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|            How in the world do I write a song in Soundsmith?!?              |
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    Before we start our lesson, please make sure that you are using Soundsmith version 0.9 or higher.  If you do not have this, please download it in the Music and Sound area of America Online(keyword AMS).  If you think you're gonna write a song with 0.7, heh..well, get real and get 0.9.  'Nuff said, let's get started....
     After booting Soundsmith and get past the title screen(does ZZ Top care?), Title song and the send-me-$20 screen, you are presented with a small, empty box with 4 buttons.  The only button you can use at this point is Load Instrament.  Put simply, this is how you load instraments.  You can load instraments from any disk and use them, but if your song uses instraments from more than one disk, make sure you copy all these instraments onto one disk/folder or else you won't be able to load all your instraments when you load the song again.  The author was gracious enough to include a plythera(I like this word) of instraments for our use, all of which sound better than any of Music Studio's sounds(but SS sounds may be saved into MS Wave-files.  If you do this, make sure you change the envelope form in the Design Instrament section of Music Studio).  To change the default volume of an instrament, highlight the instrament and use the scrollbar to set the volume.  The Vibrato Speed and Vibrato 'Depht' are apparently inoperative.  You can test the notes on the keybaord below(on later versions of SS, what you play on a keyboard will be recorded into your song).
     Now that you have selected all your instraments(you can still select more later on if you do not have enough), go to the file menu and select 'New Song.' This will give you the familiar spreadsheet that you usually see littered with 'D#5's and stuff, except that it is empty.  You are now ready to begin composition.  First of all, select MUSIC from the pull down menu.  You should get a screen with 'Number of Positions','Position','Block' and 'Tempo'.  Set the number of positions to about 10 or so, and then set POSITION #0 to BLOCK #0 and Position #1 to Block #1 and so on and so forth and then set Tempo to whatever you want.  1 is the fastest and 16 is the slowest.  The Position bar and the Block bar are vital.  The program plays the blocks according to how you tell it to: for example, SS starts at position zero and at position zero, you have instructed SS to play Block #0.  After playing Block #0, SS moves on to the next position.  At position #1, you have instructed SS to play block #1. But, let's say you want to repeat a block.  Set position #10(or whatever) to block #10 and Position #11 to block #10.  This will repeat the 10th block.  Hit the 'OK' button to get back to the Spreadsheet.
     What I usually do at this point is put any note on the screen and save it to /RAM5 and then close the spreadsheet and load the song back up(but 'Cancel' the loading of new instraments).  Although I'm not sure about 0.9, SS had a bug that made the graphic player display garbage when you started a new song unless you loaded it.  This way, you have loaded a song and are modifying it.  Delete the dummy note oyu have placed on the screen and now you are REALLY ready to begin.
     On the other songs, you may have noticed the way the notes were arranged:

        Note  Instrament
         ||      |
      |  D#5  |  4000  |
           |      |||
        Octave   Effect

Note:  This is the note.  The musical alphabet is CDEFGAB and that is how SS   looks at it's notes.  Sometimes a note has a # after it.  This denotes a    'Sharp' or an increase in the notes pitch.  Since SS doesn't recognize flats,   only sharps may be used, such as  G# instead of Ab(these are both the same     note).  Sometimes, though, notes cannot be sharped.  These notes are B and E.   This is because B# is C and E# is F.  Keep that in mind.  (The following is   an example of a musical staff.  If you'll notice, they are in alphabetical   order from bottom to top, counting spaces and lines)

Spaces                                               Lines(Trebel)

     _______________________________________________  F(ine)
   E _______________________________________________  D(oes)
   C _______________________________________________  B(oy)    
   A _______________________________________________  G(ood)
   F _______________________________________________  E(very) 
     _                                             _    
     _______________________________________________  A(lways)
   G _______________________________________________  F(ine)
   E _______________________________________________  D(o)     (Bass)
   C _______________________________________________  B(oys)
   A _______________________________________________  G(ood)

Octave:  This is what picth the note will be played at.  Each new octave starts   at C(ex: A4 B4 C5 D5).  I usually use the C in the Trebel Cleff as C5, the C   in between the two cleffs(middle C) as C4 and the C in the Bass Cleff as C3.    Your octave may range from a low 2 to a high 7.
Instrament:  This is the instrament number to play.  They range from 1 to F(a   Hex number{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F}).  You can use any instrament in   any row.  
Effect:  A very useful tool.  This affects the way a note preforms.  Although I   think 0.9 has some bugs in the Effect Area(some of the Effects listed in the   docs don't work).  The most useful effects I use are Volume and Tempo.  To   change the volume of your score, go up to the effect box and type 3(this says   'I'm changing volume, you dummy!' to SS) followed by any number from 00 to   FF(again, this is Hex).  00 is no volume at all and FF is full blast.  This   type of volume only affects the current note.  To change the Tempo, go to the   Effect box and type F(again, "I'm changing Tempo now!!") followed by any   number from 01 to 0F(WARNING-WARNING: Under NO circumstances type F00 and   play it as it will shut off the speed of your song.  There is no way out of   this(the Tempo Bar in the pull-down is now all solid, and you can't change   Tempo again in your song becuase your song isn't moving!), except to re-load   the song).

      Ok, now that that's settled, the first question everyone asks me is "How do you set the Time Signature?"  Forget this.  There are no time signatures in Soundsmith.  If you want to make a whole note, put down a note and leave 3 blank spaces after it.  If you want to make an eight note, put down a note and leave no spaces after it(if you aren't adding anything after it, that's fine.  The note will play to it's full extent, but it won't mess anything up.  If your pickey, place 'STP' in place of the note/octave.  This should stop the note,but I havn't have much luck with that.  Let's say you have sixteenth notes in your song:  to make a whole note, put down the note and leave 7 blank spaces after it.  To make a quarter note, put down a note with 1 blank space.  As you can see, I've doubled the distance between all notes, and with this, you may also need to half the tempo. 
     Usually, however, duration doesn't mean didly in SS.  What is important is when each note starts since that is all that is really heard.

Shortcuts:  INstead of typing in each note, octave, instrament, and effect, you can simply highlight the square you want to work on by clicking on it.  Then, typing any number on the jeypad will set the octave, and any number on the top-number-row will set the instrament(apparently, 5 on the keypad and 5 on the keyboard are different!).  Typing the keys between [G] and [:;] on the keyboard will produce the notes C though A(unfortunately, I cannot get a B note to work).  The letters on the row above will produce the sharp notes.  Ex:
            [Y][U]                     [C#][D#]   
          [G][H]     will give you   [C ][D ]
Of course, all the OpenApple- commands work as well.
   Cut and Paste is vital to a song writer.  If you want to copy part of your song, take your little mousie, click and hold at the top part of your segment and drag the mouse all the way to the bottom part of your segment.  You may also drag it across several rows.  Now that it is all highlighted, release the mouse and select Cut or Copy(cut removes the piece and puts it into memory, copy copies the piece into memory).  Now take the mousie and move it to the top corner of where you want your segment to end up and then select paste(or hit OpenApple-V).  Voila, there it is.  
    You may notice Fade IN and Fade Out in the menu(OA+ and OA-).  This is a really Kick-Butt item.  I just found out how to use it tonight.  All you do is select the area of the song(for example, the last block) and then select Fade Out or Fade IN.  SS automatically calculates the variables needed for a nice, even fade in/out.  Nice for ending songs with.  I'm gonna use this one extensively!!
     Change Sample.  If, for some reason, you decide you hat ethe instrament you wrote your song in, select the portion of the song with the instrament(you can select whole rows, columns, and blocks by clicking on the heading), and go to change sample.  Put simply, it's asking: You want me to change all the Instrament Number x to Instrament Number y.  This is useful.
    Set Octave.  This is rather useful  Sometimes, you make a really great Drum Beat, and when you listen to it, you discovor it sounds like your supper is attacking you from the inside becuase the octave is way to low.  Select the area and then pick Change Octave from the Menu.  This will set everything in the selected area to Octive x.  A drawback of this is when you have multiple octaves such as B3 C4 D4, it will change them all to the same octave, such as B5 C5 D5(which will produce 1 high note and 2 low notes instead of 3 low notes).
     Never forget about the UNDO item.  If you make a bad mistake(such as fading a part of a song you don't want to) go up and select Undo and it will undo it.
    Another Warning:  Never use Select All or anything that uses more than 64k. If you do something, such as change the octave of a whole song, the program will sit there for an unmeasured ammount of time.  Although this might work, I have never seen it work.
    DOC.  This is pretty neat.  It shows exactly what memory specifically designated for your DOC(Digital Oscillator Chip(the sound chip!)) is used up by the instrament data.
    Play and Graphic Play are used to listen to your music.  Continue and Graphic Continue doesn't continue the song from where you stopped it, like I previoulsy thought, it mearly acts as a loop so it will play forever.  Stop Souund stops it from playing.  (You can do Continue and listen to the song while you're writing it.  It'll play the notes after you add them.)
     
     After you have a song all written out, go back to MUSIC in the Pull-down and make set the Total Positions to the greatest position+1.  This will cause the song to end right after the last position.  (+1 becuase Number of Positions starts with 1 and Position Number starts with 0).  Clicking on the LOOP box will make the song start over after the last position.

  A few Hints:

    To give your song a wierd hollow type sound, copy all the tracks and fill up all 14 tracks with your music.  I have done this in my song 'Drums.a.Plenty' in the 5th block(I think).  Sounds spiffy.
    Make your song fun to watch, as well as listen to.  In my arangeement of 'Funky.Town', I improvised an ending.  I made all 14 tracks light up in descending order for a super-freaky-neato wave effect.  This is fun to watch, but boring to listen to.
    The lower the octave of a note, the longer it gets.  To make a long fuzzy sound, use C2 with the instrament 'BLAST(Axel.F).'  I have done this for the very last note in my song 'Drums.a.Plenty'
    If you're just starting out, I recommend adding a drum beat to a classic songs such as 5th Symphony, Blue Danube or something.  See my example of Pachelbel's Canon in D under the name 'New.Cannon'
    To give that BassDrum2 more bass, play 2 or 3 notes at the exact same time. Boom.
    To improve overall sound, connect your GS to youre Stereo.  This is very simple to do and will cost you maybe $8 at Radio Shack and will require no extra equipment, except some wires.  I'm telling you, the sound is UNREAL!  It'll get rid of that Internal Rattle and also wake the neighbors.
    After writing and uploading the song, ask people to leave you mail.  The ammount of mail you recieve(however minimal) will make you feel absolutely great!  I know it kept me going!!
    
    Hmm...don't you wonder what Beethoven, Bach, Brahams or any other great composer would have done with a GS and SOundSmith??????
   
   Welp, that concludes this lesson.  If there are any questions at all, please, feel free to leave mail to me, Cappy, or AFA Gene(if he's in a good mood, he'll forward the message to me, otherwise, he'll revoke your password.  hehe :-).  
                                        Mark Young  (real name)
                                           aka
                                          Cappy     (America Online)
                                           aka
                                       Captain R/C  (Local BBS's)

(Huibert Aalbers(Spelling?!!):  I would like to help you write the manual for Soundsmith.  If you are reading this, try and contact me.  I am on America Online)
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