| Contents |
| Introduction: The Disks
| AWSystem
|
Music is split up into patterns, which are like phrases of music. They contain a section of the tune. Within each pattern is a sequence of up to 64 events per channel.
It is these "events" which tell the music player what to actually do; they are the actual notes, rests, effects and commands which, when strung together, make a piece of music.
Patterns would be no good on their own; they have to be sequenced - put into some kind of order. To do this, the sequence table is used, which tells the music player which order to play the patterns in. This table can have any length from 1 to 128 inclusive. Up to 64 patterns may be used, numbered from 0 to 63. Using a sequence table means that patterns can be played in any order, and they can be played more than once.
In a tune, samples are given numbers, from 1 to 36 inclusive (SoundTracker
type music files - 001, 701 and CC5 -
can only store 31, not 36, so be careful which format you save the music
in). When a note is given in an event, the sample to play at that note would
also be given. For example, the event "C#1 05 01 002" would
play sample 5 at C sharp in octave 1, with effect 1 (pitch slide) and effect
value 2 (a small amount).
To play the sample at a given note, the computer is actually playing the sound fast or slow, to simulate a different pitch. This means, for example, that if a speech sample is played at too low a note it takes longer to play, and may well be unintelligible because it has been slowed down. Experiment, and you will see what I mean: load a sample into Samp-Edit, play it back at different notes, and take notice of the amount of time the sample lasts each time.
| Introduction: The Disks
| AWSystem
|
| Contents |