Music Studio Song Player GFA Basic Version by: Walter Holding About MSPLAYER.PRG... MSPLAYER.PRG is for use with Music Studio Files written using the Music Studio Program designed and developed by Audio Light Inc. on the Atari ST. At this time, this program works via the use of the MIDI port only. Medium resolution only! It has the capability of reading and playing files created on the Atari ST as well as editing the tempo, volume and MIDI parameters of these files. Any changes you make can be SAVED back to a disk file. LOADING and PLAYING... This is pretty straightforward. Simply click on the Load button and a fileselect box will appear. Select the song you wish to load and it will be done. There is a limit to the size of the file of 32767 bytes, but this should not be a problem as I have yet to see a Music Studio file which even comes close to this limit. The fileselect has a default extender of ".SNG" but this is not a limitation, as the program actually checks within the song file to insure that it is a Music Studio file. Therefore, if you have changed the extender on your files, simply change the extender in the file select box and your files will be displayed. This is explained (I think) in the ST owners manual. Once a song has been loaded, the "play" button becomes selectable and clicking in this box will start the song playing. Touching any key will stop play and the song will remain in memory if editing is desired. ADJUSTING VOLUME AND TEMPO... Once a song has been loaded, you can adjust the tempo or volume of the song by simply pointing into the appropiate DISPLAY and clicking the left mouse button to decrease the value, or the right mouse button to increase the value. (Note: To better hear the effects of an accented note, it is best to leave volume adjusted to around 90 or less. Try it, you'll like it!) The reason is that maximum velocity is 127 and if you already have it set for the maximum, you will not hear the accent. SAVING THE FILE BACK TO DISK... Simply click on SAVE from either the main menu or the edit MIDI menu and you will be warned that you are about to write the song file back to disk, and given a chance to escape. You may overwrite the existing file or create a new one, the later of which is my recommendation until you are sure the song sounds the way you want it. This way, if you make matters worse, you always have the original to fall back on. (Good practice for any program!) EDIT MIDI... This does what it says. It allows you to edit the midi parameters. When you click on EDIT MIDI from the main menu, another window pops up and displays the midi parameters as they were saved into the file. No changes can be made until you click on the EDIT button from this menu. To make changes, simply select the parameter you wish to change by pointing to it with the mouse and clicking the left mouse button to decrease and the right button to increase. Holding either button down will cause rapid advancement of the parameter. When it is released, it will stop. Simply point to the next parameter until all changes are made. If you desire, you may save the file back to disk at this time, however, I recommend that you at least listen to the song and if you are satisfied with the changes, you may then save them back to disk. The Song remains in memory until you load another or select the JUKEBOX mode. JUKEBOX... Jukebox, when selected, will play all songs within the ROOT Directory of the active drive unless the prgram is in the same folder as the songs. The active drive can be changed most sim- ply by loading at least one song from that device. For those of you that are not sure what ROOT directory means, simply put, root directory means "NOT IN A FOLDER" of the active drive. Jukebox creates a temporary file containing a listing of the ".SNG" files on the disk, so therefore the disk cannot be write protected. You will have to rename your files to contain the ".SNG extender in order for this option to work properly. Pressing any key other than 'X' will stop playing of current song and load and play the next song. Pressing 'X' will completely stop all play and abort the Jukebox function. No songs remain in memory and the temporary file created by the Jukebox mode will be deleted. If no songs are found, the main menu screen will simply reappear. FOR YOUR INFORMATION... I have encountered valid MUSIC STUDIO FILES that contained no information regarding tempo, volume or key signature. I don't know how or when these files were created, but if loaded into this player, they caused the program to crash. Therefore, I have taken the time to let the user know that this information was missing by displaying an ALERT that says that the TEMPO information was missing and the program has set it to 120 beats per minute. If you encounter this message after loading a song, I recommend that you try to play the song and adjust tempo and volume accordingly. Unfortunately, the Key Signature information may also be missing from these files, and if this is true,the song will be played out of key. I have not found a solution to this problem. Fortunately, I have only encountered 2 such song files out of the 200 that I have, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. WHY... Music Studio is a nice program and works well. Most of us that have it use it about 95% of the time as a player. The inconveniences of using it were such that a player program was definitely needed. What inconveniences you ask? Consider These: 1. Low resolution only 2. Disk is copy protected so it cannot be run from a hard drive so hard drive users had to find the original floopy. 3. No way to share file with friends that did not own Music Studio. Not really earth shattering but inconveniences none the less. A program of this type was being written by a good friend of mine in C. I wanted to be involved in the writing and not knowing much of anything about C, immediately found myself with a lot of printed out source code and not a prayer in the world of trying to figure out what does what and when. Therefore, I thought I would embark on writing a similar program in BASIC! Surely it cannot run fast enough to to be used in a song player capable of playing notes as fast as Music Studio. (Not only that but for each note you turn on, you have to send another command to turn each one off. So, when you are running this program, think about the fact that for each and every note playing, That at least six bytes (not counting program changes) go out the midi port.) And GFA Basic was definitely fast enough to handle it! Soon, I intend on adding the Atari Sound chip as part of this program but for now, I have run out of time on this project and must leave it as is. Should you find bugs, please let me know. I can be reached on GEnie - LACEII BBS as Walter Holding (806) 792-3317 or by writing: Walter Holding 5505 Third Street Lubbock, Texas 79416 Any input would be greatly appreciated. Happy MIDI-ing... This program was released into the public domain and is not for sale at any price. You may distribute this program as you see fit, as long as it is distributed in it's entirety, which includes this READ_ME.LST file. The source code is included but is of no value unless you have GFA Basic distributed by MichTron. (If you don't have it - WHY NOT?) It will not load into any other basic, nor can it be listed to the screen. WHY NOT?) It will not load into any other basic, nor can it be listed to the screen. ðpN®ø¶pN®