Music Scene #2

DMC V5.0 Music Editor

Introduction / The Sound Editor / Making Your Drumkit / Making your first piece of music / The Other Bits / Packing your music
Introduction

This tutorial goes through how to use DMC V5.0. Compared to DMC V4.0, DMC V5.0 is a more professional composer and is a whole lot more difficult. It is even better than DMC V4.0, due to the fact that it has many features, which DMC V4.0 does not use. Compared to DMC V4.0, the composer looks really basic, but to tell you the truth, it's not that BASIC. It has a whole lot more put into it.

As with DMC V4.0, there are no instruments ready made, so we are going to have to program these ourselves, but before we do. We'll take a look at the DMC V5.0 itself. Take a look at the screen below and you'll see what I'm talking about.
As you can see, this is the main environment of the DMC composer. And it does look pretty dull doesn't it? Well don't worry, it's a good composer anyway ;o) You are able to download an updated version of DMC V5.0, from the Friends Downloads page. It is Public Domain and is allowed to be spread. Some instructions are also included on how to get yourself started with this editor (mainly the controls).

The Sound Editor

Before you try and get composing music. What we'll need to do first is use the Sound Editor. It wont be such an easy stage, as you would be required to have some sort of programming knowledge to work these sounds 100%. Below you'll see a screenshot and the names for the parts of the sound editor. The size of this image is pretty meaty, but parts of the editor have been marked with white numbers, so I could indicate to you what these functions are.

1. Attack/Decay
This controls the default volume and duration of your instrument.

2. Sustain/Release
A second control, which is to set a volume and longer, continuous duration of your sound.

3. Waveform
This function reads from the wave form table, to form instruments.

4. Pulse
A special function, which creates pulse sounds according to table, for when you use $4x or $5x as a sound inside the Waveform editor.

5. Filter
A special function which allows you to add a synthesized filter into your sounds. Please note that these will not work unless you set FLT.XX with/without FRQ.XX in the sector editor.

6. Vibrato #1
Controls the vibrato delay.

7. Vibrato #2
Same again, but this time with another vibrato.

8. Vibrato #3
A special vibrato to create various modes.

9. Sound Number
This indicates the instrument you are currently creating.

10. Waveform Table
A table where you program your own sounds.

11. Pulse Table
A table where you program your own pulse.

12. Filter Table
Where you program your filters.

13. Soundnames (Not numbered)
If or however, you wanted to store your own instruments data then you can load and save all your sounds from the disk.

Now that's all the functions, we are now going to create a few instruments.

Example Instruments

This is going to be a pretty easy task to perform. Before we actually create and instruments, here is a list of the types of encoding that represent the sound-types. They are as follows:

11 xx Triangle
21 xx Sawtooth
31 xx Sawtooth 2
41 xx Pulse
51 xx Special Pulse
61 xx Special Pulse 2
71 xx Sawtooth 3
81 xx White Noise
90 xx Restart at position of instrument

Right, now we have got these set up, we shall now make some instruments, because although there are some sampled sounds supplied with DMC V5.0+, it would be very lame to use another person's instruments. We will make our first sound, which is the main lead. So copy the following from the diagram below.

If you look at this diagram carefully, you'll be able to see that the waveform is pointing to $00 at the wave table, the pulse is pointing at $01 at the pulse table and the filter is pointing at $01 at the filter table. You have to be really careful if you are using pulse tables and filter tables, else if you don't use them correctly, you just get horrible sounds. Always remember that when you create your own wave forms, be sure that you call and use the pointer after $90xx, else you will have problems. Another example below should give you an example of how you should do your next instrument properly. This time we'll create another lead.

You may think 'Aaaah you're doing the same thing', but that is where you are wrong, because the wave form is pointing at the correct position of the wave table. The pulse is not required to be used, as the C64 recognizes it as a sawtooth. And we still use $01 as the filter. What's happening here is that we're calling the right wave forms.
Please remember that there's more that meets the eye, when producing sounds and music using the DMC V5.0 player. Later on we will be showing you how to do filtered voices, but first, we'll work on the main sounds. We'll try and create a minor chord, using sawtooth. Where we were last left from, go to the next free sound (Where it's all blank) and then enter the following example below:

AD SR WV PU FL V1 V2 V3
0c 00 04 00 00 00 00 00

Now move your cursor underneath WV (Which represents the wave table) and then enter the wave table, by pressing the SHIFT button and ENTER/Return (Depending whether you are using C64 emulator or a real C64). Now edit the wave table as below:

04 2100
05 2100
06 2103
07 2103
08 2107
09 2107
0A 9004

You probably wonder why I used 00,03,07 beside the waveform number, 21. This is because 21 represents the sawtooth and $00,$03,$07 represent the octave to make a minor chord. Using 9004 will make the sound jump back at $04 so we have a continuous minor chord. Which you should be familiar with in the future.

Our next step will be to create a major chord. So go to the next blank sound table make everything the same, except the WV, and put 0B (not zero eight) on to the wave table. We are now going to make a major chord. Follow this example below:

0B 2100
0C 2100
0D 2104
0E 2104
0F 2107
10 2107
11 900B

There we are, simple enough. We have created a major chord, using $00,$04,$07 as the octaves.

Try experimenting more with the octaves beside the waveforms, you'll end up with some cool effects. I promise :)

Creating Your Own Drum Kit

After getting used to various sounds, we are going to start to go a little further into the music making scene. Before we actually compose any sort of music, using DMC V5.0 player, you cannot be without certain sounds. The next sounds which we are going to create is our own drum kit. As usual, in the sound editor, let's find the next blank sound, indicate attack decay (AD) as $08 and sustain release (RS) as $00, indicate the waveform table to jump to $12 and pulse table (PU) to jump to $05 and then follow the example below.

The Wave Table:

12 89FF
13 490B
14 4909
15 0900
16 9015

This was for our first drum. As you notice, we mix our sounds, to make it C64 drum-like. At first you will find this task difficult, but it will get even more simpler once you have got used to this. Now lets create our own pulse table.

05 0800
06 0000
07 0000
08 9006

Here we are, our first drum. We have another drum to create, which should be simple enough. Find the next blank sound and then set the wave form to jump to $17 on the wave table, copy the pulse table as above, set the attack/decay as $09. Now follow this example for our wave table. :)

17 89FF
18 490F
19 81FD
1A 490D
1B 490B
1C 89FF
1D 901C

That's our second drum complete. We are nearly ready to get started using the track and sequence editors for composing music, but before you get started, try and experiment more creating sounds, etc. If you want to create your own filter tables, then use the same method with the pulse tables, and set up your own filters for your sounds. These filters wont work unless you set the filter in DMC V5.0's sequence editor, but we will be taking a look at this later on :).

Making our first piece of music

If you remember taking a look at the DMC V4.0 tutorial, you would have familiarised yourself with the track editor. DMC V5.0's track editor is -exactly- the same. No instructions really needed to on how to use the track editor, except for use SHIFT+ENTER/RETURN to enter the sector editor. You probably have the instructions with DMC V5.0 on how to access these editors ;o). Now let's do a small piece of music, to get you started :o). Go to sector $00 and enter the following:

SECTOR 00
00 DUR.03
02 SND.01
04 D-3
05 D-4
05 D-4
06 D-3
07 D-4
08 D-4
09 D-3
0A D-4
0B END

Now let's edit sector $01: this is where we have the drums and bass. xx will represent drum 1 and yy will represent drum 2

00 DUR.03 02 SND.xx 04 D-2 05 SND.00 07 D-2 08 D-3 09 D-2 0A SND.yy 0C D-2 0D SND.00 0F D-2 10 D-3 11 D-2 12 -END

Now we have two sample, we'll leave the third track blank, so you can experiment with the sequence editor. This tutorial is only for DMC V5.0 beginners and will be updated later on, probably in a couple of month's time. :o)

Now let's play with the track editor and make the two sequences sound like music.

TRACK 1 TRACK 2 TRACK 3
00 TR+00 00 TR+00 00 -STOP-
02 --- 01 02 --- 00
03 --- 01 03 --- 00
04 --- 01 04 --- 00
05 --- 01 05 --- 00
06 TR+03 06 TR+03
08 --- 01 07 --- 00
09 --- 01 09 --- 00
0A --- 01 0A --- 00
0B --- 01 0B --- 00
0C TR-02 0C TR+02
0E --- 01 0E --- 00
0F --- 01 0F --- 00
10 --- 01 10 --- 00
11 --- 01 11 --- 00
12 TR+05 12 TR+05
14 --- 01 14 --- 00
15 --- 01 15 --- 00
16 --- 01 16 --- 00
17 --- 01 17 --- 00
18 END! 18 END!
19 --- 00 19 --- 00 There you go, a 2-channel piece of music. I was going to add more, but there really is no point, because this is a tutorial to get you all started using DMC. Anyway, here's some more interesting things before I leave you experimenting using DMC V5.0. :)

Other Bitz!

You have understood the basic bits using DMC V5.0. Now we shall go into the harder parts on using the DMC music editor V5.0. I'll show you how to use a music packer later on, but first of all let's familarise ourselves with the sector editor a little more. You may notice that we only used simple commands, but you can also use other commands, such as VOL.xx, which is volume (Shift+V), SWITCH (Shift+X) ADSR.xx (Shift+Y)FILT.xy (Shift+F), FREQ.xx (Shift+Q) and -GATE- (£), -GLD.xx (SHIFT+G), SLD.xx(SHIFT+S). When you add a filter to your sounds, you must use track 3 for the particular sound to work a lot more properly. What you do is add the sound no, read from the sound table, then you at FLT.xy. You may wonder why I added xy. This is because 'x' represents the filter type (use 1,3,4 or 5) and 'y' represents the volume of the filtered sound. After using filter command, you can add a note. Also when using filtered sounds, you can add a frequency filter (FREQ.xx). You can use any value for the frequency sounds. ADSR can also do cool effects in your sounds.

To stop a note from playing, we use the -GATE- command. You can use -SWITCH- to add some effect to your sequence. You can also use the glide and slide commands (GLD+SLD) to make your note slide.

When you are composing music, you have to be extremely careful, because if the duration of your sounds do not calculate up to the same value, your song will go out of tune.

The DMC V5.0 Music Packer

There are two different sorts of packers for DMC V5.0. There is the original packer by Graffity, or the DMC V5.0 packer by Iceball/Motiv8. These two packers will raw DMC music files and then will pack these to a smaller size (just like an ordinary cruncher and packer). Don't attempt to use a cruncher or different packer for these tunes, else you'll just get a load of garbage in your machine code memory. If you use Action Replay, then I recommend that you use the GRAFFITY version of the packer, else if not. Then you can use Iceball's DMC V5.0 packer instead.

To use GRAFFITY packer, using Fastload or BASIC, load the packer like you normally load a normal C64 disk program. Next load your own music file like you do in BASIC, then enter M/C monitor and type G $2E00. Once done, wait a few secs then enter the address where you want to load your packed music. I recommend you use $1000 as start address so you can use the tune on various PD utilities, such as Oldschool Demo Makers, Note Writers, etc. Once done, your tune will relocate and pack to the address. Now save the tune, and play it (init $1000, play $1003) in your own programs or PD utilities ;).

To use Iceball's DMC V5.0 packer, load from BASIC, enter loadname and then enter the address to pack to ($1000), wait and then save :o). Easy

That ends out DMC V5.0 music composing tutorial ;o)

If you have SIDPlug installed, you are listening to "Force" by Trident/Active.

Email: http://www.redizajn.sk/tnd64/richard@c64.rulez.org