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Documentation for EZ-Track Plus Demo Version ============================================ This file contains an introductory guide to using EZ-Track Plus, so that you can get a better understanding of the capabilities of the program from trying the Demo Version, which has all the features of the actual program, except that it lacks any ability to save files. You can thus experiment with creating your own songs (though you won't be able to save them in the Demo Version), and you can also load existing songs to get an idea of what sort of finished creations can be accomplished in it. EZ-Track Plus (from Hybrid Arts, Inc.) lists for $65. Registered EZ-Track owners can upgrade to EZ-Track Plus for $22 (California residents add tax), and will be notified by mail when the update is available. EZ-Track Plus comes with a completely new manual, which is more than 150 pages long. The manual places an emphasis on clear step-by-step explanations of procedures, numerous examples, and graphics wherever helpful. Once you have sent in your registration card, you can also call Hybrid Arts tech support, and can later upgrade to more advanced versions of our sequencers. This file has been formatted for either print-out or on-screen viewing. If you print it on a printer using 66 lines/page (the standard page length), it will skip over page-break perforations automatically. Hybrid Arts Sequencer Philosophies ---------------------------------- It will help you to understand this (and any other) Hybrid Arts sequencer if you keep in mind the following 3 points: 1 - Timing accuracy is most important. Just as it's easier to add options like radios and rear windshield wipers to a car once you've got the engine working the way it should, than trying to add a good engine to a feature-loaded car lacking in performance, so it is with sequencers. It's easier to add editing options after making sure the utmost in timing accuracy is there in the "guts" of the sequencer, than to do to it the other way around. The Hybrid Arts sequencer line has been designed with excellent timing accuracy as the primary goal, and only when we had that perfected did we move on to adding features. It may have taken a bit longer that way, but what you now have is a solid product which can grow with you as your needs grow. Hybrid's more advanced sequencers have more features, but EZ-Track Plus has the same "engine" with the same timing accuracy as the professional-level SmpteTrack. 2 - Non-destructive editing. Any time you do any editing operation, you can place the result on a different track than the original. If you _choose_, you can save the result back to the same track, but this is your choice. No extra steps of making a backup copy of a track are necessary. If you quantize a track, for instance, there are many choices of settings, which can produce different results. By saving the quantized version to another track, you still have the original available if you decide to quantize it again with another setting. 3 - No separate record mode. On a tape recorder, you have to decide when you want to record and when you want to play back, because recording always erases whatever you had there previously. In Hybrid's sequencers, however, all recording you do goes into a Record Buffer, which you can either KEEP to a track, or discard. Thus you don't have to worry ahead of time which time through will simply be practice and which will be an actual "take". You can just be playing along, looking for ideas, then if you liked what you played, you can decide to KEEP that. This is an extension of our non-destructive philosophy, applied to recording. Record Controls --------------- The Recording Controls are in the lower right part of the screen. If you look at most tape decks, you will find the same universal symbols for (left to right on EZ-Track Plus screen) STOP, PLAY, PAUSE, and REW/FF. KEEP, as described above, is a replacement for Record. And directly above PLAY is the Counter (the equivalent of a tape counter), with a Counter Reset button to the left of it. Recording Music --------------- If you have an instrument correctly connected to the MIDI ports of the Atari, EZ-Track Plus will record anything you play on that instrument. To Record Music: - Turn up the monitor sound (so you'll hear the metronome once you PLAY) - Click on the PLAY button - Play some notes on your instrument - As soon as you press any key on your instrument, the KEEP button will become highlighted. This means that EZ-Track Plus has received some MIDI information and is storing it in the Record Buffer. - As soon as you're done playing, click on the STOP button Whatever you have played is stored within the Record Buffer, and you'll need to assign this information to a track. _Unlike a traditional tape recorder, you select the track AFTER you've recorded some music._ To the left of your screen you'll see a column of numbers from 01 to 20. These are the 20 tracks. Directly to the left of number 01 you can see a small arrow, which is an indicator to show you which track you are about to access. Since it's already pointing to track 01, we'll save our music there. To Save What Is In The Record Buffer: - Select an empty track to save on (track 01 is initially selected) - Click on the KEEP button The KEEP button turns grey (meaning the information is no longer stored in the Record Buffer) and a small "c" appears to the left of the percentage for track 01. This signifies some change has been made to the track and has not yet been saved to disk. Notice the percentage for that track no longer reads 00%, since the track is no longer empty. To Hear What Has Been Recorded: - Click on the PLAY button To Add Another Part: - Click the PLAY button - Play an additional part on your instrument in time with the music on track 01 - As soon as you being playing, the KEEP button is highlighted - When you're finished, click on the STOP button You'll now need to put this part on a separate track. To Save Overdubs: - Select an empty track by clicking on its track number. You can tell a track is empty because the memory percentage shown for that track will be 00% - Click on the KEEP button. The KEEP button greys and a little "c" appears to the left of the track percentage - If you click the PLAY button once again, you'll hear both tracks 01 and 02 You can keep building tracks this way until all the tracks are filled up. Congratulations! You've just learned the basics of recording using EZ-Track Plus. More About the Manual --------------------- The last page or so of this file (the section titled "Recording Music") is an excerpt from the EZ-Track Plus manual (Chapter 2 - Getting Started). Of course, it's easier to read and follow in the actual manual, as headings are boldfaced, steps are bulleted, and graphics are inserted wherever appropriate. Still, I think you can get a feel for how comprehensive this manual is when you consider that example. Here's another one, from later in the manual (Chapter 4 - Music Processing), which deals with tranposing a track. (Keep in mind that there is a detailed section on "Selecting Tracks to Edit" earlier in the manual.) Transposing Individual Tracks ----------------------------- You can transpose the information on one track (up or down) in a range of one half-step to multi-octave jumps. This function actually changes the note information and saves it at the new value. (Global Transposing does not change the note information on each track; it just adjusts the values as they are sent out [the manual contains a reference to the discussion of Global Transpose].) To TRANPOSE A Track: - Select Transpose Track from the Edit menu - A dialog box prompts you to select the amount and direction to tranpose: [a picture of the dialog box] - Click on the # (or b) to select up (or down) tranpose - Click on the digits to select the amount to tranpose by - Click the RIGHT button to increase - Click the LEFT button to decrease - Click OK to continue - Select the track you wish to TRANSPOSE with the LEFT button - The track selected will reverse highlight [a picture of the screen at this point] - Select a DESTINATION track - Click the RIGHT button to save the editing The track you transposed is now placed on the new track. If you chose a track other than the original, you still have the first, untransposed version available. _You can TRANPOSE a track back to itself, but the original will be erased if you do this._ To TRANPOSE A TRACK From the ST Keyboard: - Press Control T. This will bring you to the initial dialog box. That's Just a Taste ------------------- The EZ-Track Plus manual is a music software user's dream. It contains over 150 pages of pictures and easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions -- you just can't live without it! It takes you through the details of each feature so that you can quickly get back to the reason you bought the program in the first place -- making music. While all features (except for saving) are available in this Demo Version, some may be a bit difficult to figure out without the manual. We hope you'll be impressed enough by the parts you _do_ figure out to rush out and buy the actual program, with manual, so that you can take advantage of every last feature... Sample Song ----------- At this point, it's easiest to explain a few more points if you load in the sample song. Select Load from the File menu, then select the file EZTDSAMP.SNG and load it. Notice that there are three tracks used, and each is named. You name tracks by first selecting the track (by clicking on its number), then selecting Name from the Track menu. The three named tracks have up-arrows next to the names, and all other tracks have down arrows. These are muting indicators. Click on them with the LEFT button to turn the track on (arrow up) and with the RIGHT button to turn the track off (arrow down). Other operations are possible with multiple mouse clicks; for example, you can solo a track (turn it on while all turning all others off) by clicking _and holding_ the LEFT button and then clicking the RIGHT button. The TV GUIDE style channel indicators make all MIDI information on that track get sent out on the MIDI channel indicated. Note that the unused tracks have no channel symbols showing. This means that a track will play back any channel (or mix of channels) as recorded in the track data itself. Click the channel symbol (or on the blank space in the column where it would be) with the RIGHT button to increment, or the LEFT button to decrement (you'll notice that's a common use of the two mouse buttons throughout the program). On the right side of the screen, the Song Name is at the top. Below that box is the tempo, time signature (enabled by selecting Meter/Metronome from the Options menu and choosing "0001|01.00" after setting the time signature), metronome sound on/off (speaker symbol), and Sync Type Selector (the Atari logo means Internal Sync, the normal mode of use; the 5-pin jack means MIDI Sync, in which an external source of MIDI Clock, such as a drum machine or another sequencer, controls EZ-Track Plus). Under the Cash Register symbol are four values, which are the Auto-Locate Start Time, the Punch-In Time, the Punch-Out Time, and the Auto-Locate End Time. If you are familiar with these concepts, by all means go ahead and experiment with them, but it would take too long to explain them in detail here. In summary, you can Auto-Locate to any point in the song by clicking on the digits to select the Start Time, then clicking on the bracket-shaped line that connects the Start Time and the End Time, and clicking on the PLAY button. Instead of starting at the beginning, it will start playing at the Start Time. You can set Punch-In and Punch-Out times similarly, and punch mode is enabled by clicking on the Punching glove symbol. Select the source punch track by clicking on the _name_; select the destination track for the punch by clicking _to the left of the track number_. By the way, the ...1 indication you see when you start playing the song is for lead-in bar 1. It is followed by bar ...2, 0001, 0002, and so on. Notice you can actually record (say, a pick-up bar) during the lead-in. On the far right, the piano-keys symbol is for Global Tranpose (it tranposes the whole song as it's playing). The channel to the right of that is one channel which is _not_ tranposed (handy when you use drum machines as instruments, and don't want your snare turning into a conga). The Thru option, if checked, takes whatever you play into the MIDI In port, optionally (if a channel number is showing) puts it on a specific MIDI channel, and sends it back out the MIDI Out port. This is very useful for directing MIDI from a master keyboard to keyboardless modules as you're recording. Menus ----- Here is just a very brief summary of some of the menu items which may not be so obvious. FILE MENU: Import Track allows you to bring in a track from another song file into the song you're currently working on. HybriSwitch will only be enabled when you run EZ-Track Plus under the HybriSwitch program, coming soon (spring 88) from Hybrid Arts. That program lets you have EZ-Track Plus and EZ-Score Plus both in memory (minimum 1 meg required), for example, and switch between one and the other (without losing the data in either) in an instant. TRACK MENU (affects the currently selected track): Glue Section is the cut-and-paste feature. Copies any portion of a track or tracks that have been defined by the user (as a Section, reached by clicking on the Cash Register symbol on the main screen), from one timing location to another. (The manual explains this very thoroughly, with examples.) EDIT MENU (if tracks are affected, it always prompts for them): Unmix Track separates out information on a track by MIDI channel. Quantize Track auto-corrects timing. Also see Quantize Method in OPTIONS MENU. MIDI MENU: Input Filters selects which types of events of get recorded and which types get filtered out. Output Options lets you set MIDI clock output options, including whether to output Song Position Pointer (supported by some but not all drum machines). OPTIONS MENU: Meter/Metronome lets you set: a time signature for the display (of time values), the note value for the metronome tick (either every quarter note or every eighth note), either no lead-in or 2 bars of lead-in, and whether to work in Beats mode (00000.00) or Meter mode (0001|01.00). If you select Beats mode, the other settings here are ignored. Quantize Method affects all subsequent Quantize Track operations. The Move Note method moves the whole note, keeping the duration constant. The Shift Attack method only moves the start of the note, keeping the end time of the note constant, and thus possibly changing the duration. Whole vs Region lets you enable a prompt which applies to Quantize, Tranpose, and Velocity Adjust. If you choose Region in those cases, only the events between the Register's Start Time and End Time will be affected. Track Delays lets you shift each track in time (forward or backward) by ticks (1/96th of a quarter-note beat). SAFETY MENU: If Entering Menu is checked, you must _click_ to drop down a menu. Key Equivalents: ---------------- The key equivalents for all selections (except Quit) in the File menu are Alternate plus the first letter in the selection (for example, to Import a Track, use Alternate I). Between the Track and Edit menu, most selections are Control plus the first letter. A few, generally more "dangerous" ones (like Delete Track), are Control Shift plus the letter. Unprotect is Control Shift P. There are key equivalents for most main screen functions as well. For example, Space Bar is equivalent to PLAY, Return is STOP, and = toggles Thru on and off. Compatibility: -------------- EZ-Track Plus can load files created with EZ-Track, and any files saved with EZ-Track Plus can be loaded into EZ-Track. EZ-Track Plus can also load many files created with the MidiTrack ST series of sequencers (ie, SyncTrack or SmpteTrack), provided they only use the first 20 tracks and do not use special types of tracks (tempo, chain, etc) not supported by EZ-Track Plus. The files EZ-Track Plus creates are loadable into any current or future version of MidiTrack ST (Sync/SmpteTrack) sequencers. They can also be Auto-Scored in EZ-Score Plus. EZ-Track Plus is compatible with the GenPatch accessory (which will be included on the EZ-Track Plus disk when you purchase the program). Thus you can load and send patch files created with the GenPatch ST program (or with one of several conversion utilities) from within EZ-Track Plus. EZ-Track Plus should also be compatible with all other reasonably well-behaved accessories. (With a very few, it may be necessary to select the About entry from the Desk menu to return to normal operation.) As described above, EZ-Track Plus is also HybriSwitch compatible. Legalities ---------- EZ-Track Plus (including the Demo Version) is Copyright 1986, 1988 by Hybrid Arts, Inc. The DEMO VERSION _ONLY_ may be freely distributed, as long as this DOC file is distributed with it (on the same disk, or in the same ARC file, named EZTPDEMO.ARC). Excerpts from the EZ-Track Plus User Manual are Copyright 1988 by Hybrid Arts, Inc, and are included here by permission.