OTHER FEATURES RELATING TO INSTRUMENTS

Instrument Properties

Select Set Properties from the Instr menu, or click Props in the Main Control window. With this important window you may alter the characteristics of the current instrument.

From the top down, the slider and arrows select the current instrument in the same way as Shift←/→. 1st/Last/L.U. select instrument 01/1V/the last used instrument. Flush removes the current instrument from memory.

Set an instrument's default pitch by holding the left mouse button on the box and pressing the appropriate key. Pressing key F then inserts the instrument at this pitch into the Tracker editor. Useful for percussion instruments whose pitch is often constant. Loop Start and Length are the loop start and loop length in bytes. If On is switched off, the loop is temporarily disabled.

Transpose raises or lowers the current instrument's pitch in halfsteps. Finetune allows you to tune instruments in small steps. Vol sets the instrument's default (usual) volume: 64 is maximum, 0 is silent.

The sample list

Select Sample List Editor from the Display menu. The sample list is a list of all the instruments you have in your collection (not just samples in fact), and is an easy way of organizing and loading instruments.

Notice that the Sample List Editor is split into two lists - a list of your sample directories, and a list of the samples contained in those directories. There may in fact be no directories shown; this is because you haven't yet told OctaMED in which directories your samples are contained.

Select a directory by clicking on its name. To add more directories, click Add Dir and select the appropriate directory in the requester that appears. Repeat for all the directories you wish to add. OctaMED will load the names of all files in the directories; if some of these files aren't instruments, click on them in the left-hand list and click Remove.

To load an instrument into the current slot, click on the instrument name then click Load Inst. Alternatively, close the Sample List Editor and click SList in the Main Control window. This is a cut-down sample list editor used specifically for loading instruments. Select the appropriate directory, then simply click on the instrument name to load it. Select the current instrument using the four Prev/Next Inst/Free buttons (or Shift← and Shift→ as usual).

In the Save Options window, the Save Instruments check box chooses whether the song should be saved together with its instruments. If you switch it off, only the instruments' names are saved with the song; when the song is reloaded, OctaMED uses your sample list to locate and load each required instrument from your sample disks. This saves a lot of disk space.

You can save an instrument to disk using Save Instrument from the Instr menu. Select its file format through the Format menu.

The synthetic sound editor

An simple but much less memory-consuming alternative to the sample is the synthetic sound (or “synthsound”). Synthsounds are artifically generated by OctaMED, and are designed using the synthetic sound editor (Display menu).

Synthsounds are made up of one or more simple “waveforms”. You can select one of the predefined waveforms from the Preset menu, or draw your own by dragging the mouse along a “waveform display” (one of the two speckled boxes).

The waveforms are then linked together (although many synthsounds consist of just a single waveform), and their volume and pitch altered by creating a “synthsound script”, a sequence of simple commands and values. A list of available commands can be found in the help guide.

For more information, press Help, click on Instruments in the Features Guide and follow the links to synthetic sounds.

The numeric keypad

The numeric keypad is the small collection of 18 keys on the far right of your Amiga's keyboard (excluding A600 owners). Without alteration (using Keyboard Shortcuts from the Settings menu), the keypad is layed out as follows:

Keys 1 - 9 Select instruments 1 - 9 0 Select instrument 10 / Select last used instrument . Change the first instrument digit (e.g. 05 -> 15, 15 -> 05) + or - Next or previous instrument ( or ) Decrease or increase current instrument's volume by one * Pick instrument number nearest the cursor Enter After pressing Enter, press key A - V to select the corresponding instrument