| Contents |
| EasySynth
| Glossary
|
Once this application has been loaded, click on its icon to open all of its
most important windows, or open them through the "Open Window" part of the
main menu.
Each note in the note column is displayed in the following format:
<note><# | -><octave, 1-3>
If there is no note to be played, three dashes (---) are shown.
For example, C-2 is middle C, and A#1 is A sharp
(or B flat) below middle C. If you are still confused, load Vivaldi and open
both the main edit window and the keyboard. Clicking on each note in turn
will show you the full sequence, from C-1 to B-3.
The sample number is simply the number of the sound sample to play at the
given note. It can be any number from 1 to 36 (31 in SoundTracker files). If
it is 0, then the last sample to be played on that channel will be used, but
the volume will not be altered.
NB A sample must have been loaded into the given slot, or nothing
will be played! See below for details of how to load
samples into Vivaldi.
The effect number and effect value are usually 0. The effect number tells the music player which effect to use, and the effect value is the parameter passed to it. The effects used by Vivaldi are given on a separate reference sheet, as are the keyboard shortcuts.
The selection is used for various effects such as transpose and copy. In the above picture, the start event is 5 and the end event is 10, with the selection channel being 2 and the selection pattern 9. See below for more about selection.
Finally, the current event (the next one to be altered) is the one in the
window which is red.
SELECT or ADJUST on a name allows you to alter it.
The currently selected sample is shown by the number which has a dark
background; to make a sample the current one, click on its number. To see
its attributes, double-click the number - see below
for details of the attributes window.
To load a sample (it must be an STSample or a SampDump file), you need only
to drag it to Vivaldi - any of its windows, or the main icon. The sample
will be loaded into the current sample slot; if there is already a sample
there, it will be replaced with the one you are dragging in.
SELECT moves the
stereo position by 1; ADJUST moves it by 16.
The possible settings for Tracker files are -127, -96, -64, -32, 0, 32, 64, 96 and 127. Other values will be rounded off to the nearest one possible.
SoundTracker type files do not store the stereo settings; they are usually implemented as right, left, left, right, right, left, left, right.
MusDump files (Vivaldi's own type) store the stereo settings exactly as you
set them in this window.
A screenshot of this window is shown to the right. The white box shows the
current position of the music in the sequence table (0 means that the music
isn't playing), and the icons have exactly the same function as they do in
TrackPlay, with the exception of the
stop icon - this only stops the music, it doesn't remove it from
Vivaldi's workspace!
Note that clicking on the play icon in TrackPlay will not start the
music in Vivaldi; TrackPlay's play serves only as an "unpause"
button.
This window controls the selection.
This window shows the current channel of the current pattern as a sequence
of notes and rests. The current event has a red line just after it, and the
selected events (if there are any in the current channel and pattern) have a
white, rather than grey, background. Clicking ADJUST on a note
blanks that event, turning it into a rest; SELECT changes a
note, using the current keyboard settings (see
below). If Shift is held down when
SELECT is clicked then the note is sharp, otherwise it is
natural.
This window offers some control over the attributes of a sample, and allows
it to be removed from memory if necessary. The icons are self-explanatory,
except for the top one: This is the sample name, and may not be altered in
this window, only in the Sample Data window.
This is one of the more important windows in Vivaldi. While the main editing
window (see above) is open and the mouse pointer is
in the keyboard window (or the pattern data window pane), mouse clicks or
key presses of the keys shown in the picture (Z,
X, C etc) will enter notes at the current event,
with the restrictions dictated by the icons on the far right ("Note",
"Sample" etc). The up and down arrows (top left) simply move the
current event up and down; the arrow keys on the keyboard have the same
effect.
The white boxes to the right of "Sample", "Effect" and
"[effect] Value" hold the current values, which will be entered in
the event with every new note. A hexadecimal value (see
glossary) is only allowed in the
effect value box, and must be prefixed with an ampersand
(&). If it isn't, it is assumed to be a decimal number.
Clicking on "Note", "Sample", "Effect" or
"Value", or pressing F1 to F4, toggles the
icon on and off. If selected, then that aspect of each event will remain
unchanged when a new note is entered; for example, in the picture
above/right the effect and effect value will not be changed when notes are
entered.
If "Timed" is selected, then events will be entered in real time,
with the speed being determined by the effect value (set to 6 by default).
When the end of the pattern is reached, stop playing!
"Info" leads to an information window.
"Close windows" closes all open windows belonging to Vivaldi.
"Monitor" enters the music monitor if music is playing - otherwise,
it opens the tools window.
"Quit" removes your music, and Vivaldi, from memory - make sure your
work is saved first!
Ctrl+F5.
Ctrl+F6.
This leads to 3 choices - selection, pattern or whole file. These refer to
what is to be searched through by the replace function: the selection alone,
the current pattern alone, or the entire file.
In each of the boxes in the Replace window, shown in the picture, an
asterisk (*) on its own means "anything", and in the
"Note" box it means "any note". To replace blank notes, search
for ---. An asterisk in any of the "replace" boxes simply means
to leave that value alone, so the values in the picture would result in
nothing being done at all.
NB Effect values should, as usual, be prefixed with
& if they are in hexadecimal.