textfiles/programming/AMIGA/star.txt

+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|                          STARTREKKER 1.2                      |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+

                    CODED BY EXOLON OF FAIRLIGHT

                      RELEASE DATE: 19/11-1990


  Now your own local Exolon has been up all night coding on the StarTrekker
  just for you... But the result was worth the pain, because...

  The main theme for this release is SYNTHETIC SOUNDS.... Read..



------------------------New features in 1.2--------------------------

1. Now prints patterns while playing in 8 channel mode.

2. An FM-Synthesizer is included to make samples for you. You can make
   any sound from organs to whips, chains and drums :-) See special doc
   below.

3. An AM-Synthesizer is included to make realtime sounds for you. A bit more
   limited than the FM, this makes sounds similar to the Future Composer..
   Doc below... 

3. Diskop screen squeezed into halfheight... So you can diskop while
   pressing play and stop...

4. Channel On/Off gadgets in 8 channel mode.

5. You can now click on the spectrum analyzer and it turns into two COOL
   oscillioscope pictures... Click again and the analyzer comes back. The
   left scopes displays voices 1 and 4 (the left channels) and the right 
   scope displays voices 2 and 3 (the right channels).

6. Play routine sources included on this disk:

     NORMALREPLAY.S	- normal replay routine without "AM" sounds
     AMREPLAY.S	        - replay routine for both normal and "AM" sounds
     8CHANNELREPLAY.S	- replay routine for 8 channel modules

7. Maybe it's a little more bugfree now... Try it!




                 --------*> FM SYNTHESIZER <*--------

Welcome to the FM Synthesizer!

First of all I would like to send some great thanks to my friend GLUEMASTER
for exploring this topic. He got inspired of the Yamaha DX FM synth and
decided to write his own on the amiga. He did, and now I have made one too!
And included it into the StarTrekker 1.2!!

It works like this:

After you have pressed RESET, 
you have four sinus-waves under your control. You can't change the waveform,
but you can change the envelope and base-frequency for each sinus-wave. Then
you can choose for each to listen to it, modulate the next's frequency or
both... The program then calculates a sample of your selected length, and
you are free to use this sample to whatever you want (including playing
it!). You can also choose just to save the parameters (120 bytes) to disk.
You have some examples in the FMSOUNDS drawer on this disk. Load,
press calc, play, and learn...

Some hints:

Try to only listen to ONE sinuswave (number 4 f.x), then put a small
envelope on sinuswave 3 and press F.MOD on wave 4. Now wave 4's frequency
will be modulated according to the output of wave 3. Then you alter the
envelope and frequency of wave 3 till it sounds great, then press F.MOD on
wave 3 and make a envelope on wave 2, adjust and continue with wave 1. NOW,
if you press F.MOD on wave 1 also, it will be modulated by wave 4, and the
modulation will be fed back to the beginning, causing some kind of noise
suitable for drums etc..


The FM-Synth controls:

In the middle of the screen there's a rectangle containing the selected
wave's (the 1-4 buttons) envelope. It always display the envelope from the
start till the release ends, even if the total time is just a fraction of
the whole sample. Above the envelope is a black line. This line shows how
much time the envelope shows, with respect to the total sample time.

Buttons 1-4 let you select which wave to edit.

The TOT number is the total time for the envelope (discussed above), if you
want the envelope to be the same lenght as the sample, the black line above
the envelope should be as long as the rectangle. HOWEVER if the total time
is longer, the line's still only as long as the rectangle, so to be sure
decrease the TOT until the line begins to shorten, the increase to the
rectangles end..

The LENGTH number is the number of bytes the output sample should have.

The FREE button clears the FM parameters but the sample's still intact.

The RESET button loads the current FM parameters with the default sound.

The LOAD and SAVE let you load and save the parameters as a disk file
of the length 120 bytes.

The CALC button calculates a sample according to the current parameter
settings. The small dot appearing up in the right hand corner of the calc
button signals that you have changed the parameters since you CALCed last.

The FMOD button tells wether the current wave should be frequency modulated
by the preceding wave.

The LISTEN button tells if the output sample should contain this wave's
output or not. To get a sound at all, at least ONE wave should have this
button highlighted.

Now for the real parameters... From up to down:

FQ       This waves base frequency. $1 is very low, $4 is average and $20 is
         quite high.

L0       Start amplitude for the envelope
A1L      Attack level
A1S      The speed that the amplitude changes to the attack level, $1 is slow
         and $40 is fast.
A2L      Secondary attack level, for those who likes envelopes...
A2S      Secondary attack speed.

DS       The speed that the amplitude decays down to the:
SL       Sustain level. There is remains for the time set by the
ST       Sustain time.

RS       Release speed. The speed that the amplitude falls from ST to 0.

Any change of either of the envelope parameters will cause a redraw of the
envelope curve. It's very easy to see what does what with the graphic
representation.

DO NOT set any speed to 0, unless you want the amplitude to remain at the
last value.

To roll values faster, press the right mouse button also.

When you press SAVE MODULE a requester pops up asking whether to save the
by FM synthesis calculated samples. Normally you press NO to save diskspace,
the FM sounds are automatically recalculated when you reload the module.
However, to use the module in the replayroutines, you have to press YES
because the replaysource doesn't contain a FM generator. (Guess why...)

I realize that the FM-Synth can be quite hard to understand, there has been
a lot of talking about FM-sounds and calculation here and there, but load
the examples in the FMSOUNDS directory and try to change some parameters,
important, DON'T FORGET THAT YOU HAVE TO PRESS CALC before you can play with
your sound...


		------------> AM SYNTHESIZER <------------

Welcome to the AM synthesizer. Unlike the FM synth this doesn't create a
sample. It has it's own internal 32 byte long samples, and changes the 
volume and period of the sound 50 times a second. So, it operates similar
to all the other synthetic sound programs out there like Sidmon, Future
Composer etc. Here you therefore doesn't have to press a CALC button all the
time, just change a parameter and play the keyboard.

CONTROLS:

  In the box you have the envelope shape. You can edit the envelope in
exactly the same way as in the FM synth, so please look above for that.

Below the box there's four waveform gadgets to select the waveform. There's
a sinus, a sawtooth, a pulse and a noise waveform.

To the left, you can edit the vibrato amplitude and speed as well as the 
pitch fall.

The FQ value is the octave. 0 is the highest and 5 is the lowest.

Again, the best way to learn is to load the examples in the AMSOUNDS drawer.


The FREE button clears the AM parameters.

The RESET button loads the parameters with the default settings.

The LOAD and SAVE buttons speak for themselves, don't they?


            ---------------------------------


Greetinx goes to:

   F/X-lab, Lord CMP, Octo, Olwon, Freddy "FISKEN", Alex "PADDEL",
   Toffelhero, Peter Bo X-tra Long John Silver Skold Frankenstein,
   and to all others who has helped me with suggestions about the 1.2...



      Well that was all for this time, hope to see you soon in further
     more advanced versions of the only state of the art music-program:

                             THE STARTREKKER!



                                    Signed EXOLON OF FAIRLIGHT!




   As always, suggestions are welcome at this address (NO SWAPPING!)

                     Bjorn Wesen
                     Roslins v.20A
                     S-217 55 Malmoe
                     SWEDEN

   Or contact me at FAIRLIGHT EUROPEAN HEADQUARTERS:
                    MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE +46/44247539

   Or mail me on the Amiga Echo area on FIDONET to 'Bjoern Wesen'.



------------------------------1.1 doc--------------------------------

1. Opens an own intuition screen so mouseclicks won't fall through to the
   underlying workbench and cause trouble.

2. MULTITASKS correctly... Just press the screen to back gadget on the
   ST screen and it will lie quiet in the background Wait()ing... When you
   want to return to the st, just select the st window on the st screen by
   pressing the workbench depth gadgets.

3. KEYBOARD ROUTINE REWRITTEN! Using an IDCMP port connected to the st
   window... The ST now works on any configuration without using the -h
   option. So now you can choose your own key repeat speed in Preferences.
   NOTE: Key repeat will be disabled when not in Edit mode. Otherwise it
   wouldn't sound very good if you just play with the keys, hold one down
   and it goes R...rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

   If you have the polyphonic mode on (see the old docs below) you can now
   press many keys at the same time and play CHORDS... Great eh?

4. 8 CHANNEL EDITOR! Now the editor is in MED-RES in 8 channel mode so you
   can edit all 8 channels at the same time... When in polyphonic mode,
   choose voice 1-4 with LEFT ALT + F6-F9 and choose voice 5-8 with LEFT ALT +
   LEFT SHIFT + F6-F9.

5. INSERT/DELETE note in the editor. In edit mode, press return and the
   notes below in the column will go down one step.. Just as in an ordinary
   text editor. Also, by pressing Backspace you will delete the note the
   cursor's on and the notes below will be moved up one step.

6. FREEMEM now prints with 6 chars... So those of you with 2 meg chip can
   see all..

7. COMMANDS implemented in 8 channel mode:

      $1 <amount>             Frequency up
      $2 <amount>             Frequency down
      $4 <speed><amplitude>   Vibrato
      $A <up><down>           Volume slide
      $C <volume>             Volume change
      $D                      Pattern break
      $F <tempo>              Tempo change

   It's not a very great idea to load a 4 channel tune and go 8 channels..
   Because of the way the 8 channel routine works, it is very difficult to
   make the portamento commands in 4 and 8 mode equal f.ex.

8. The DISKOP menu now uses a real filerequester.. So you can go loading
   songs, modules and samples from wherever you want... There is no delete
   buttons on the diskop menu because in the filerequester you can delete
   any file you want.


 Some bugs fixed:

      When saving an 8 channel module or song the last odd pattern was lost.
      This is now corrected. (Thanx Lord CMP of Paradise for reminding me
      about that one.)

      Restart didn't work in 8 channel mode. I had it fixed in one version
      but unfortunately there was a slight version mix up. Now it's fixed.

      There was a bug in the NoiseTracker 2.0 when loading the .NT extra
      file. It was supposed to contain the midi transpose values etc. but
      they got overwritten as soon as the file had been loaded. This is now
      corrected.




VERY OLD DOCS:


POINT KEY: ( [.] On the keypad)

   With the point key you can select three playmodes. With one press, one
   dot will appear next to FREEMEM. You can now play with the keypad like
   a drum machine. The pitch for each instrument is set by pressing left
   ALT + the desired pitch key. With two presses, it's just like above
   but now the notes will be written to the pattern when in edit or record
   mode. With three presses, you will activate the POLYPHONIC mode. Now
   you can play on the keyboard, and the StarTrekker will automatically
   change voices. You can choose which voices are used by toggling them
   on and off with left ALT + F6-F9.


QUANTIZE:

   With the quantize control, you can choose how many lines the cursor
   should jump when you enter a note in a pattern. The number is increased
   by pressing the left mouse button in the QUANT box, or by pressing
   CTRL. The number is decreased by pressing the left and right mouse
   buttons in the box, or by pressing left SHIFT + CTRL.


COLOR CONTROL:

   Because the ordinary grey color is so utterly boring, you can choose
   between a bunch of colors by pressing ALT + F10. If you don't like any
   of them, SHIFT + F10 makes your day by randomizing the colors!


MIDI:

   INCOMING MIDI:

      With the R: control you can select the channel the ST will respond
      to. You can play on the synthesizer's three middle octaves just like
      on the Amiga keyboard.

      The ST will NOT respond to MIDI clocks, Active Sensing or other
      control commands.

   OUTGOING MIDI:

      With the C: control you can select an outgoing channel for the current
      instrument. The L: controls for how long (how many patterns steps) the
      note will be played. If there is any C commands (volume change) in
      the pattern, these will be sent along with the notes as Attack
      Velocity. The T: finally is a transpose control.

      The ST will send out MIDI clocks in the same tempo as you have
      selected with the F command. Also the ST will transmit Midi Start
      and Midi Stop when you start or stop a tune.


   Remember to turn the MIDI on!

------------------------------------------------------------------------


                              BYE! HA DET BRA! /EXOLON 

 BRAECKKORV FOREVER!!!!