Before starting, make sure you have a clear staff by switching to command mode and entering

CLEAR

You should do this each time you start on a new tune in the Staff Editor.

Here's the example:

IMAGE MISSING

Notice the clef sign at the start and the vertical line at the end - we enter both these on the editor staff. The 'c' key inserts the clef, and the 'e' key inserts a thick end line (note: this is not a bar line).

Start by pressing 'c' for the clef. Both treble and bass clefs appear - the notes of this example go on the treble (upper) staff. Press RETURN to get a brush note, and then enter the notes of the tune. After pressing RETURN to 'paint on' the last note, press 'e' to insert the end line.

You'll be left wth the unwanted brush note after the end line. The COPY key removes the symbol at the cursor, so press it now to remove the extra note.

You may have been tempted to miss out the last RETURN and leave the brush note as the last note, making the mistake of thinking of RETURN as 'going on to the next note', rather than painting on a note. If you did this, you'd have to mvoe the crusor to get the end line in the right place. If you do it the way we recommend, you can enter complicated sequences easily with no cursor moves.

If you spot a wrong note after you've finished, use the LEFT and RIGHT keys to move the cursor to it, and then adjust the pitch or length using the normal keys. You can remove an extra note with DELETE or COPY. To add a missing note, go to the note after the place where it should ahve been, press RETURN, then move back one and adjust the new note's pitch and duration.

As you move the cursor, the item number at the top left of the screen changes to show at what point in the tune you are.

To hear he tune, you first set up a voice with an instrument. This you do by going to command mode and entering

1 VOICES Upright

for example.

To play the tune, return to edit mode and press f1 play. The cursor disappears and returns when the Editor is ready for your next command. If you want to stop the music before it has finished, press ESCAPE.

You can easily play the tune on other instruments, for example:

1 VOICES Vibglock
or
1 VOICES Panflute

To display a list of all available instruments, enter the command

"CHANS"FIND

To change the playing tempo, you use the =T instruction to set it in beats per minute - the normal setting is 125 crotchets per minute. To go twice as fast (250 crotchets per minute), enter

48, 250=T

The 48, indicates that the beat is a crotchet. To return to normal, enter

48, 125=T

You can store the music that's on the staff as an AMPLE word. This lets you:

• play it by entering the word name as a command
• include it as a sectionin a complete piece
• save it on disc or tape
• edit it in AMPLE music notation

The word is described as a 'score word', since it contains score information, distinguishing it from mix, instrument and other words.

Before making the word containing your tune, you give it a name with the NAME command. The name of the word you are making is shown at the top of the screen - since you started from scratch with CLEAR, it is currently 'newword'. To give a new name, go to command mode and enter:

"ode"NAME

(You could choose just about any name of up to 15 lower-case letters). Now, to make the word, enter the command:

MAKE

You will see AMPLE music notation displayed as the word is made, after which, the % prompt returns. If you enter SHOW, you will find 'ode' has been added to the list of user words.

You play the music from the word by entering

ode

and try different instruments by entering

1 VOICES Upright
ode

and

1 VOICES Panflute
ode

(Your music word should be entered as the first item on a new line, so that it starts properly.)

You can save the word 'ode' (with any other user words that are present) as a program, either with the 'Save program' option on the main menu, or by entering the SAVE command directly:

"odeprog"SAVE

To reload the program, use 'Load program' from the menu, or the direct LOAD command:

"odeprog"LOAD

When you enter CLEAR to start another tune in the Staff Editor, the music on the staff is lost. If you made this music into a word, you can get it back onto the staff for editing.

To edit an existing word in the Staff Editor, use the command GET, for example:

"ode"GET

After a moment, the Staff Editor display appears with the music of the named word, leaving you in command mode.

When you get a word, the Editor automatically sets the 'making' name, so that you can carry out changes and remake the same word without having to set the name. To make another word containing the altered (or the same) music, first use NAME as before to change the name.

A rest is inserted by the '^' key, just like a note is inseted by RETURN. When you are entering a sequence and come to a rest, just make the brush note the right length, and enter '^'.

If you need to change the length of an existing rest, or insert a new one in an existing sequence, you adjust its length using the SHIFT-LEFT and SHIFT-RIGHT keys as normal.

In the Staff Editor, bar lines make the music easier to follow and point out any bars that don't add up to the correct length. They have no effect on the sound. When entering from sheet music, you normally include the bar lines, but you can leave them out if you want.

You insert a bar line by entering the '|' symbol (top right of keybaord). Each time you come to a bar line in the sheet music, you press '|' and the line goes before the brush note. Don't forget the last bar line - it goes just before the thick end line, so together they look like the final (double) bar line found on the written music.

Bar lengths are not checked unless you add a time signature. This usually goes between the clef and the first note or rest, after any key signature that is present. Three pre-defined time signatures are supplied:

To insert one of these, just press its key.

You can adjust both the top and bottom numbers to get any of the other possible signatures. Move the cursor to the time signature and use the following keys:

Once you have a time signature, any bar whose length doesn't add up to the correct total will be spotted at the bar line when it plays - the error message 'Bad bar' appears, leaving you in command mode. (Don't be confused if the music has not yet reached this point - the system checks a few bars ahead.) When you return to edit mode, the cursor is positioned at the bar line that found the fault.

When you come to entering sections of a complete piece, you should play each section from the staff before making into a word, just to check bars.

Many tunes start and end in the middle of the bar. They are written out in sheet music with the first and last bars deliberately short of the full length. When entering these, you normally make each incomplete bar up to the full length with rests. The Staff Editor allows you to put a new time signature at the start of any bar, so you could alternatively give each short bar its own time signature setting, not forgetting to insert the normal one for the next bar.

The following keys insert accidental signs:

When entering music into the Staff Editor, you always type the symbols in the order they appear on the printed staff, and they will appear in the same order on the screen. This means that when you come to a note with, for example, a sharp before it, you enter the sharp (+) and then the note. To enter a double sharp or flat, you press the key twice.

Most printed music uses a shorthand whereby any accidental you see actually also applies to all further notes of the same letter name (including those in other octaves), up to the next bar line. In the Staff Editor, each accidental applies to the next note only, so you must add the accidental before each note that requires it.

Because of this shorthand, you will sometimes find a natural sign used to cancel the sustained effect of a sharp or flat. You don't need to put this natural sign in on the Staff Editor, though it does no harm.

You can have any of the full range of key signatures: up to seven sharps and seven flats. You normally enter the key signature after the clef, and before the time signature and first note or rest. After pressing 'c' for the clef, press '+' once for each sharp you want, or '-' once for each flat you want, and then press 'k'. 'k' converts the line of accidentals into a key signature with sharp or flat signs correctly positioned on both staves. For example, to enter a key signature with two sharps (D major or B minor), enter:

++k

If you make a mistake, use DELETE to remove the whole key signature, and try again.

You may find that a non-standard key signature (one with an odd sequence of sharps and/or flats) is more convenient for some pieces, for example, one that includes the sharpened seventh of a minor key. You can make any non-standard signature by putting in a seven-sharp or seven-flat signature (or both, one after the other), and then deleting the signs you don't need. Don't leave any spaces between signs in the key signature.

You can enter a new key signature at any point in the music, and there is no specific limit on the number of key signatures.

You can insert spaces in the music to match the layout of long and short notes in the printed music, or just to make the tune easier to follow. It's a good idea to put spaces between each group of notes, particularly if you aren't using bar lines.

To insert a space, simply press the space bar. You can use this like a typewriter space bar when entering music, or add spaces once the music is entered.

If by now you have entered a tune which is more than one screenful, you will have found that the screen moves along the staff when you get to the left or right edge. To move around a long tune more swiftly, you use the CTRL-cursor keys:

You can find out how much room you have left on the staff by pressing CTRL-DOWN to move to the end, and reading the item number. There is room for 240 items.

Many tunes have small groups of notes that are repeated, either exactly or with a few chagnes. To make these easier to enter, the Staff Editor has a block copy function. Before we look at this, remember that you should enter large sections separately so they can be called up for repeats at the later piece-building stage. If you find a repeated bit of more than a few bars, it's usually best to treat it as a section and make it into a word of its own, not make a copy on the staff.

To copy a group of notes, we use the f2 key, 'copy'. This makes a copy of the music from the cursor up to the end, and adds it on to the end. When you come to a small group of notes that repeats immediately, enter the notes once, move the cursor back to the start of the group, and press f2 copy to add a copy. Pressing it again copies the two to make four, and so on.

Often you find one group of notes, followed by another, followed by a repeat of the first - an 'ABA' structure. You can enter this by inputing A and B, copying both to make ABAB and then deleting the second B. Alternatively, use some forward planning: enter A, copy it to make AA, and then add the B in the middle.

To delete chunks of music swiftly, use the Editor's 'delete bar' function: pressing SHIFT-COPY deletes everything up to the next bar line, or to the end of text if there is no further bar line.

Here's a summary of the parts of a complete tune:

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The clef initialises all music settings, for example, setting no key signature. It makes sure that the tune is not afected by what played previously.

The time signature indicates the length of the bar. It is often followed by a key signature.

The bar lines automatically check that each bar has the correct length. Don't forget the last bar line.

The thick end line finishes the last note, which would otherwise play on, waiting for a following note or rest. It goes straight after the last bar line, with which it makes a final double bar line.

As in written staff notation, the Staff Editor uses a curved line between notes (of the same pitch) to show a tie. To enter a tie, type the '~' symbol (top right of keyboard). When entering two notes tied together, just enter the first one, then press '~' for the tie, and then enter the second one. The tie can go anywhere between the two notes, but it is best to put it after any bar line and before any accidentals.

Where you want three or more notes tied together as one, just put ties between each note and the next, as is shown on the written staff.

Remember that in the Staff Editor, accidentals apply to the following note only, so where you find an accidental before the first of a pair of tied notes, you must repeat it on the second of the pair.

When you come to a dotted note in entering music, after pressing RETURN to enter the note itself, simply press '.' to enter the dot. To add a dot to existing music, go to the symbol after the note where you want the dot, and enter '.' (like all other symbols, the dot is inserted before the cursor position).

Entering a dotted rest is just as simple: you enter the rest as normal with '^', then press '.' to add the dot.

To enter a note or rest with two dots, just add two dots.

You can add a single dot to any length note or rest from semiquaver upwards, and two dots to any length from quaver upwards.

On the written staff, a triplet is shown with a curved line and a single figure 3 over or under the notes in the group. For clarity, the Staff Editor uses a separate figure 3 after each of the notes in the group, leaving out the curved line:

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When inputting each note of a triplet, you enter it as written and then press '3' to add the figure 3. This makes the note play for two-thirds of its normal length, so three such notes add up to two normal ones.

To make an existing note into a triplet note, go to the symbol after the note, and press '3' to insert the figure 3. You treat rests in exactly the same way.

You may find more complicated triplets; with just two notes, with a dotted note, or with more than three notes. To enter these, follow the same rule - enter each note as written, and add a '3' after it. If the note has a dot, put the '3' after the dot.

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You can put a '3' or '2' on any note or rest length, including the smallest (demisemiquaver) and all allowed dotted and double-dotted lengths.

The following tune uses many of the symbols we have seen so far. (We have already added rests to make up the incomplete first and last bars.)

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Normally the sound of each note is played for the whole of its written duration, so the notes play in a connected 'legato' fashion, represented as follows:

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You can change the style of playing by shortening the time of the sounding portion, or 'gate period', of each note, so leaving a gap in the sound before the next one. (Note that with sounds the immediately die away to nothing, like drums, there is a gap anyway.)

To modify the gate period, we use the instruction 'Len' with a single number before it. 'Len' is an additional, preset instruction, as are preset instruments for example. As with all preset instructions, its name is in lower case with an upper-case initial.

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Positive Len numbers are used for short, staccato-like effects. Where you find a passage of staccato notes, choose a Len number that is half the length of the shortest note, as in the example above. At the end of the passage, use the instruction '0 Len' to return to normal, full-length notes.

A negative Len instruction sets the length of the gap between notes in time units, by reducing the gate period of notes of all lengths by a fixed amount. For example, -12 Len has the effect of a semiquaver rest before each note, taking its time from the previous note:

IMAGE MISSING

Negative Len settings are very important for instruments which give no special emphasis at the start of notes - some organ sounds for example. Without a separating gap, you don't hear the start of a note unless the pitch changes: repeated notes of the same pitch play as if tied. For this sort of sound, you use a Len value of around -4 as the normal setting throughout the piece.

A small negative Len throughout can also suit instruments that do have an emphasised start to notes, such as piano-like ones. In piano-style music, you would temporarily switch back to '0 Len' for a group of notes marked with a slur.

Special musical instructions like 'Len' go above the staff, on the level of the cursor and start and end markers. They can be inserted at any point in the music, but since 'Len' is a musical effect, and therefore cancelled (set to 0) by the clef, there is no point in putting it before the clef.

To enter an instruction above the staff, you first press the UP key to go to 'text mode'. The cursor changes from the normal block to a line. Now when you type on the keyboard, the normal characters are inserted at the cursor. When you've finished, you press the DOWN key to return to 'symbol mode'. The cursor changes back to the block and the keys reutrn to their musical symbol functions. DELETE and COPY have the same effect in both modes.

To insert, for example, '12 Len', you press UP to go into text mode, type it in, and then press DOWN to get back to symbol mode. Remember to return to symbol mode, else you will find you cannot insert symbols on the staff.

If your music needs frequent changes between note styles, it can be more convenient to define named equivalents to the 'Len' instructions, and use these instead. You make these as normal user words, with names of your choice, containing the instructions you want them to do. Simple definitions can be entered directly in command mode, for example:

"stac" [ 12 Len ]
"leg" [ 0 Len ]
"gap" [ -4 Len ]

The names are kept short for compactness on the staff. Once defined, you can enter their names as instructions above the staff precisely as you would 'Len'. The words are part of your program and so will be saved and loaded with the music that needs them.

You can define your own versions of any above-staff instructions, or sequences of them, in exactly the same way. To find out how to store them separately for use in future programs, see the chapter 'Building Pieces'. Two commands that are useful for user-defined instructions are FIND, to find all uses of a word, and TYPE, to display the contents, for example:

As in written staff notation, the Staff Editor uses a curved line between notes to show a slur. This is the same symbol as the tie - if the note pitches are the same, it is a tie, and if they are different, it is a slur.

To enter a slur, type the '~' symbol (top right of keyboard). When entering two notes slurred together, just enter the first one, then press '~' for the slur, and then enter the second one. The slur can go anywhere between the two notes, but it is best to put it after any bar line and before any accidentals. Where you want three or more notes slurred together in a group, just put slurs between each note and the next.

The effect of the slur is to play the second note as a continuation of the first, without any gap and without restriking the envelopes.

In piano parts, the slur symbol really means just 'legato' (no gap - a true slur cannot be played on a piano). In AMPLE, you produce this effect with a changed Len setting, not with a slur symbol.

On a flat organ-type envelope with a gap 'Len' setting, the effect of the slur is to remove the gap. If there is no gap on this type of unemphasised envelope, then the slur makes no difference.

On envelopes that quickly die away to nothing, you may not hear the second note at all - it doesn't make sense to slur a drum beat!

Here is a diagrammatic summary of the various symbols that go before or after notes and rests, indicating the choice available in each position and the order in which the symbols go.

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The Staff Editor shows chords in a simple 'exploded view' which makes it easier to enter and edit the notes individually. Each chord is represented as a normal main note followed by up to seven additional 'chord notes'. Each chord note is shown as a solid head with no stem. Here is an example:

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To insert a chord note you press '@', just like you press RETURN to insert a normal note. When entering a chord, you start at the bottom and put in the notes of the chord one by one, pressing RETURN for the first one, but '@' for the subsequent ones.

Try entering the example above, on the treble (upper) staff. Do not forget to CLEAR first, and include the clef at the start and the end line at the end.

To play chords from the staff, you set up a voice, with instrument, for each note in the biggest chord. For the example above, four voices are needed:

4 VOICES Vigglock

Note that you must include an instrument name - 4 VOICES alone is not sufficient.

The length of a chord is always that of the main note. Like a normal note, this can have dots and a figure 2 or 3. These extra symbols go right after the note, not after the whole chord.

You can add accidentals, ties and slurs to individual notes of a chord in the normal way. As in written music, ties work separately on each note, so you can hold over some notes while others change. To tie a complete chord, you put ties on all the notes. The same applies to slurs.

Rests take effect on all notes of the chord, as you would expect. You are quite free to have a sequence with a mix of single notes and chords of different sizes.

You do not have to build chords upwards from the bottom note; you could make the top note the main note and move down, or put them in any order you like (remembering that the first note must always by the main, normal one). The main note always plays on voice 1 with the additional chord notes in order on voices 2, 3, 4 so you can choose which notes play on which voices, and then give each voice a different instrument.

Here is a short example of chords for you to try. It is form Tchaikovsky's 'Nutcracker Suite':

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The Staff Editor can be used to enter percussion scores as well as tunes and chords, for example a part to be played on a drum.

If the instrument has variable pitch, like the 'Yakbell' preset instrument, then you play pitches on it as normal. If the instrument has a fixed pitch, like 'Drum', then it doesn't matter what pitches you use because it always plays at its pre-defined 'natural' pitch.

The Staff Editor lets you score for up to six percussion instruments on the same staff by using the lines and spaces for different instruments, rather than different pitches. You use the above-staff instruction 'Perc' to assign the six treble-staff lines and spaces from D to B, to voices 1 to 6:

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You choose the instruments and put each one in a single voice, starting with voice 1 and going upwards. Each note on a voice's line or space will then play a hit on the corresponding instrument, using the instrument's pre-defined pitch.

The 'Perc' instruction must go after the clef because the clef sets the staff back to normal pitched playing.

Where you want two or more hits on the same beat, you enter them in a chord. If this occurs often, it can be easier to write a dummy main note on every beat, and insert all the hits as additional chord notes. Put the dummy notes on the middle C line where they won't be heard.

You usually make the final assignment of instruments to voices with the Mixing Desk, but for now you can do this directly by command. You use VOICES as before, but each voice is selected individually with VOICE to give it a different instrument, for example:

3 VOICES 1 VOICE Drum   2 VOICE Cymbal   3 VOICE Yabell

You can store this as a word by defining at the keyboard:

"kit" [
3 VOICES
1 VOICE Drum  2 VOICE Cymbal  3 VOICE Yakbell
]

Now, to set up the three voices for playing from the staff, just enter:

kit

You can now play the percussion score by pressing f0 as normal.

Percussion parts often have a few fixed patterns, one or two bars long, strung together with many repeats to make a complete section. AMPLE lets you build sequences like this very easily - you create the patterns as separate words and call them up by name in the required order. For example, you could define 'pat1' as a main two-bar pattern and 'pat2' as a variation, and play them in sequence by entering

pat1 pat1 pat1 pat2 pat1 pat1 pat1 pat2

When you reach the piece building stage, you can use even more powerful facilities to build complete parts from elements like these.

To set the dynamic level of the music we use the AMPLE music notation instruction '=L', which in the Staff Editor is added above the staff.

=L has a number before it that determines that level in the range 0 (very quiet) to 64 (loudest).

To insert a level setting, press UP, type in (for example) '50=L', and then press DOWN.

The level is initially at maximum (64), so if you want the music to get louder later on, you must start with a quieter setting.

Here are suggested settings for the common staff dynamic levels:

You can usefully define your own named versions of these as described for 'Len', but be careful in the choice of names - 'ff' would be normally interpreted in AMPLE music notation as two 'f'-letter notes, so use something like 'ffl' (for ff level) instead.

You can easily make a single note louder with the accent instruction. This is the single quote mark (centre top of the keyboard), which looks like this: ' .

The accent symbol is inserted above the staff, before the note to be accented. To enter a note with an accent, press

UP ' DOWN

and then input the note as normal.

The dynamic level starts off at the maximum so before you can hear the effect of an accent, you must reduce the level with an =L instruction. The normal accent adds 15 to the level of the note, so 49=L is a good general level.

To accent a whole chord, you put the accent symbol before the main note. You cannot accent individual notes of the chord.

The accent has no effect on tied or slurred notes - only a note that actually strikes can be accented.

You can change the strength of accents with the 'L instruction, inserted above the staff, usually right after the clef. For example, 20 'L increases the strength from the normal 15. Remember that 64 is the maximum total level.

To enter pitches that are outside the range of the editor's double staff, you can use the AMPLE music notation word '@' above the staff. This is similar to the '8va' markings used for the same purpose in sheet music, but you give the number of semitones of transposition as a number before it. 12@ transposes up an octave, -12@ transposes down an octave, and 0@ returned to the normal pitches.

Where you find an 8va marking above the staff, insert 12@ before the first transposed note and 0@ after the last one. Similarly, use -12@ and 0@ where you find an 8va (or 8va basso) marking below the staff.

Where you find notes written outside the range of the Staff Editor's staff, you use the same method to enter them: place them an octave above or below the written pitch and use '@' to transpose accordingly.

So far we've looked at two editors - the Mixing Desk and Staff Editor - and seen how they are used to enter and edit their specific types of data (mix and score), storing the results as AMPLE user words. The third is 'Notepad', a multi-purpose editor that handles data in text form, that is, like a normal computer program or word processor document. Notepad is used for a variety of different types of data including instrument definitions, AMPLE music notation, musical section arrangements, and computations. As well as the standard text-editing facilities, it has some real-time control functions like those of the Mixing Desk and Staff Editor.

In fact, any AMPLE user word can be edited as text, even if created on the Mixing Desk or Staff Editor, because all AMPLE words have the same basic structure whatever their origin or purpose. This means that editors can freely exchange data, so you could, for example, enter music on the staff and then edit it in text form to add extra details.

This chapter introduces Notepad for general text-form word entry and editing, to prepare you for applications which use it for more specific tasks. These applciations and the functions of notepad that are specific to them are dealt with in following chapters.

Before starting this session, save the existing program if you want to keep it, and select 'New program' from the menu (or enter the command NEW) to start afresh. When you come to working on complete programs, you will usually call-up Notepad without clearing the program.

To call-up Notepad, select it from the main menu. After a moment, the Notepad screen appears, leaving the cursor at the % prompt in an area at the bottom of the screen. You are now in Notepad's command mode from where you can enter commands as normal.

To enter and edit text, you press TAB to enter edit mode - a cursor appears in the editing area (the blank central screen area). To return to command mdoe, you press TAB once more.

Remember that you enter commands at the % prompt in command mode, and enter text in edit mode - TAB switches you between the two modes.

You can return to the main menu at any time by pressing f0 in command mode, but this clears any text in the editor, so use it with care.

To enter text, you switch to edit mode and just type as normal - the characters go in at the cursor position. DELETE removes the last character you typed (the one before the cursor) and RETURN moves to the start of the next line.

You can move around the editing area using the four cursor keys - these let you move back to a mistake and correct it. Each new character replaces the one previously at that position ('overtypes' t). If you want to add or take away characters in the middle of a line, you can use character insert and delete:

There are corresponding functions for lines:

When you are inserting a character or a line, any characters pushed off the screen are lost, so take care.

Notepad has a copy function line the computer's own: using the cursor and COPY keys you can copy characters from another point on the screen, adding extra ones and deleting unwanted ones as you go. You press COPY to start copying and RETURN to finish. For example, to copy an existing line to the cursor position, you

• press COPY to start copying. A block cursor appears
• move the line cursor to the characters to be copied
• press COPY for each character. At this point, you can type in extra characters, or skip past any that you want to leave out
• press RETURN to end copying. The block cursor disappears

Warning: a fault in the BBC Model B's Operating System allows you to move the line cursor out of the editing area. You should not attempt to do this. This fault is not present on other models.

To clear the text area ready for new text, you enter the command:

CLEAR

To make a word using Notepad, you use the command MAKE : this creates a word containing the text you have entered in the edit area.

If you try this now, you will probably get an error because MAKE first checks that the text is a valid word definition. So that you can try out the MAKE command without this happening, put a % sign at the start of each line - this marks the line as a comment, so you can put in any characters you like.

To make the word, switch to command mode and enter

MAKE

After a moment, the % prompt will return if the word was made successfully. If something goes wrong, for example there was a nonsense line without a % at the start, an error message appears and the word is not made. You can then correct the fault in edit mode, and try MAKE again.

When the word is made successfully, you can enter the command SHOW and you will see its name on the list of user words. Its name will be 'newword', the name that Notepad assumes until you specify one of your own. The current name is shown at the top of the screen in the message

got "" to make "newword"

You set your own name for the new word using the NAME command. NAME is preceded by the name you want in double quotes, for example:

"test"NAME

The name uses no upper-case letters, to avoid confusion with system words. It can be up to fifteen characters long, but you should try to keep it to nine or less to make various screen displays clearer.

After you've set the name to 'test', MAKE will make the word under the name 'test'. If you change the text and make 'test' again, the new one will replace the old. When you want two words with the same or similar contents, take care to change to a different name for the second one.

To alter the contents of an existing word, you first call it into the editor with the command GET. The name of the word goes first, in quotes, for example:

"test"GET

The contents of the word will appear in the edit area, and the top of the screen will change to show

got "test" to make "test"

indicating that the word you used GET on was 'test', and the word you are making is 'test'. You can now make your changes to the text and re-make the word without having to set the name with NAME.

If you use GET on a preset word - an instrument, for example - the 'to make' name will be set to 'newword' rather than the original name. This is because if you want a modified version of a preset word, you must create the new version as a user word - you cannot change the preset word itself. The 'got' part of the message reminds you which word you started with.

The AMPLE language has a built-in music notation of its own. Unlike staff notation which is graphic, AMPLE music notation is textual, that is, it uses the normal printing characters including letters and numbers, entered and displayed in normal computer form. It has equivalents of the usual staff graphic symbols, plus others which are not available on the staff but which are nonetheless important and useful. Any tune that can be entered on the staff can be simply and easily represented in AMPLE music notation.

You can use AMPLE music notation as an alternative to the standard staff notation. This will suit you particularly if:

• you do not read staff notation
• you have experience of a logical language such as a programming language, including BASIC
• you are interested in the mechanisms of music and not just the final result
• you want to produce large or complicated pieces

AMPLE music notation is also particularly suited to the types of music that go well on computers, including:

• highly-structured music, having, for example, patterns and sections in sequences and variations, etc.
• music in which the 'studio end' (instrument sounds, balance, etc) is at least as important as the 'score end' (written elements)
• music which includes more than just the standard pith, duration and loudness in the written score
• music which actually uses automatic decision-making processes in the performance, including computer-composed music

This includes much modern music; pop, rock and contemporary classcal.

AMPLE notation has the following advantages over the staff notation:

• it is simpler and more logical in design, and easier to learn
• it has important additional musical instructions
• you can enter it directly from the keyboard, even as commands
• you can print it out as and enter it directly from a listing
• it is about ten times more compact on the screen
• it is more economical in memory, so you can have bigger pieces
• execution is fasted, since it represents music more directly
• it is integrated with more advanced programming functions

You enter and edit music in AMPLE notation using Notepad.

Before starting this session, save the existing program if you want to keep it, and select 'New program' from the menu (or enter the command NEW) to start afresh. When you get on to building complete programs, you will switch to Notepad to edit an existing word, so you won't clear the program first.

To start this session, select 'Ready system' from the menu (or enter the command READY). This stops any program that is playing, frees all voices and additional memory in use, and makes initial music settings.

We'll go straight in and have a look at a tune in AMPLE music notation. The tune is 'Oranges and Leoms':

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The marked items of AMPLE notation are as follows:

number plus comma, to set the length of following notes. This example sets a quaver length, to suit the shortest note in the tune. A crotchet would be 48, a semiquaver 12, and so on.

number plus colon, to set the octave in which the tune starts. This example sets octave number 0 - from middle C to the B above. Negative numbers give lower octaves and positive numbers higher octaves.

note letters, A to G. The octave is determined by the case: an upper-case note goes up from the last note, and a lower-case one goes down, but the same letter and case again, always stays at the same pitch. So, for the first four notes in the example:

IMAGE MISSING

If you want an interval of more than an octave, you put a ! before the second note. This jumps an extra octave in the appropriate direction.

a 'slash' (divide) character. Each hold makes the previous note one beat longer, so the 'e/' is a note twice as long as 'e'. 'e//' would be three times as long. You can get any note value you like with the right length setting and holds.

just used to separate groups of characters for clarity. In this example, each group corresponds to a bar - six quaver beats. The spaces after the length and octave settings are not essential either.

'^' character (top right of keyboard). Rests are the same length as notes, and can also be extended by holds. This rest is included at the end to silence the last note, since notes (and rests) play on forever until the next one.

You can enter a line of AMPLE music notation directly as a command so that it plays as soon as you press RETURN, but it is often easier to use Notepad. If you enter the music into Notepad, you can make changes without re-typing, and play it at any time.

So that you will be clear to make your own words, before you start, select 'start new program' from the menu to discard and program present.

Call-up Notepad from the menu, press TAB to go into edit mode, and enter:

SCORE
24, 0:
GGe/G/ e/c/DE
F/d/G/ e/c/// ^

The SCORE command sets all musical values, including ',' and ':' and many you haven't seen yet, to sensible starting values. You should put this at the start of each AMPLE notation tune. The next thre lines hold our example tune, split up for convenience.

Before you can play this, you must have a voice with instrument, as before. In command mode, enter

1 VOICES Vibglock

Now return to edit mode and press f1 play to hear the tune. Once you've set up a voice, you don't need to do it again until you want to change the instrument. To play the tune at any time , just press f1.

When the cursor returns, you can try changing the tune. You could try replacing some of the notes by holds, or some of the holds by notes or rests, and so on. If you change every hold to a rest, the tune will play in a broken 'staccato' style.

To make a word containing the AMPLE music, you first set a name for it using the NAME command, and then make the word with the command MAKE, which can be on the same line. For example, to make the example above into a word, enter:

"oranges"NAME MAKE

When the prompt returns, if you enter SHOW you will see the name of the new word on the list: if you started a new program, it will be the only one.

To get the word back for editing at a future time, you use the command GET:

"oranges"GET

This also sets the 'making' name to that of the word you edited, so to remake the same word with the changed contents, you just enter MAKE with no NAME beforehand.

AMPLE's symbols for accidentals are, logically:

+ (sharp), and
- (flat)

These go before the note, for example:

24, 0: C//D -E/c/ +D/// ^
            ↑     ↑
       E flat     D sharp

Unlike accidentals in sheet music, but like those in the Staff Editor, + and - apply to the next note only, so you must put them on each note that you want to be affected.

To set a key signature, you put a set of sharpened or flattened notes inside K( ... )K. The accidentals are remembered and automatically applied to all notes of the same letter name. Here are some examples:

The key signature goes after the SCORE, and before the first note. AMPLE's natural symbol is '=' (equals) so to cancel the effect of the key signature on a note, you put '=' before it. Like + and -, this applies to the next note only.

You can include bar lines and the AMPLE equivalent of a time signature to automatically check for extra or missing beats in a bar. You use the word BAR with the number of beats per bar before it, and you put a length setting first to indicate the length of the beat. The '|' character (top right of keyboard) is the bar line - it checks that there has been the correct number of beats since the last bar line. Here's an example:

The time signature and bar lines are only for checking - they don't affect the sound.

This example illustrates some other points:

• long tunes are split into phrases that each start with an octave setting - better than a long tune with one setting at the start
• bar lines can fall in the middle of notes with no extra symbols needed - the AMPLE is much simpler than tied notes on the staff
• tunes can be laid out in phrases, even if, as here, bars are split over lines because the phrase starts in the middle of a bar. You should find it easy to follow the music as it plays

In AMPLE music notation, each chord is written as a main note plus up to seven additional notes which play at the same time. The additional notes go in round brackets after the main note, for example, here is a C major chord:

                 0: C ( E G )
                   ↑    ↑ ↑
            main note   ↑ ↑
    first additional note second additional note

The pitches of the additional notes is just as if they were normal notes, so in this case the three notes are the middle C, and the E and G immediately above.

When it comes to putting chords together, each chord works exactly like a note: you simply string them together in sequence, using holds (after the whole chord) to extend the length. The pitch of each main note (and therefore the whole chord) is up or down from the previous main note - the additional notes do not count in the pitch. Here's an example that you should recognise when you hear it:

SCORE K( +F)K 0:
48, G(BD) 16, G(BD) G(BD) G(BD)
48, e(BE) e(BE)
    d(BF) F(BD)
    e(BE) /
    ^(^^)

To play it, first set up enough voices with instruments for the chords, by entering the commands

3 VOICES Upright

Now return to edit mode and press f1 play to hear it.

Points to note in this example are:

• a 'chord of rests', ^(^^), is used to end the sequence
• the notes of a chord can be close together in pitch or spread apart: the first chord is 'close', but the d(BF) is spread, due to the order of the pitches
• the length setting is changed to 16 to get the triplets at the start - three beats in the length of one (16 x 3 = 48)

The chord of rests can become awkward if needed often, so there is an alternative - the 'chord rest' ^; which does rests on all voices.

You can mix notes, holds and rests in a single chord, if necessary. The hold makes the note on that voice hold on through the chord, and the rest silences that voice. If there is nothing for a voice, a hold is assumed - this lets you extend the whole chord with a single / , but means that when going from one chord to another with less notes, you must silence the unused voices with rests.

AMPLE's slur symbol is the '~'. This goes before the note to be slurred, and has the effect, as on the staff, of joining its sound to that of the note before it. It works by disabling the striking of the envelopers, so the only change you hear is the pitch of the second note. If the envelope has died away by the time the slurred note starts, then you will not hear it at all.

In AMPLE, ties are totally redundant since a note written with holds can have bar lines, spaces etc. in the middle of it anyway. However if you use the slur symbol as a tie, that is, on a note which is the same pitch as the one before, you will get the expected effect.

If you are used to staff notation, then you may have some confused ideas about slurs, which we shall clear up here. Firstly, the slur symbol has absolutely no additional effect upon the previous note. It is a mistake to think of 'two slurred notes' - there is only one slurred note and that is the one after the symbol. Exactly the same applies to 'tied notes'. Secondly, you cannot play a slur on an instrument like a piano - it must have separate control of the envelope (for example, air flow or bow pressure) and the pitch (for example, fingering). The nearest thing to a slur on the piano is 'legato' (no gap between the note) and this is how a slur symbol in piano music is interpreted.

AMPLE notation is the 'native' music notation of the system, so even music entered in the Staff Editor can be displayed and edited in this form. You will have already seen that the Staff Editor displays the music in AMPLE notation when it is put into a word. If you take a score word that was created on the staff, you can TYPE it or GET it in to Notepad to see the AMPLE version. Try this on a staff word of your own or one of the 'part2' words in 'Manor'.

You will see what should by now be familiar AMPLE notation. All the staff symbols are represented using the small number of AMPLE symbols we have seen so far in this chapter. In particular, the following items correspond:

A tied note is represented as, for example, ~C/// rather than the obvious //// so that the tie is preserved when going back to the staff, even though this information is entirely redundant musically.

If you are interested, you can learn a great deal about the structure of music notation, above the confusing illogicalities of staff notation, by looking at the way staff and AMPLE notations correspond. For example, you will see that regular note values are multiples of a fundamental beat, and irregular values such as triplets and duplets represent a change in that beat, and not new values as such.

When you start using AMPLE notation in earnest, you may find yourself writing things in natural ways which you then discover cannot be represented properly in staff notation. Some of the example pieces are written like this, even ones which were originally published in staff notation.

To make sure that such a word is not edited in the Staff Editor by mistake, all staff-editable words are marked with '%STAFF', as the very first thing on the first line. This does not show on the screen of the Staff Editor since it is removed by GET and replaced by MAKE. If you try to edit a non-STAFF word in the Staff Editor, it will come up empty, meaning there is no staff-editable music in it.

You don't have to think about this unless you are deliberately entering music in AMPLE for editing on the staff. If you are entering a piece from a listing, you'd normally enter %STAFF where it appeared as a matter of course, like any other instruction. This system is designed to suit the natural progression from using the staff to using AMPLE notation directly. If you have reached the stage of entering music in AMPLE notation, then presumably you don't want to take it back to the staff. If you do, and the music is not too complicated, you just add a %STAFF to the start.

The Staff Editor's 'above-staff' instructions, such as 'Len' and ' (accent) are in fact AMPLE notation instructions, 'borrowed' for use on the staff. Any instruction you can put above the staff, you can use in AMPLE notation music. Here's a summary:

There are many further such instructions including true music words, and extensions such as special effects. Some you can also use above the staff, but others only work in the freer environment of AMPLE notation. These are introduced in the following sections, and are described in reference form in the chapters 'AMPLE Music Words' and 'Special Effects'.

One of the most exciting special effects is echo. You can produce true echoes with full control over the volume, stereo position and even instrument selection of the original sound and each echo, because the effect uses separate voices on the player - the notes played on voice one are echoed on successive voices.

You turn on the echo effect with an 'Echo' instruction at the appropriate point in the music, usually the start of a section. 'Echo' takes two numbers, for example:

SCORE 48, 4 BAR K( +F )K 12 3 Echo
                         ↑  ↑
                delay time  number of voices

The delay is the time between echoes, and is measured in timebase units, so this example uses a delay of one semiquaver. Specifying three voices means that there will be two echoes in addition to the main sound. For experimentation, you set these voices up and you would for chords. Individual voice adjustments are made using the Mixing Desk.

Echo is a musical effect so it is cancelled by SCORE. You can turn it off manually with 'OFF Echo'.

You can experiment with echo by typing notes in directly at the keyboard, and using the Mixing Desk to control the voices.

Call-up the Mixing Desk, and enter

READY
8 VOICES Vibglock

If you now switch to edit mode, you will see the eight voices ready to be mixed as if they were in a piece.

To play some echoes, enter

SCORE 48 2 Echo
C/// G^f-ed ^

Try increasing the echo voices, switch to the Mixing Desk's edit mode and adjust the volume faders and pan knobs as normal. The echo effect moves across the vocies from 1 to 8, so 1 is the main sound. You could try making them successively quieter, and on alternate sides of the stereo field. You could even put a different instrument on each voice, but with any more than two echoes, this will probably sound muddled.

You can keep a direct mix such as this just as you would a normal one.

You will find many ways to use echo in a piece, and if you have any voices spare, it is often worth using them up on echoes. Here are some suggestions:

• reverberation - one or two very short echoes on a quiet voice to give a reverberation effect
• slapback - a single short echo about as loud as the main voice, and often at the opposite pan position
• doubling - a short delay on a second voice with a slightly different or widely contrasting instrument
• harmonies - a second voice with a delay of exactly one or more beats on a carefully composed tune - a 'close canon'. This works well with arpeggios
• rhythmic interleaving - one or more voices with dotted or triplet time values, adding interleaved beats. Very efefctive on sequencer-style patterns
• repeating echoes - a long delay on three or more voices, giving a typical 'tape-loop' style echo

The echo voices can be adjusted with DETUNE and TRANS in addition to the Mixing Desk controls - see the Chapter 'Building Pieces' for information.

AMPLE has a special music symbol for 'hits' - scored notes which have no pitches, as played on drum for example. This is 'X', and it works like a note in all other respects, for example

X/// X/X/ X//X XX/X

is a simple percussion score. The instrument plays at the last pitch set - if it is a purpose-designed percussion instrument, this is its pre-defined pitch, but it could just as well be the pitch of a previous note on the voice. (This can be useful for repeating notes - see 'X' in the chapter 'AMPLE Music Words' for details.)

When it comes to multi-part percussion, you can use the 'Perc' effect as you do on the staff. The note letters D to B then play hits on successive voices:

D/E/ D/D(E)/ D/ED DDED

You could alternatively define your own percussion hit symbols for the required voices, using ';' to set the voice:

"x" p 1;X ] "y" [ 2;X ]
...
x/y/x/x(y)/ x/yx xxvx

Finally in this chapter, we come to gradual changes of dynamic level (for example, crescendo) and tempo (for example, rallentando) through the music. This is an advanced feature which is only introduced here, and dealt with in full in the reference chapter 'AMPLE music words'.

The words +L and -L work with =L to set gradual changes of dynamic level. +L takes two numbers that together specify the amount and length of the change, for example:

30 8 + L | | amount of level change length in number of beats

Note that the length is in beats, set by ',', not timebase units. This makes it much easier to specify the end position of the slope. If you want a change of level that is instantaneous, but relative to the =L setting, use +L with a length of 0 beats.

-L is identical except that the level decreases.

The dynamic level is in fact a general-purpose musical level which, though used for volume by default, can be re-directed to control stereo position and pitch slide. See 'Autopan' and 'Slide' in the chapter 'Special effects' for details.

+T and -T produce relative and gradual changes of tempo, and work in the same fashion as +L and -L:

10 16 +T amount of change number of beats

Instantaneous changes (zero number of beats) are particularly useful since they are relative, so you can, for example, double the tempo, or speed up slightly and then return to the original, without having to know the original tempo set on the Mixing Desk. You don't normally set the tempo to an absolute value (with =T) in the middle of music.

(Gradual tempo changes are deliberately cancelled by a new tempo setting in a mix. If you want a gradual change of more than one section, and then want to change the mix in the middle, you exclude the 'tempo' setting from the mix - see 'Building pieces' for details).

The instruments we have used so far have been preset - supplied as standard with the system. You can easily make your own by either altering preset ones, or creating new ones from scratch.

To examine, change or create an instrument, we use Notepad in 'panel' mode. This provides a control panel rather like that of a synthesiser, with equivalents to 'knobs' and 'switches' for the variable parameters of the sound. Knobs take the form of numbers which you can increase or decrease, and switches can be set to ON or OFF. There are also 'word' items which you set from a menu of available options.

Rather than having a single unwieldy panel which includes every control, the panel layout varies to suit the class of instrument, leaving out those controls that are not relevant. You can edit the panel layout to change or add controls, or even design a custom panel to your requirements.

You hear the results of changes you make immediately, either on a voice you have set up just for editing, or on any voice in a piece of music playing at the same time.

You will know how to use Notepad for text editing from previous chapters. Apart from the editing itself, Notepad works in exactly the same way for editing instruments.

Before starting this session, save the existing program if you want to keep it, and select 'New program' from the menu (or enter the command NEW) to start afresh. When you get to building complete programs, you will usually call-up Notepad to edit an instrument in the existing program, so you won't clear the program.

To start this session, select 'Ready system' from the menu (or enter the command READY). This stops any program that is playing, frees voices and additional memory, and makes initial settings. (In future, you may want to enter Notepad with the program still running, or keep the voices you have set up, in which case you will not do a READY.)

Select 'Notepad' from the main menu. The Notepad screen will appear, leaving you in command mode. Remember that to switch between command and edit modes you press TAB, and to return to the main menu you press f0 in command mode.

To get an existing instrument for examination or editing, you use the GET command on the name of the instrument. We will start with the most basic preset one:

"Simpleins"GET

The contents of 'Simpleins' will appear at the top of the editing area, like this:

----------------------------------------------------- 2 CHANS 1 CHAN Hollow Flat Peaked ----------------------------------------------------- | waveform pitch envelope amplitutde envelope

The first two lines are concerned with channels - for the moment, all we are interested in is that they provide one channel of sound, meaning that this instrument is a relatively simple one made up of a single tone.

The third line is the one we are interested in. It shows the waveform, pitch envelope and amplitude envelope selections - the settings that are responsible for the sound of the instrument. The waveform determines the tone quality - 'Hollow' gives a simple, hollow tone. The pitch envelope provides pitch variation during the note - in this case it is 'Flat', that is, there is no variation. The amplitude envelope determines the amplitude (or 'loudness') of the sound during the note - 'Peaked' gives a simple organ-like shape with a slight emphasis at the start.

In order to play the instrument and hear the effect of changes to it, you get a voice and put the instrument on it.

To get a voice, make sure you are in command mode and enter:

1 VOICES

To put the instrument on the voice, go into edit mode (press TAB) and press f1 play (this executes the contents of the instrument, like putting an instrument name after the VOICES).

You can now hear the sound of the instrument by returning to edit mode and pressing RETURN. This plays a note at middle C which lasts until you lift the RETURN key.

To try the instrument at different pitches, you can enter AMPLE notation note letters in command mode. Start by switching to command mode and entering

SCORE

to prepare for notes. You now enter single note letters (C,D,E,F,G,A and B) followed by RETURN to play different pitches, using upper-case letters to go up in pitch, lower-case letters to go down and ^ to stop the sound. You can first set the octave of the note by a number and ':' symbol, for example:

0:C % middle C -1:G % a low G

Once you've settled on a pitch, return to edit mode and use RETURN to play notes at that pitch.

You may have noticed that the editing cursor is a block, rather than the usual line - this indicates that you are in Notepad's panel mode, the instrument-editing alternative to its usual text mode. Notepad selects panel mode automatically when you edit an instrument, so you don't need to worry about this.

To change the settings of the instrument, you use the edit mode cursor keys.

To move from item to item, you press the normal (without SHIFT) up, down, left and right keys. If you try them now, you will find that you can only move horizontally along the line. This is because the only variable itsems in 'Simpleins' (the waveform and envelopes) are on this line - the CHAN and CHANS settings are fixed.

To change a particular item, you move to it and press SHIFT. A menu of alternatives appears over the command area, with a cursor on the current selection. With the SHIFT key still down you use the cursor keys to move the cursor to the option you want, and then release SHIFT to select it. The new selection will appear on the screen in place of the old one.

For example, to change the waveform, you

• move to the waveform word (the one of the left)
• press SHIFT
• while holding SHIFT, move to the new waveform option
• release SHIFT

If, after seeing the menu, you decide you want to keep the current selection, just release SHIFT without moving the cursor.

You can hear the effect of your change by pressing RETURN.

You could now go through all the waveforms and envelopes trying them out. We suggest you return each item to the original 'Simpleins' setting before varying another, to make sure you don't get confused between the effects of different items. In particular, use a straight-forward amplitude envelope like 'Peaked' or 'Onoff' when trying different pitch envelopes.

Your changes only take effect on the settings stored by the editor and on the sound - not on the instrument word itself. You can prove this by re-entering '1 VOICES Simpleins' - the sound returns to the original. The screen settings are unaffected, so you can restore the sound to match the screen settings by pressing f1 play in edit mode.

At any time, you can get back to the original settings with:

"Simpleins"GET

Detailed descriptions of all the waveforms and envelopes appear in the chapter 'Sound Instructions'.

The set of items on the screen constitutes a new instrument which you can make into a new word, allowing you to

• call the instrument up by name
• use the instrument in a piece
• save the instrument as part of a complete program

The top area of the screen shows the name of the instrument that you used originally, and the name that will be given to the new word you make. This is currently 'newword', but you can set it to a name of your choice with the NAME command. For example, in command mode enter:

"myins"NAME

Now, to make the instrument word under the name 'myins', you enter

MAKE

If you now use SHOW to display the list of user word names, you will find 'myins' in it.

You can save your instrument word, along with any other user words that are present, as a program, either with the 'Save program' option on the main menu, or by the direct SAVE command:

"instrus"SAVE

To reload the program, use 'Load Program' from the menu, or a direct LOAD command:

"instrus"LOAD

The chapter 'Building pieces' describes how to add your saved instrument words to an existing program.

You cannot change the contents of a preset word, so if you want a modified version of a preset instrument, you make it as a new word of your own. Preset words have upper-case initials and your word names must only use lower-case letters, so there should never be confusion between the two.

Once you have made an instrument as a word, you can recall it for editing using GET as you would for a preset instrument. In this case, GET sets the 'making' name to that of the original word, so that to replace the original word by a new version, you don't need to set the name with NAME.

The 'trying' line at the top of the screen shows the commands that are carried out when you press RETURN to try the sound. At the moment it should say 'RETGATE', the name of the command that plays the sound until RETURN is lifted.

You can set your own 'typing' line to play a sequence of notes using the TRY command, for example:

"0:CDEFG^"TRY SCORE

The '0:' sets the octave and the '^' symbol silences the last note. 'SCORE' is a separate command that prepares for notes as before. Now, when you return to edit mode and press RETURN, the five-note scale will play.

You can try the instrument on more than one voice simultaneously, to hear how it sounds when playing chords. You enter, for example:

3 VOICES

and then put the instrument on all these voices by pressing f1 play in edit mode as before. To play chords, you use note letters followed by the letters for the simultaneous notes in brackets, for example:

0:C(EG) D(FA) ^;

The '^;' symbol silences all the voices. To put this on the trying line, enter:

"0:C(EG) D(FA) ^;"TRY SCORE

The 'Simpleins' instrument uses only one channel of sound, but most instruments use two, enormously expanding the range of sounds. A channel pair is used in three main ways:

• with slightly different settings to enrich the sound
• with contrasting settings to produce a complex varying sound
• in combination with modulation, producing totally new sounds

We'll start with a look at an example of the first; the synthetic piano sound 'Upright'. Enter:

"Upright"GET

The lines of the instrument are as follows: ------------------------------------------------------ 2 CHANS number of channels 2 CHAN select channel 2 0 SHIFT 200 OFFSET 128 AMP instructions for ch. 2 EVERY CHAN select channels 1 and 2 Round Flat Strike instructions for ON PHSET channels 1 and 2 ------------------------------------------------------ You will recognise the line starting 'Round' as the waveform, pitch envelope and mplitude envelope selections. The most distinctive of these if the amplitude envelope 'Strike', which has an initial peak very characteristic of the piano. The 'EVERY CHAN' on the line above means that these selections are for both of the channels, so the two channels will always have the same waveform and envelopes.

The other long line has three number settings which apply to channel 2 only, indivated by the '2 CHAN' above it. These settings determine the differences between the two channels that give the richer sound.

To listen to this instrument, set it up on a voice as previously.

The SHIFT cursor keys let you change numbers in the same way as waveforms and envelopes, except there is no menu - the keys increase and decrease the number in place on the screen, like adjusting a knob:

For example, to change the OFFSET value, you move the cursor to it and press SHIFT up to increase by one, and SHIFT down to decrease by one. You can set any number to zero by pressing '£' (SHIFT-underline, just next to the cursor keys).

To change a flag (a 'switch' vaue that is ON or OFF), you move the cursor to it and press SHIFT up to turn it ON, and SHIFT down to turn it OFF.

The OFFSET instruction makes the channel slightly sharp of flat. It is commonly used to make two channels very slightly 'out-of-tune' with each other. In 'Upright', the two channels are used for the effect of two strings on each key. The offset makes one string slightly 'flat' or 'sharp'.

Try adjusting the offset, and listen to the following settings:

The AMP instruction sets the amplitude in the range 0 (off) to 128 (loudest). Channel 1 is at the loudest setting by default, so AMP is mainly used for setting the balance of channel 2. In 'Upright', the two strings are the same loudness, since channel 2's AMP setting is at maximum.

Try setting channel 2's AMP to zero (move to it and press pound, '£'), to remove the sound of the second string. If you set it to 100 AMP, you will hear a faint two-string effect.

The SHIFT instruction raises or lowers the pitch of the channel so it plays a fixed interval with another channel. (Don't confuse the SHIFT instruction with the SHIFT key). In 'Upright' the instruction is '0 SHIFT' so the two strings are at the same pitch (though detuned by OFFSET). 0 SHIFT is the default, so in fact the SHIFT instruction has no effect in the unmodified 'Upright' instrument - it is included just so it can be changed.

Try raising the SHIFT value to make the two strings play an interval apart. 192 SHIFT produces an octave - this can have the effect of either two sounds an octave apart or one new sound, depending on the context.

The ON PHSET instruction gives a precise hard start to the sound waveform at the beginning of each note, as opposed to a soft continuation of the previous note. In 'Upright', it contributes to the hammer strike effect. Try switching it to OFF (by moving to it and pressing SHIFT down) to discover its effect.

Here are some further modifications to 'Upright' for you to try one-at-a-time and in combination. Remember that you are recall the original 'Upright' at any time using GET.

• change the waveform 'Round' to 'Hollow' or 'Clear'
• change the pitch envelope 'Flat' to 'Vibrato' or 'Delvib'
• change the amplitude envelope 'Strike' to 'Short' or 'Reverse'

You can easly make completely new instruments using the same panel design as 'Upright', starting from the same settings. For example, to create a church organ sound, make the following changes:

• 192 SHIFT
• waveform to 'Pipes'
• amplitude to 'Onnoff'

You will end up with an instrument similar to the preset 'Organ'.

'Vibglock' is an instrument that has a glockenspiel-like sound with a gentle vibrato as it dies away. It is an example of one whose sound has two different parts, so the channels have contrasting settings.

Enter:

"Vibglock"GET

Here's what appears: ----------------------------------------------- 2 CHANS 1 CHAN Clear Delvib Long instructions for channel 1 2 CHAN High Flat Short instructions 128 AMP for channel 2 EVERY CHAN ON PHSET instruction for ch. 1 and 2 ----------------------------------------------- Channel 1 makes the main sound - this dies away slowly ('Long') with a vibrato at the end ('Delvib'). Channel 2 makes the initial 'clonk' of the mallet strike - it has a special waveform ('High') and dies away quickly ('Short'). The ON PHSET creates a precise strike.

The waveforms and envelopes are carefully selected so that the two component sounds combine to make a complex single sound. You can vary the brightness of the strike using channel 2's AMP setting. Reducing this to 100 makes a duller sound.

The instrument 'Drum' has a similar panel to 'Vibglock', but an entirely different sound: ------------------------------------------------ 2 CHANS 1 CHAN Pure Zap Burst instructions -38 PITCH for channel 1 2 CHAN Metal Flat Click instructions -20 PITCH 128 AMP for channel 2 EVERY CHAN OFF PSENS ON PHSET instructions for ch. 1 & 2 ------------------------------------------------ The sound is that of a modern drum-machine-style bass drum. Channel 1 makes the main tone of the drum skin. It has an extreme pitch sweep on it ('Zap') which in this short sound makes a more complex skin sound. Channel 2 produces the all-important thwack of the beater hitting the skin, by using a rough waveform ('Metal') and an envelope ('Click') that is so short that only one cycle of the waveform is let through.

Try reducing the AMP setting to show the contribution of channel 2.

Being a drum, the instrument has pitch of its own as set for each channel by PITCH. The OFF PSENS instruction makes both channels ignore further pitch settings, so the pitch of notes has no effect.

You can think of the PITCH of the thwack as setting the replay speed of a very short recording ('sample') of a strike sound. If you first switch PSENS to ON, you can lengthen and lower the thwack by decreasing the PITCH setting. Channel 1's PITCH independently controls the tightness of the drum skin.

Another way of combining channels is by modulation. This transforms the sound of channel 1 by feeding channel 2 into it in various ways. The waveforms of both channels, the offset and the shift all contribute to the final sound. Channel 2's sound is unaffected and can be added in separately, Using pitch envelopes, the sound can be made to change through the note.

There are three types of modulation available: ring modulation, synchronisation and frequency modulation.

Ring modulation makes a complex hybrid of the two channels' waveforms to produce sounds that are ricker, brighter and at times rough and distorted. The pitch interval and waveform selections are both important to the final effect. As an example, we will look at 'Ringsyn': ------------------------------------------- 2 CHANS 1 CHAN ON RM 2 CHAN 0 SHIFT 150 OFFSET 128 AMP EVERY CHAN Bright Delvib Verylong ON PHSET -------------------------------------------- Switching RM to OFF will show you the effect of the modulation. To hear the modulation effect alone, set channel 2's AMP to zero.

The effect of an offset is much greater with ring modulation. Here is creates the throbbing effect: more offset gives faster throbbing. You sometimes see ON PHSET used to restart the throb cycle on each note.

You can slow the throb down to create a steadily-changing tone. For example, these changes make the sound of a swooping aeroplane:

• 20 OFFSET (for a changing tone)
• 'Delvib' to 'Wide' (for a swooping pitch)

To set this to a suitable pitch, play a 0:C on it before using RETURN to play the sound. (If you have changed the trying line to play some notes, enter "RETGATE"TRY to return to the simple RETURN key effect.)

Setting SHIFT for different musical intervals produces different modulated tones: try 112, 192 and 384, after returning the pitch envelope to 'Delvib'. Discordant intervals produce dense non-harmonic tones which are useful for rough sound effects, for example, a racing-car engine:

• 45 SHIFT
• 'Delvib' to 'Wide'
• 'Verylong' to 'Onoff'

The most effective ptch is around -1:G (the G below middle C). To play the sound of eight cars together, first set up eight voices: 8 VOICES TAB f1 play TAB Then, be ready to turn down the amplifier volume, and enter: SCORE -2:c(100,FBEGDAG) Press ESCAPE for silence. Noise Sounds Ring modulation of a complex wave is one way of making random noise. The best waveform for this is 'Metal', which is itself random. The instrument 'Cymbal' is a good example: -------------------------------------------------------- 2 CHANS 1 CHAN ON RM 100 AMP 2 CHAN 110 SHIFT -20 OFFSET 128 AMP EVERY CHAN Metal Flat Long 24 PITCH OFF PSENS ON PHSET -------------------------------------------- Both channels use the 'Metal' wave form so while channel 1 produces the noise part of the cymbal sound, channel 2 adds the metalic ring. Channel 1's AMP instruction reduces the level of the noise part. This instrument is the basis for many interesting metallic sounds. A good start is to lower the pitch and set 0 SHIFT, adjusting OFFSET to taste. The result is just as interesting without ring modulation. Synchronisation Synchonisation (of 'sync' for short) produces coloured (for example, vowel-like) sounds by forcing channel 1 to play the pitch of channel 2, leaving channel 1's original pitch to 'sound through' as a kind of resonance. The pitch of the note is always that of channel 2. Channel 1's pitch controls the tone, and its pitch envelope changes the tone dynamically. The example instrument is 'Wha', a human voice sound: ----------------------------------------------------- Further instructions unavailable