Atari Mega Archive 1

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PREFACE ******* First, authors of this shareware would like to thank you of having downloaded Alchimie Jr. Anyone you are and anywhere you live, you are wellcome in the world of Alchimie Junior. The authors hope that you will enjoy working with your new sequencer especially made for ATARI 1040 and Mega ST/STE. They hope so that you will appreciate 2 1/2 years of development. (please understand the sometime poor translation, french is our mother tongue, but we shall do better next time if...) Note : for french people a complete french version is available. (la version française est disponible dans un conditionnement commercial classique que vous pouvez obtenir pour 100 US$ ou l'équivalent dans votre monnaie nationale). When sending us your support, you will get (among several documents) a complete information about Alchimie Senior, the cheaper and the most powerfull sequencer you will never see. (we know, it's just words but try the Junior, understand its logic and just imagine what could be the Senior version...) If you like to join us for questions, criticals or for anything else, you can write to : Prosoft informatique Dominique Canevesi Redoute 18 CH-1260 NYON (SWITZERLAND) You can also join us in : COMPUSERVE ID 100016,156 BIX ID DCANEVESI DELPHY ID DCANEVESI GENIE soon available You can also send a Fax : (01141) 825.34.05 If and when you send your support, please do not forget : First name, name, your complete address and state, your payment or with a credit card : pay to the order of PROSOFT informatique, the kind of CC, CC number and date of issue. Thank you again. DISTRIBUTION LICENSING AGREEMENT Anyone wishing to charge people a fee for giving a copy of this shareware must have the writen authorization of the authors. Without which, the distributor is guilty of copyright violation. To receive such authorization, send this completed form to : PROSOFT informatique, D. Canevesi, Redoute 18, CH-1260 NYON (SWITZERLAND). Please include 5 US$ to cover the cost of processing and receive terms of distribution. Name of the Organisation :.................... Your Name :................................... Your complete address :....................... Your signature :______________________________ - 1 - 1 - INTRODUCTION TO ALCHIMIE Jr You have now in your hand one of the most powerfull musical sequencer of Atari's world. At the date of issue (1989), this was one of the first real-time, multi-windows and multi-task sequencer. (maybe the first one) 1.1 What you see ---------------- When you run Alchimie Jr, you can see many differents objects displayed on the screen. They are three open windows (Songs, Patterns and Tracks), at the bottom right four icons, (Printer, Disk, Trash and Stack), at the bottom left a rectangular part (the control pannel) and on the top at the right position of the menu bar, a counter showing you the current time/position. The control pannel contains three parts, which are from the left to the right: Left part contains six buttons and a white bar. They are (from left to right and up to down) : RECORD, PLAY, STOP, BACKWARD, FORWARD and RESET. The white bar represents the MIDI INPUT BUFFER. Middle part contains four values indicating the START, STOP, PUNCH-IN and PUNCH-OUT times. Right part contains the tempo value, the time signature and various control buttons. On the bottom you can see an horizontal slider which allows you to modify times values or the tempo, modifications depends on which of them is selected. 1.2 Using mouse --------------- The mouse is used to : * Select : click brievly on the left button of the mouse. * Get Info : double click on the left button * Move : point and hold left button down, move to destination, release the mouse button. 1.3 Musical time notation ------------------------- Alchimie Jr print the musical time in a three parts number as BBBB/TT/CCC where BBBB indicates the count of bars, TT the count of time in the bar and CCC the count of internal tops. For example 0008/01/048 means 8 beat time, 1 beat and 48 internal clocks. The internal clock counter is on the right top of the screen, on the menu bar. Note : they are 96 internal clock for a quarter note. - 2 - 2 - QUICK GUIDE In this section, we explain step by step "how to do that". 2.1 Play the demo song ---------------------- - Run ALCHIMIE.PRG - Click on the "OK" button after you have read the Info Box. - Choose a song in the files selector At this step, you have load one song. It appears on the top of the song window. Drag the first line of the Song window to the PLAY button on the control panel. 2.2 Record a new pattern ------------------------ Before recording a track, you must create a new song and a new pattern. - Create a new song by double clicking on an empty line in the song window and filling up the dialog box with correct values. Select it. - Create a new pattern by double clicking on the Pattern window and filling up the dialog box. - Drag the new pattern to the STOP button. This operation indicates to Alchimie Jr of using this pattern as the current one. Note that the START and STOP time on the control panel are adapted to follow the pattern duration. Now you can start recording : - Push on RECORD and then on PLAY - Wait 2 beats time of clicks and play what you want on your synth. When you are playing, first you can see the INPUT BUFFER turning to grey then appears a black rectangle which grows from left to right. - Click on the STOP button when you stop playing - Drag the input buffer to the desired position on the Track window. This operation actually records data on a track. You can obtain the same result by pressing the "/" key on the numeric pad. Note that the input buffer will not be erase until you click on the RESET button or you drag a song or a pattern to the PLAY or RECORD buttons. This, gives you the opportunity of doing records on many others tracks. (perhaps in others patterns). Now, you can hear Alchimie Jr playing what you have just recorded by clicking on RESET and then on PLAY. Press F6 to show on the GRID what you have just recorded. Note : to record an other track, you only need to repeat the three last steps. - 3 - 2.3 Some usefull operations --------------------------- Copy a track: - Drag a track to the destination track number and fill up the dialog. Erase a track: - Drag the track to the TRASH icon then confirm in the dialog box. Change the midi Channel of a track: - Click on the Ch column. Move the mouse up and down until you reach the correct value you are expecting for. Click on stop or double click on the track's name and fill up the dialog. Quantize a track: - Choose the correct track. In the menu FUNCTION choose QUANTIZE. Input the quantum value and confirm. Note : the same logic is applied to all of the others windows. Save a pattern or a song : -As you guess, drag the pattern to the DISK icon. 3 - STRUCTURES As you have remark, there is a great dependency between the various windows. For example when you select an other song, you can see the content of all others windows changing. At the top of the hierarchical structure, there is the SONG. At the same level, we have the MASTER, witch explains to the Alchimie's sequencer how to order the patterns when playing in song mode. At the next level are the PATTERNS. They are the basic material used to compose a song. Each of those is a set of 256 TRACKS witch contains the various MIDI informations such as Notes etc... Each part of this structure has its own window. Windows can be open by selecting the desired title in the menu VIEW or by pressing functions keys F1 to F6. They are two more windows (GRID and LIST), offering great flexibility on editing notes and Midi Events. 4 - THE CONTROL PANNEL 4.1 Sequencer control buttons ----------------------------- RECORD : Toggle capture of midi messages. PLAY : Start/continue to play a song if in song mode else a pattern STOP : Stop the sequencer Back/forward: Control the current position of the sequencer - 4 - Reset : Cleanup the Input Buffer and set position to zero Beep : Enable, disable click on the loudspeaker of the monitor Countdown : When recording, countdown two beats time Cycle : Select cycle mode. In this mode, when the sequencer hit the stop time, it rewinds to the start time and continue to play. What you have made an entry on your keyboard during the loop, this last entry will be played in the next loop, as long as no midi datas are coming on. To make record effective, simply drag the input buffer to a track. Synchro : Enable/disable midi synchro Punch : Enable/disable punching. The P.IN/P.OUT times are used do define the punching part. Autorec : Enable autoRec. In this mode, the contents of the Input Buffer is recorded to the current track when the sequencer is stopped. Solo : If selected, plays only Tracks with flag in S column set. Auto << : If selected, rewinds as soon as stopped. 5 - MOUSE OPERATIONS 5.1 ...on Tracks ---------------- Select : Choose the current track. The current track is used by default for all of the operations in the FUNCTION menu. If the THRU option is specified in the CONFIG/MIDI OUT box, the Ch column of the current track is used as current thru channel. Dclick : Show info on this track. You can change, in the dialog box, the values of all columns of the window. Drag : Drag to Trash to Erase/Delete, drag to another track to Move/Copy, drag to Stack to Cut. 5.2 ...on Patterns ------------------ Select : Choose the current pattern. The current pattern is the default one for all operations in the FUNCTION menu. The contents of the Track, Grid and Events window is depending on this selection. Dclick : Get info about a pattern. In the dialog box, you may change its name, length and time signature. Drag to : an other pattern to Move/Copy, to TRASH icon to Erase/Delete, to STACK icon to Cut, to DISK icon to Save pattern. Drag to the PLAY button to set the "pattern mode" and start playing or to the STOP button to just set mode. Drag to master window to insert a pattern in the song. - 5 - 5.3 ...on Songs --------------- Select : Choose the current song. The contents of all windows depends on this selection. Dclick : Get song info. In the box you may change the name and the length of this song. Drag to : DISK icon to save, TRASH icon to erase, PLAY button to set song mode and play, STOP button to set mode. 5.4 ...on Events list --------------------- Click : Choose an event and shows the events menu. Dclick : Edit an event. Drag to : TRASH to delete, an other event to Move. If the SHIFT key on the keyboard is pressed while draging, the event will be copied. 5.5 ...on Grid -------------- Click on a note : Shows note parameters Click elsewhere : Deselect zone if already defined Dclick on a note: Edit note parameters Drag a note : Drag to the grid to Move/Copy note, to TRASH icon to Erase a note. Drag a zone : Drag to the grid to Copy/Move all the notes in the zone, drag to the TRASH icon to Erase/Delete notes. Drag elsewhere : Start to define a zone. 5.6 ...on other parts --------------------- Dclick on : DISK icon to show disk free space, on STACK icon shows the stack contents, on PLAY button to see Sequencing mode, on Input Buffer to see infos on captured events... Drag : DISK to Song or Pattern window to load, STACK to Pattern or Track window to paste. Note : To customize your desk, you may move your icons and the control panel elsewhere on Alchimie's desk. 6. THE MENUS 6.1 View -------- Song, Pattern, Tracks, Master, Grid and List : To open and show the corresponding window. A checkmark indicates the opened windows, visibles or not. Option : To change display mode. Quit : To leave Allchimie Jr. - 6 - 6.2 Function ------------ Insert : To insert a blank space in a Track or in a Pattern Repeat : To repeat a part of Track or Pattern Strech : To ajust events positions Double : To play twice the part Reverse: To reverse order of events Rotate : To rotate order of events in a track or pattern part Import : To read midifile. Export : To write a midifile from a pattern Execute: To run a programm without leaving Alchimie Jr 6.3 Events ---------- Channel : to change the midi channel of events on track or pattern Controler : to change controler number Position : to quantize/humanize note position Velocity : operations on note velocity Length : operations on note length Compress : data reduction 6.4 Config ---------- MIDI IN : the Midi Input Filter MIDI OUT : various output options Filter : the data filter Save : save Windows and Icon positions for the next use - 7 -