MUSIC - PlayStation FAQ / TUTORIAL by J Woodrow 04/04/2002 Version 1.1 - This FAQ is in two parts plus separate Appendices _________________________________________________________________________ MUSIC CREATION FOR THE PLAYSTATION Released: November 1998 Developers: Jester Interactive Publisher: Codemasters [This game was released in EU only] _________________________________________________________________________ P A R T T W O - M A K I N G M U S I C _________________________________________________________________________ I N T R O D U C T I O N _______________________ This is Part Two of my tutorial on MUSIC for PlayStation. Part One covered THE BASICS - Introduction to the Main Console Understanding the Track Editor Loading a Demo Using the Track Editor (Playing Demos / Adjusting BPM) Understanding Modes Using Modes (Play Mode / Track Mode) Using Mute Mode Using Library Mode and handling the Riff Library. This tutorial follows on directly, so I recommend you read Part One even if you already have some experience of using MUSIC. This guide is still written assuming you are an absolute beginner though. In this part we will look at - Introduction to the Riff Editor Using the Instrument Manager The Instrument Library Handling and Editing Riffs Building your own Riffs Fine-Tuning your Riffs Memory Issues [To follow this tutorial, you will need to have loaded from the disc, and ready to go, the demo called "Disco" by The Evangelist.] _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ P A R T T W O - M A K I N G M U S I C _______________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 888888 88 888888 88 88 88 8TM88 888888 8888 8888 8 888888 8 8888888888 8 8888888888888 888888 8888 8888 8 888888 8o 88 8 8888888888888 888888 8888 8888 8 888888 8888888888 8 8 8888888888888 888888 8888 8888 8o o88 88 8o 88888 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 M U S I C C R E A T I O N F O R T H E P L A Y S T A T I O N 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 _________________________________________________________________________ We left Part One having discovered the Riff Library. Can we use this to produce our very own tracks? Yes indeed, with the aid of the Riff Editor - if not the most powerful Music-making tool in the world, then certainly on the PlayStation when this program arrived. "I T C A N B L O W Y O U R H E A D C L E A N A W F" _________________________________________________________ Well, maybe it's not as powerful as a .44 Magnum, but it IS 'mind- blowing' in its own way. With the cursor over a blank blue block (that sounds like water going down the plughole) - press R1. fig.2 - THE RIFF EDITOR [Best viewed in Courier New] _______________ _______________________________________________________________________ |===============+===============+===============+===============| 6 | | | | | ---_____]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ==' ||||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| 5 | | | | | ---_____]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ==' ||||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| 4 | | | | | ---_____]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ==' ||||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||| |===========+===+===============+===============+===============| ________| | | | | 3 |---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| | | | | | ---_____]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ==' ||||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||| 2 |===============+===============+===============+===============| | | | | | ---_____]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ==' ||||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||I|||||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| 1 | | | | | ________]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' Now overlaid in the centre of the Track Editor window is a smaller window, also with numbers down the side (going UP this time) from 1 to 6. These too have musical notes alongside them and the number '4' is lit up. There is a keyboard next to this with... let's see, 1-2-3...seven white keys and ...five black ones, making twelve altogether. That is a full scale! (A full-scale what? Is that another of these Musical Terms or something? You'll have to take this slowly or you'll lose me...) Don't worry - you don't need any musical knowledge to follow this tutorial. Beneath this screen is a red menu headed 'loaded' with 'instrument' written underneath that. The Mute Mode window has the mysterious words 'analog fat' alongside an orange square with the number '1'. To the left there are now strange symbols in the Video window, but it is hard to make any sense of them, as they are nearly blacked out. Just as you did with the Track Editor window in Part One, have a good scroll around the blue window. It isn't very wide; in fact you can nudge the cursor along and fit the blue blocks right across it. It looks pretty similar to the Track Editor window in that it seems to be made up of columns of blocks, and if you move the cursor to the right, one block at a time, you find there are sixteen columns across (this is the default window; there is a way to make a series of blocks almost as wide as you like, and we will try that later). This window is twelve blocks high. Twelve..? Like the musical keys to the left? That would certainly explain the dark banding - it actually shows which of the rows are aligned with the black keys. (They are all the same, it is just a visual separation.) It is beginning to make sense now, I hope. As you press Up and Down it seems to have no effect on the window. But hold on though - look at the numbers to the side. As the cursor reaches the top or bottom of the screen, the numbers count up or down once and then repeat the next time. You can reasonably expect that this is because the cursor is effectively scrolling through an identical screen and you can tell by the numbers as they light up that there are SIX of these windows 'stacked' one on top of the other. Why? We'll soon find out. Stop anywhere and press X. The menu to the left lit up like a Christmas tree and the number '01' appears in the blue grid where the crosshairs are. You also got a rather dull musical note. Press X to hear it again. Could it be that the number '01' and the musical note that played there have anything to do with the number '1' beside 'analog fat' in the other window? But of course. press L1 and the window that says 'analog fat' changes like so: fig.2.2 - The INSTRUMENT MANAGER ______________________ _____________________ _____________________ ( loaded ) ( loaded ) --------------------- --------------------- ( instrument ) ( instrument ) ===================== ===================== | 1| analog fat | | | | | - with L1 | | | | becomes: | 1| analog fat | |2345678910111213141516 | 2| big beat | |ooooooooooooooooooooo| | 3| funky | This new window is the INSTRUMENT MANAGER. It 'manages' which instruments you are using... ...and right there at the top is 'analog fat' again, but now you can see that it is just number 1 in a list of others. Use DOWN to take a look at the rest of that window. There are names next to the first 8 numbers, which go right up to 99, all of which after those first eight say 'Not loaded'. And there is your clue. Yes, of course - these are all the sounds and instruments used by that "Disco" demo we loaded up in Part One. This window lists ALL the instruments loaded into the PlayStation memory for use at the present time. The "Disco" demo is very simple, so there are just a few instruments loaded - the eight you see listed here. Scroll back up to take a look at those 8 sounds. Highlight them one by one and press CIRCLE a couple of times to get a demo of each. Interesting. So you can guess that the idea is to fill this menu with all the sounds to be used in your song. Where ARE all these sounds? Previously we used L1 in the Track Editor window to find a list of hundreds of complete riffs, but when we demo these loaded instruments we just get a single note. How do we get them into a riff? OK, make very sure that you scroll the Instrument Manager down to any one of the numbers that says 'Not loaded' and press L1 again now to see if we can find out. _________________________________________________________________________ W E 'R E R I C H! R I C H, I T E L L S Y E R! __________________________________________________ Well HEL-LO!! We certainly have struck gold... Scroll around and see. This looks just like the Riff Library, but there are hundreds and hundreds of individual musical instrument sounds: bass, guitars, drums, piano, keyboards and strings and every conceivable type of percussion and many, many other sounds and effects. Not only that, but there are also hundreds and hundreds of vocals samples - in fact, in addition to those several hundred sample riffs we found earlier, these menus contain nearly 1200 instrument and vocal samples. Take a look at Appendix 2 to appreciate just how many there are! If that lot jumped together they could create a tidal wave that would finish us all. Before you get carried away and want to start playing them, just be satisfied with knowing that they are there, whenever you want them. Close the Instrument Library by pressing TRIANGLE twice, thus stepping back through the Instrument Manager and returning to the Riff Editor window. The featured instrument should say 'Not loaded' because that was what we left the cursor on when we left the Instrument Manager to look at the Instrument Library, but if it says anything different then I expect you were tempted to demo something out of the library. Which is understandable. *WARNING* -If you start pressing buttons in the Instrument Library or the Instrument Manager willy-nilly there is a real risk that you could unintentionally alter your entire song. For example the drums can change to a piano at the simple touch of a button. This is great when it is what you want, but can be a nightmare trying to sort out when you don't know what happened. I told you the Riff Editor was powerful, so treat it with respect! (And this is just the easy bit.) Get rid of any stray instrument by pressing L1 again, scrolling to the offending line in the Instrument Manager and pressing SQUARE to delete it from memory. Then scroll back to number '1' which is still "analog fat" and press X to load it up again, and there it is ready at the Riff Editor. If the menu has been completely messed about and you have deleted or changed too many instruments, then you can always exit the Track Editor with Select + Start and load up the demo again as you did in Part One. For now though, we want to take another look at the Riff Editor so that we can work out how to use all those instruments in our riffs. This is exciting isn't it? _________________________________________________________________________ R I F F B U I L D I N G ________________________ Now you should be back at the Riff Editor. Move your cursor left or right and press X again. The original '01' is still there and now it will be joined by another. Try a couple more, spreading them up and down the window and moving along just a single block each time. Then move to an empty column and this time shoot as far up as you can go and press X when the cursor stops. Another musical note - a high one - and another '01' left to mark the spot. Now nudge along a bit more and scroll all the way DOWN. 6-5-4-3-2-1. 'Ding'; Basement - Food Hall and Sale Goods. This time the X seems not to make any sound, but the '01' appears as it should. Now for a surprise. Scroll the cursor off to the left and press START. What a racket! OK, you are smart enough to realise what you were doing. The cursor was placing music notes on a scale representing a full six 'octaves' - the set of musical notes that make up a complete scale (think "Doh a Deer" from The Sound of Music... And now you won't be able to think of anything else all day.) The concept is just the same as having a synthesiser keyboard with 72 keys, but that lot wouldn't fit on the screen, so this is a clever solution. You just found that this particular sound you are placing is nearly inaudible on the very lowest scale. Go and find the note you placed down there - all the notes appear on the same window, and as your cursor passes over each one, the numbers at screen left light up to show which of the six octaves it has been placed on. Try it and see. When you find it (I think it should be on the bottom row and the number '1' next to a yellow musical note at left will be highlighted), press X while the cursor is over it. It just makes a sort of clicking noise to let you know that there IS something there. Move UP and keep tapping the X button and soon you will hear the note ascending, the further up the stack of octaves you go, just like tapping a keyboard from one end to the other. You should notice that the crosshairs align with the keys down the left side, and you can even see the notes 'playing' as you move along them. Keep going to make sure you've got the concept straight in your mind. When the cursor is all the way at the top, come down again still tapping X. Well, I don't know about you, but I think it only sounds 'right' from about the bottom of the 6th to the top of the 4th scale, and not all of those notes sound good. You are still using just Up and Down here to place the note, and so you will notice that after you place a note, if you move up a little and place another, the first one disappears. You would expect this, as otherwise you would get two or more notes trying to play simultaneously. (Sometimes that is exactly what you want, and there are a couple of ways to do this, which you don't have to think about just now.) You cannot place more than one note in any column then, but you CAN have notes placed in all sixteen available columns across the entire window if you want, although it won't sound very good except possibly at a very slow tempo. It is sometimes a good idea to do that with percussion though. Delete all those unwanted notes by pressing SQUARE when the cursor is in the relevant column (you don't have to have it over the actual note if it is elsewhere in the column as the crosshairs will pick it up). Try placing a 'proper' tune, now that you see how to do it. You should be aiming to create a little melody of perhaps five or six notes. Something simple like an advertising jingle ("Bod-eh-FORM foooor yee-ewww!") or the chorus from one of your favourite songs if you can't come up with anything else ("WHOA! I'm going to I-bi-za"). Nobody else is going to hear this; it is just to illustrate the lesson, and you will delete it afterwards so it doesn't have to be perfect. I would say that if you have musical training, then you don't need this part of the tutorial, and I guess most of you know what you are doing, but consider that there might be a ten-year old reading this who has lots of enthusiasm but no musical knowledge. (If that ten-year old is YOU - It's way past your bedtime, young man. Five minutes more and that's it.) All of us know what sounds good to our ears, so just experiment with the placing of these notes. If you DO have musical training or any experience on a keyboard, then placing the notes to make an instant melody will be second nature. You can of course preview your riff by scrolling left and pressing START. When you have an arrangement that sounds attractive to you, then we can try placing this freshly-minted Riff into the Track Editor. _________________________________________________________________________ M A K E I T E A S Y O N Y O U R S E L F ___________________________________________ Press R1 to exit from the Riff Editor and scroll to a set of four empty blocks anywhere on the Track Editor window. With the crosshairs on the first of these blocks, press X. A keyboard icon appears as if by magic. Move to the next block and do it again. Move to the third and also the fourth to lay down two more. Now scroll back a little way so that the cursor is over that first riff you placed and press START. All RIGHT! We're on our way... Congratulations! You are a composer. It doesn't sound too good though - kind of like a stuck record. I have no way of knowing what little melody you came up with, but not many one-bar ditties can stand to be repeated over and over unless it is a football chant: "Sheeearer... Sheeearer..!" What we need is some variety brought in to add interest. Scroll to the first block in your new set. With the crosshairs over it, press R1. The Riff Editor opens up. Remember what your tune looks like, take a deep breath and use the Square button to DELETE any notes from the first eight 'columns'. Use R1 to close the window, and press START. As you expected, the riff has been mutilated, and the first part is completely missing. The cursor moves on to the second riff and... THAT IS CHANGED TOO! And the third... and the fourth! How come? That is another example of the power of the Riff Editor - if you select an example of any riff anywhere in the Track Editor and change it, you will be changing every single example of that riff in the entire song. Usually that is exactly what you want, and this feature is a great time- saver when you are in full flow. For now though, it had an unwanted effect. There is an ingenious alternative... First bring that changed riff back into the Riff Editor and restore it if you remember it exactly, and then place it back, and perhaps play the whole section again just to convince yourself that everything sounds as it did. Move to the fourth block this time and press and HOLD R1. Now tap X and then let go. You have opened the Riff Editor as before, but the tap on the X button has created a BRAND NEW riff modelled on the old one. It is a clone of the original and now you are free to change this copy as you please and the first riff and all examples of it will remain as they are! And that really IS ingenious. What we need for this riff is something subtly different based on the tune that we already have. A very satisfying simple melody structure for example is the 'Call and Response' that you hear in a million songs. Sometimes literally: "Hi-de-hi-de-Hii... (Hi-de-hi-de-Hii!) Ho-de-ho-de- hoooo..." etc. but more usually this structure is just a melody that seems to wander off a little and then find its way back - like the chorus of just about every pop song you ever heard. This isn't the place to go into any kind of detail about musical theory, so stick with the test of what sounds good to you. We are after a final musical phrase which sets off nicely the first part you already have, so perhaps take a listen to your set of three, and try to imagine what short 'response' will round off this 'call'... We need to alter it so that it still goes with the others but with a little interest to make the whole phrase complete. Sometimes a simple Pitch Shift may do the trick - just copy the notes you already have but move them up a line or two until they sound 'right' when following on from the first section, perhaps with the last note or two coming down to 'resolve' the musical phrase. When you think you have it, exit the Riff Editor and there is your riff already waiting in position four. Scroll back to the first block and play this short sequence once again. How does that sound? You now know exactly how to bring an existing riff into the Riff Editor and change just one part or all the parts, so tinkering about with this little melody will be a breeze. But there is no need to get attached to it, as once you are satisfied that you understand how the Riff Editor works, we need to clear some space in the Track Editor so you can shortly say goodbye to your first composition. _________________________________________________________________________ L I V I N G I N A B O X __________________________ Move the cursor over the first riff in your composition. Press SELECT. A Green box has appeared over it - this block is now 'selected'. Something else happened: the Mode Ball is off again, and this time we have an Orange face (Like Judith Chalmers? No. Behave yourself) and it has an icon of a spanner. Fairly obviously this means that some kind of work is to be done in this mode, so think of yourself as a mechanic taking a wrench and getting to work when you are in Edit Mode. Press START and the blue crosshairs appear as they did when you played through the four parts just now, but instead of sweeping on through the next block in the window as before, they stay fixed on this block and play it over and over until you press START again. Of course that is the effect of having just a single block selected. This is a great way to pick out any block you like and hear just that single riff. Press SELECT again, and now move the D-pad Right and you see the Green block 'grow' to take in the second of your riffs and then the third and so on until you release the Right button. Use any of the D-pad buttons and you soon see that you can select as many blocks as you like in any direction, anchored on that first block. As you might expect, just as you found that a single block when selected would play over and over, you can round up as many blocks as you like and everything inside the Green box will also play in an endless loop. Maneouvre the box until only your four riffs are 'selected' in the Green box. Then press SQUARE. Gone! What the..? What is this Red box? Help! Don't panic; you can bring them back instantly by pressing X. Now press Select again and the Red box will depart. What you did just then was Select some blocks, Cut them and then (since they were waiting in the PlayStation memory) Pasted them back. If you cut something else in the meantime, then the first riffs are deleted forever! So be careful. [In most operations in MUSIC, the TRIANGLE button means 'cancel' -or you can think of it as 'Go Back'- and so you always have this one chance to correct it if you do something by mistake and realise it at once.] Try out the Green box once again - press Select. Since the box is on the last riff now, try scrolling LEFT this time and lasso those four riffs. Press Square to cut the blocks and after the Red box appears move around the Track Editor window a bit. The Red box comes along too, and now just press X on any empty set of four blocks and BAM! Four blocks present and correct. The Red box is still there, so try moving four blocks to the right and press X again... A-ha! Four MORE blocks! Move to the next four and do it again... move up or down and try it there. Well, that is very interesting. You realise that you can create just one riff and paste a hundred copies anywhere in the Track Editor, and before you know it you can have an entire song! There is one very useful technique which can be learned here for later. Scroll back along your line of riffs and make a 'stack', first just one row of four, then place one on top of the next group of four and then move along and create a stack of three, so they look like steps. Scroll back to the first row of four and press Select to lose the red box and then Start. How does that look? More importantly, How does it sound? That's right - the melody played normally and then suddenly got a bit louder and then very loud as all three samples played at once. Cool! That is a fabulous technique for building drum rolls to a crescendo and can be reversed to build and fade out anthemic choruses for example. Use it sparingly - too much and the sound becomes distorted. Now use Select and the green box to round up every example of your riff and press Square and then Select again to delete them. You will soon be creating better riffs than that, so don't worry - they have done their job. _________________________________________________________________________ C U T T I N G A N D P A S T I N G M A D E S I M P L E _________________________________________________________ That whole procedure will be about the most common thing that you will do when using MUSIC, so I've listed everything to get it fixed in your mind: 1) Press SELECT - you get a transparent green box over the chosen block Press RIGHT - the box now covers two blocks Press Right again - the box covers three blocks Press Right again - the box covers four blocks... (usually four blocks is enough, but you can copy just one or hundreds) 2) Press X - the box turns red and the blocks are Copied (or Press SQUARE and they are Cut - Press Select again to DELETE) 3) Press Direction buttons to move to empty block(s) 4) Press X - riffs appear beneath the red box 5) Press SELECT again - the red box disappears ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Those 'steps' in full: MOVE X X SELECT (copy) _____________ (paste) SELECT __________| |__________ __________| |___________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- (And remember: SELECT-SQUARE-SELECT = Gone! But TRIANGLE Brings It Back) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- _________________________________________________________________________ L E T 'S G O T O W O R K ___________________________ Do the 'START and flick DOWN' trick to return to block 001. I promised you in Part One that we would do something to sort out that wretched "Disco" demo. Start by Selecting the riffs at top right called "Fever". I'll give you Fever, mate - press Right and select all the riffs on the top row and then Square and finally Select again. GONE and Good Riddance. Scroll back to 001 and now press L1 to see the wonderful Riff Library again. Remember in the first menu ('ambient - basslines') there were those riffs called 'wobbler'? Scroll down to the bottom of that menu and highlight "wobbler1". Press L1 again to hear your PlayStation burp into life as it loads this riff into memory, and then you are back in the Track Editor with 'wobbler1' as the featured riff in the Mute Mode window as you expect. Press X. There is that riff at 001 on the top row. Notice that a second 'wobbler1' has appeared in the smaller window above the first. this is just to tell us what is in the block where the cursor lies. Press Square and both this window and block 001/1 go blank. Press X to paste the riff again and both are back. But did you notice something else? The background to the icon has changed colour. There are a couple of dozen sometimes only slightly different colours, and this can be useful to distinguish between riffs which have been pasted at different times (even the same riff) since you may have since swapped a riff around and need to know that this is the latest example. You could start pasting dozens of these "wobbler1" riffs along the top now to make a start on a bassline, but the hard work has already been done by those kind folk at Jester, so press L1 again and scroll down the next line of 'basslines' to highlight "wobbler2". Press L1 to exit the Riff Library with the new riff, and now take a look at those central windows. The Mute Mode window now says "wobbler2" (because we just loaded it up) and it is just the window on top that now says "wobbler1". That is because block 001/1 contains that riff and the cursor is still there. Press X. Nothing happened... You can't paste a riff 'over' another; you can only paste onto an empty block. That is a good thing too, or you might soon be slapping stray riffs all over the place. This way you can see exactly what goes where. And "wobbler2" is going on block 002/1 beside "wobbler1". Next of course is L1 to go and fetch "wobbler3". Press Down to highlight it then L1 again to exit with the riff in tow, and then X to paste it into block 003/1 and finally "wobbler4" goes in 004/1. Phew! Throw a green box around these four riffs and press Start. Does that sound just a little familiar? It might if you are anywhere approaching 40... "Sahhhn your name a-cross mahhh heart..." That guy made millions from that! MILLIONS! (But where is he now?) When you have heard it a couple of times press Start again (to stop) and then lasso them once more with Select and then the direction buttons, and press X to Copy. Tab along four blocks and Paste with another X. Lose the red box and there you have a very colourful top row. Scroll back to 001. _________________________________________________________________________ F I X I N G A H O L E _______________________ We have made a good start to 'fixing' that demo, but if you care to press Start you will still hear a nasty noise. Prime suspects are those 'cheesy' riffs on Channel 5. You are now well- practised at deleting riffs, so round up those Sporrans and bin them. Try listening again. It starts off OK but then goes horribly wrong at column 004. We just checked our 'wobbler' bassline and it seemed fine, and the percussion is not too intrusive, so the culprit has to be Channel 6. Press and hold CIRCLE to enter Mute Mode and switch off everything except 1 and 6 (Channel 5 has been deleted of course). With the cursor at 001/6 press Start again and watch the window above the Mute Mode window. It says "Portal 1" and the trouble plainly starts when it switches to "Portal 2" and the same thing happens on block 008 to confirm it. That nasty riff will have to go. Scroll to either example of "Portal 2" and press R1 to take a look at it in the Riff Editor. fig.2.3 - "Portal 2" riff ("Disco" - The EVANGELIST) __________________________________________ | | | | | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |===========+===+===============+===============+===============| | | | | 07 | |---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| | | | | | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| | | | | | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| | 07 ||| 07 ||||| 07||||| 07 |||| 07 |||| 07 |||||||||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| | | | | | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' octave: (5) (6) (5) (6) (5) (6) (4) Place the cursor on the first '07', which represents the instrument used to play that note - number 7 in the Instrument Manager, which is called "wobbly". You can see that the number '5' is lit up in blue to the left, which shows us which octave the note has been placed on. Now tab over to the next '07'. Notice how after flicking into the present background octave - it will show with a white number - the number '6' lights up in blue this time. Scroll over each one and you can easily see this pattern: 5-6-5-6 etc. The synth note is bouncing up and down alternate octaves like a Eurovision song. No wonder it is annoying. Exit with R1 and then take a look at "Portal 1" for comparison: fig.2.4 - "Portal 1" riff ("Disco" - The EVANGELIST) __________________________________________ | | | | | |===============+===============+===============+===============| (5) | 07 | 07 | 07 | 07 | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' 3 7 11 15 That's a nice clean pattern - a simple four beats all on the same octave (5) to give an urgent undercurrent to the 'wobbler' bassline we just created. By comparison, "Portal 2" is all over the place. How about creating a riff that will complement "wobbler4" a little better, based on this existing riff? Use R1 to exit the Riff Editor and find and destroy the two examples of "Portal 2" (press Square). Now place the cursor over any example of "Portal 1" and you remember how to 'clone' a riff, right? It wasn't THAT long ago - HOLD R1 and tap X. Good. You will need to set the correct instrument in the Instrument Manager before you can paste notes in, so use L1 again to access the Instrument Manager and scroll down so that number 7 ("wobbly") is highlighted. Press X to select this and there is your instrument ready to go. fig.2.2.2 - The INSTRUMENT MANAGER ______________________ _____________________ _____________________ ( loaded ) ( loaded ) --------------------- --------------------- ( instrument ) ( instrument ) ===================== ===================== | 5| cheap open | | 7| wobbly | | 6| rezz | - with X | | | 7| wobbly | becomes: | | | 8| tab large | |2345678910111213141516 | 9| walking | |ooooooooooooooooooooo| This is a doddle. Raise the first, second and third notes by one row and the last one three rows, and then place one more on beat 13 as shown. This is the kind of 'response' riff I was suggesting you aim for with that melody you composed a little while ago. fig.2.5 - Custom "Portal 2" riff ______________________ --+---+---+---+---| |||||||||||| 07||||| ========+===============| | | | | | |---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| (5) ||||||||| 07||||||||||||| 07||||||||||||| 07||||| 07||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| | | | | | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' 3 7 11 13 15 Paste this riff into positions 004/6 and 008/6 (press X), and notice that we have a little problem in that the "Portal 1" riff we chose to clone has now also become an example of this new riff (the background colour of the icon matches). That's not what we wanted, so of course you just delete it (Square), copy a good "Portal 1" (Select and then X) and paste it there (move, X then de-Select), and no-one need ever know. For a final flourish, copy the new riff at 008/6 again (giving you a new, third variation). In the riff editor, simply use the Square to DELETE the second note (on beat 7). This 'stutter' sounds a little strange on its own, but it should give the underlying rhythm a 'kick' of interest. It will fit in nicely by the time we are done. fig.2.6 - Custom "Portal 2" riff - Variation __________________________________ -+---+---+---+---| |||||||||||| 07||||| ========+===============| | | | | | |---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ||||||||| 07||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 07||||| 07||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| | | | | | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' 3 11 13 15 Use R1 to exit back to the Track Editor. Throw a green box around all the riffs in Channel 6 again and have a listen. Notice that although there are definitely three distinct riffs in there, they all carry the same name - "Portal 1". Of course this is because we copied that riff to create the two variations, but you can see how confusing this will become if we later try to remember which is the variation and which are the originals. It is therefore a good idea to give these custom riffs a name as you create them. Place the cursor over the first variation (block 004/6) and open the Riff Editor with R1 and then press L2. _________________________________________________________________________ P U M P U P T H E V O L U M E ________________________________ The first thing you see is pretty obviously a Volume control. It isn't obvious what it is for. When in the Riff Editor, L2 simply alters the 'parameters' of the riff - think of this as 'personalising' the riff. Look at the Help menu and you will see the controls you need to change the parameters for the SOUND of the riff. Remember the existing settings first and then have a good play around. Try setting one side to full and the other to minimum and then press L2 again and Start your riff. Go back and swap the faders over and listen to that. Whack them both to maximum and then both nearly all the way down and compare the effect of each of these settings on your riff. Interesting, no? You can really get some impressive effects here when it comes to mixing your track. Reset the Riff Volume unless you really like any of the others more. Now press X and you will be able to alter the NAME of the riff. A menu opens with a flashing cursor next to the original name which is of course "Portal 1". You may as well keep things simple and just nudge the Left button over to the Backspace and press X and then use the D-pad to move over to the '2' and press X again. Always try to give your newly-created riffs a distinctive - and to you descriptive - name. Resist the temptation to give them rude acronyms. Use X for the capital letter and CIRCLE for lower case. The alphabet menu isn't hard to use, but if you mess it up you can press TRIANGLE to exit and try again. When you have your riff name correctly entered press X on 'OK'. Now you have the chance to alter the last parameter, which is the APPEARANCE of the riff. You can set a different icon, but the default is already flashing and it is just fine. There are dozens more in there if you want something funkier. Press X again and it's Job Done. Press R1 to exit the Riff Editor, and there is the name you chose in the middle of the screen. "Portal 2" - I like it. The name of your new riff is shown because it is 'loaded' and ready to go. In fact it is shown twice, just as you earlier noticed the 'wobbler' riffs were. Firstly its icon and name are shown in the Mute Mode window (where the Channel indicators are) because it was the last riff to occupy the Riff Editor. Secondly it also appears in the window above that because it is currently under the cursor. Simply move the cursor over any other icon to see how this top window changes. The bottom icon will remain until you open a different riff in the Riff Editor. Think of the smaller window as the Target block and the lower window is what you have as Ammunition. (If you SELECT and copy the Target with X, then that will BECOME the ammunition but it won't show in the Mute Mode window unless you open it in the Riff Editor.) Prove to yourself that the Riff Editor is 'loaded' by moving to an empty block and pressing X. Your last riff will be laid there. (Delete it afterwards of course.) If you are sure you have got the method of naming a riff straight, repeat the trick for "Portal" riff 3 on block 008/6. (Riff Editor - L2 - X) You still have Mute Mode set to demo Channels 1 and 6 on their own and now just hear how that new riff and its variation 'responds' to the 'call' of the first three bars. I hope you agree that it seems to fit with the 'wobbler' bassline a little better now as well. (Remember we're not out to create a No.1 here, this is all just for practice.) I wonder if you agree it is sounding a little 'doomy'? Great if you are a Goth, but not what we want just now. Turn to our old friend BPM by scrolling down to the bottom of the Track Editor at column 001 and use R1 to up the tempo a little to 124 bpm. a subtle difference but the song is getting better I think. It still isn't QUITE right though. Hit up block 006 in Channel 6 and press Square to delete it. Now CLONE 002 in that Channel and edit it as shown: fig.2.7 - Custom "Portal 1" riff ______________________ _______________________________________________________________________ |===============+===============+===============+===============| | | | | | ---_____]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ==' ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| | | | | | ---_____]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---| ==' ||||||||| 07||||||||||||| 07||||||||||||| 07||||||||||||| 07||||| |===============+===============+===============+===============| (4) | | | | | 3 7 11 15 Simply drop every note DOWN four blocks onto octave (4) just so that they line up with the black key next to the number 5. That's all. Name this third variation "Portal 4" and paste this riff into block 006/6 (the example at 002/6 will of course have changed to match). What have you got now? ('Portals' 1-4-1-2-1-4-1-3..?) It was a lot of chasing around, but I think we've finally nailed it. Demo 1 and 6 again to see what you think. Two Channels down, four to go! _________________________________________________________________________ I'M P U T T I N' O N M Y H I - H A T ________________________________________ Go to channel 4 and let's take a look at those hi-hat riffs, called "Frisky" and "Pacing". Switch the muted Channels back on (Hold Circle and then Square). "Frisky" is at block 001, so when the crosshairs are on it press R1 to open up the Riff Editor. (Just the very bottom of the Riff Editor is shown, as I'm sure you can work out): fig.2.8 - "Frisky" riff ("Disco" - The EVANGELIST) ________________________________________ | | | | | |===============+===============+===============+===============| | 04 04 05| 04 04 05| 04 04 05 04 04 | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' 1 3 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 Compare and contrast this with the other hi-hat pattern: fig.2.9 - "Pacing" riff ("Disco" - The EVANGELIST) ________________________________________ | | | | | |===============+===============+===============+===============| | 04 05 | 04 05 | 04 05 | 04 05 | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 They use the same instruments (the sound is of a hi-hat cymbal alternately 'open' and 'closed') but in two different patterns. Refer to figures 2.8 and 2.9 and examine each one in the Riff Editor. You can easily see that 'beats' 1, 5, 9 and 13 are identical (number 4 in the Instrument Manager list at the moment is "cheap close"), so the variety comes just from the shift in the other beats. They are not particularly exciting, though. This is a good place to start mixing up riffs, because this is percussion, so you are only concerned with the rhythm and not melody. As a start, it couldn't be simpler than this:- Open any example of the "Frisky" riff. Take a copy so that you don't affect any of the others. [While I am working on a song, I like to store temporary riffs down on Channel 16 and switch it off in the Mute Mode window during playback. You might care to keep an 'original' riff or two down there if you think you might be doing lots of editing, just to be sure you know what you started with!] Using this first cloned riff, simply delete the notes on columns 8 and 9 by counting along until you reach them and pressing SQUARE over each one. That's it, there's nothing more to do here. Move along. Don't forget to give your riff a new name - carrying on the 'movement' theme perhaps, with something like "Stutter". Press L2 and then X to reach the 'alphabet' screen as before. fig.2.10 - Custom riff - "Stutter" _______________________ | | | | | |===============+===============+===============+===============| | 04 04 05| 04 04 | 04 05| 04 04 | ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---' 1 3 4 5 7 11 12 13 15 Now to paste this new riff into the Track Editor. Move along from the existing riffs (you might as well use Channel 4 where the hi-hat riffs already live) to a new set of four blocks. Place one on block 014 and another on 016 simply by pressing X each time. That was easy! Now scroll back until you are over any one of the original 'Frisky' hi-hat riffs (not the one you just changed). Press SELECT to highlight it with a Green box, and then press X to copy it, so that the box is now Red. Simply slide the cursor back to where you just placed your new riffs and lay copies of "Frisky" on block 013 and then 015. Now move to the following set of four and place two more, on blocks 017 and 019. Great! Now go back to the original set of riffs and find the one called "Pacing" (remember that the 'target' name will show up in the centre window when you are over it). First DESELECT the Red box (with the SELECT button of course) so that the green crosshairs appear and then press SELECT again, as otherwise instead of picking up a copy of the new riff you will be fruitlessly trying to paste the last riff into a block which is already 
taken. The second time you press Select sets up a fresh operation, so 
just as you did for "Frisky", press X now to copy "Pacing" into this new 
Red box and now scroll back to your growing riff collection and place it 
into the vacant space at position 018 and then finally put another at 
block 020. Press Select to get rid of the bounding box and then scroll 
back a little. How does that look? Very pleasing I'd say. 

Scroll back to the original hi-hat riffs (001-008/4) and delete the lot 
of them (Select-Square-Select). Now move the cursor to 013, over that 
first "Frisky" icon and press Select. The green box has appeared again, 
so now press RIGHT. We are after the blocks we just pasted from 013-020, 
so keep tapping Right until all eight are sitting in the green bounding 
box. You can't see the beginning of the box as it is now off-screen, but 
you can be confident that you have copied all eight blocks as you press X 
and then move the red box all the way Left until it stops and you are at 
block 008. Press X again to paste the blocks. Get rid of the red box with 
the Select button and scroll back along those beautiful icons. Press 
Start on block 001 and sit back and listen to your handiwork.

OK, it's not going to start any fires, but you should be really getting 
the hang of things and we now have our demo well under control. That was 
so easy, and you now have a nice pacy rhythm accompaniment for your new 
song! 

Now that you have well and truly got the hang of editing riffs, let the 
cursor run on to your cluster of hi-hat riffs and listen to them play 
through again. You will have ideas of your own, so mess around with them 
as much as you like. CLONE EACH ONE first (so you don't mess up your new 
arrangement) and then alter at least a couple more to really spice it up. 
Listen to the theme from "Shaft" if you need inspiration! Try these on a 
'Frisky' clone for starters and your drummer will be quite a busy bee:



        |               |               |               |               |
        |===============+===============+===============+===============|
        | 04     04     | 04     04   05| 04      04    | 04            |
        ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
          
          1       3       5       7   8   9       11      13 



        |               |               |               |               |
        |===============+===============+===============+===============|
        | 04     04     |        04   05| 04     04   05| 04            |
        ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
          
          1       3               7   8   9       11  12  13  

Really have some fun trying to come up with your own little patterns. All 
the riffs shown here are created by simply removing notes from a copy of 
the original "Frisky" riff. What about ADDING notes? Nearly as easy...

_________________________________________________________________________


M O R E  M O R E  M O R E
_________________________


In that last section we were using the "Frisky" hi-hat riff to subtract 
notes to come up with new patterns. Now we will figure out how to add in 
notes to give us even more options.

Take another look at the other ready-made hi-hat riff called "Pacing":



fig.2.9 - "Pacing" riff ("Disco" - The EVANGELIST)
          ________________________________________


        |               |               |               |               |
        |===============+===============+===============+===============|
        | 04     05     | 04     05     | 04     05     | 04     05     |
        ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
          
          1       3       5       7       9       11      13      15  


It looks pretty dull and it sounds pretty dull - just like a bored 
drummer going "(yawn) ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR". We'll have to give 
him a bit more to do. Move along your hi-hat riffs to the "Pacing" riff 
at 004/6. Take a copy, Miss Jones. (Hold R1 while you tap X.)

All we are going to do is simply add in a couple of taps on the 'closed' 
hi-hat at beats 4 and 12, to give it a little drama. Like so:
 


fig.2.11 - Custom riff - "Skippy"
           ______________________



        |               |               |               |               |
        |===============+===============+===============+===============|
        | 04      05  04| 04      05    | 04      05  04| 04      05    |
        ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
          
          1       3   4   5       7       9       11  12  13      15 

Your new riff modelled on "Pacing" is waiting in the window. The menu 
below still reads "wobbly". The idea is to press X at a select point in 
the Riff Editor to place our hi-hat sound, just as you placed "wobbly" 
notes in those bass synth riffs before. So we have to go into the 
Instrument Manager to make the hi-hat our chosen choice.

Press L1 to get the Instrument Manager. Scroll to number 4 in the list 
which is "cheap close" - the name for our closed hi-hat note. Press X to 
select it and there we are back at the Riff editor and ready to go.


fig.2.2.3 - The INSTRUMENT MANAGER
            ______________________


        _____________________                   _____________________
       (       loaded        )                 (       loaded        )
        ---------------------                   ---------------------
       (     instrument      )                 (     instrument      )
        =====================                   =====================
       |   2| big beat       |                 |   4| cheap close    |
       |   3| funky          |   - with X      |                     |
       |   4| cheap close    |    becomes:     |                     |
       |   5| cheap open     |                 |2345678910111213141516
       |   6| rezz           |                 |ooooooooooooooooooooo|



Now that you have "cheap close" as the selected instrument (and you can 
see very well by now that this is how you manage to obtain any other 
instrument), you can start pasting notes into the Riff Editor. 

Incidentally, this 'switching' of instruments through the Instrument 
manager may seem like a lot of trouble if you only want to paste a single 
note each out of a few types already in the Riff Editor, and of course 
there is a handy shortcut. Just as you can in the Track Editor, you can 
cut or copy any block and paste it elsewhere in the window. First Select 
the note you want to Copy, then use X (or use Square if you want to 
remove it from that block) and then just move to your target block and 
Paste with another X.

As a bit of fun, try shooting up and down the window pressing X to hear 
your hi-hat sound. If you move very far from the bottom of octave 5 it 
soon stops sounding like a cymbal, but it does make some other 
interesting sounds, particularly towards the bottom where it sounds as if 
it is underwater. Up toward the top it could be some kind of clicking 
cricket - just something to bear in mind when you get the chance to mess 
about with all those other sounds.

Refer to fig.2.11. Stick a note on beats 4 and 12 and then scroll back to 
the beginning and press Start to see what you've got. If you are happy 
with that, press L2 to edit the riff parameters, and once again ignoring 
the first 'Volume Fader' screen, press X to get the alphabet menu where 
you can use that backspace arrow to delete the old "Pacing" and type in 
another distinctive name such as "Skippy". Press X twice to move forward 
to the Riff Editor then R1 to arrive back at the Track Editor where we 
find our new riff ready with the others. 

That should be enough to keep the drummer busy - "Frisky-Stutter-Frisky-
Stutter-Frisky-Skippy-Frisky-Pacing"... We have to make sure these 
Session Men earn their money!

_________________________________________________________________________


K E E P I N G  I T  R E A L
___________________________


I hope you are enjoying messing about with those practice riffs and 
coming up with some interesting variations. Maybe you have a rhythm in 
your head that you are having trouble in translating into notes in the 
Riff Editor? Help is at hand: scroll to the beginning of the riff (or you 
can start with a new blank window) and press and hold Start with your 
left thumb as you press CIRCLE. 

SHAZAM! The BPM indicator turns to a flashing Red light and you hear a 
tock-tocking metronome as the window scrolls before you, over and over 
until you press Start again. This is the fantastic 'Real-time Record 
Mode'. It does what it says on the tin - your riff is playing at the 
speed of your song, so with that rhythm in your head you can start 
tapping out the beat on the X button and the notes will be magically 
placed exactly where they should be without your having to place them by 
ear. This is great for drums and percussion, and will work as well for 
any other instrument, for example you will have no trouble starting a 
vocal element bang on cue.

You can delete errors by tapping Square on the notes you don't want, (it 
is like 'Space Invaders' - see if you can knock the notes out just as 
they pass by the cursor) and you can also demo the current instrument 
with Circle to practice with the beat and make sure it is what you want 
before placing the notes. This is all very simple with the hi-hat you are 
experimenting with at the moment.

When you have had enough, delete all your practice riffs from the Track 
Editor and review the previous sections to get the steps right in your 
mind. I bet you are already planning the next move... 

When you got cymbals, you gotta have drums!

_________________________________________________________________________


D R U N K Y  F U M M E R 
________________________


Now that you have a decent hi-hat pattern going on, take another listen 
to the full song. I know what they say about not making a Silk Purse out 
of a Sow's Ear, and right now this song ain't no Silk Purse. But at least 
it's not a Sow's Ear anymore. Stay with it.

At the moment, all the interest is being carried by that bass run. But 
there is still something fundamentally wrong with the rhythm section I 
think. The kick drum is inoffensive enough (we don't want a slammin' 
House track at this point) so let's take a look at the snare.

"Flares are cool" eh? Yes if you are among the Ragazzi on the Curva Sud 
and you are chucking lit ones on the pitch; No if you mean this drum 
pattern. I don't think just shuffling the pattern around is going to work 
here; the sound is altogether too 'punchy'. Scroll to any one of the 
blocks on Channel 3 and bring up the Riff Editor. Use the Instrument 
Manager to highlight number 3; in this case it is the drum type, which is 
"funky". Funky Drummer? I think I've heard of that...

Use L1 to take a look through the 'snare' menu in the percussion section 
of the Instrument Library (once again you can hold Select with your right 
thumb to scroll straight to the head of a category). There are nearly 50 
very different snare drum sounds; so if anything, there is too much 
choice! Your existing snare sound "funky" is not listed there because it 
has been 'borrowed' from the library. Scroll over any name you like the 
look of and press X. After a little pause as your PlayStation is 
retrieving this instrument, it will appear right there at number 3 in 
your Instrument Library. Demo it with a couple of taps on the CIRCLE 
button. Press L1 again and have another scroll up and down and you should 
spot that "funky" has been returned to the library. (It may have been 
overdue.) Try out any or all of these snare sounds, just by pressing X 
and then tapping Circle in the Instrument Manager.

I like "jazz dry" despite the name, so go with that for now and see what 
you think. Remember that swapping it for the existing instrument is as 
simple as pressing X (which is why I thought I'd better urge caution the 
first time we came here). And there is 'jazz dry' sitting at number 3. 

_________________________________________________________________________


N E V E R  M I N D  T H E  Q U A L I T Y,  

F E E L  T H E  B A N D W I D T H!
__________________________________


You should have spotted on your Help menu when in the Instrument Library 
that there are three options when loading your instrument. This has to do 
with the sound quality at which you want to load the instrument. These 
are:

11 khz - press CIRCLE. Lowest quality. Best for quick demos (RED box in 
Instrument Manager)
   
22 khz - press X. Medium sound quality. Perfectly acceptable for most 
recordings (AMBER box shows in Instrument Manager)
   
44 khz - press SQUARE. Highest quality but memory-intensive (GREEN box)

You probably know that 44 khz is 'CD' quality sound. 22 khz sounds 
perfectly acceptable (unless you have your PlayStation hooked up to a hi-
fi), and saves a GREAT DEAL of space on your memory card - a lot more 
than just half - and is nearly as good as 44 khz for most instruments. 11 
khz does sound a bit tinny with some vocals and instruments, but is fine 
when you just need some background percussion. I'll leave it up to you to 
find out which sounds best. [Sound/Recording/Memory issues can fill an 
entire FAQ. Please write one!] 

I would suggest you stay with the Amber settings by pressing X when you 
are selecting your instruments, and maybe use Green where there is 
something like a drum break or a featured musical motif that gets a lot 
of attention, and only resort to a low Red setting if there are memory 
problems when you want to Save. (Which there will be.)

To get an idea of the difference, while you have the 'snare' section 
open, load "hall" at the best quality using Square, and it appears with a 
Green box in your Instrument Manager. Demo it with a Circle. Ah, a lovely 
sharp echo, like the percussionist of the Royal Philharmonic checking for 
levels with  the sound engineer at the Albert Hall. Delete it with 
Square, press L1 again and now load it back up at the lowest quality 
(with the Circle) so that it has a Red box. Now it sounds like someone 
banging a muffled tea-tray... 

Which makes the middle option sound just fine. Re-load "jazz dry".

_________________________________________________________________________


A  D I F F E R E N T  D R U M
_____________________________


Back at the Instrument Manager, and with "jazz dry" as our featured 
instrument, press X to see the "Flares are cool" snare pattern ready in 
the Riff Editor. The 'funky' drum sound should now simply have been 
switched for our 'jazz dry' sound. Hit START to see what the effect is. 

It is definitely better, but the rhythm is still not much cop. Taking our 
inspiration from "Funky Drummer", lay down a pattern like so:



fig.2.12 - "Funky drum 1"
           ______________



        |               |               |               |               |
        |===============+===============+===============+===============|
        |               | 03          03|               | 03            |
        ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
          
                          5           8                   13    

It should be fairly obvious that the drum notes go on the bottom row in 
octave 5, and that is where they are now. If you go too far down it 
sounds like you are underwater again and too far up and it sounds like 
someone playing a tune on their teeth. Remember - Experiment! because 
sometimes that may be just what you want.

This arrangement gives us a nice funky 'shuffle' pattern, so why not call 
it "Funky drum 1"? If you exit the Riff Editor and play the whole demo at 
once, you'll see it sits quite nicely with the other tracks we have laid 
down, but I think we can tune the 'response' part of the run (bars 004 
and 008), so once again delete one and copy the other. This bar needs a 
bit more excitement, so try this:



fig.2.13 - Custom "Funky drum 1" riff
           __________________________



        |               |               |               |               |
        |===============+===============+===============+===============|
        |               | 03          03|     03        | 03      03  03|
        ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
          
                          5           8       10          13      15  16

Now, if you demo this in the Riff Editor with Start, you immediately 
sense that something ain't right. The beat is fine, it just sounds too 
'mechanical'.

Now would be a good time to see what all that 'Christmas tree' stuff to 
the left is about.

_________________________________________________________________________


A  L I T T L E  F I N E  T U N I N G 
____________________________________


If all MUSIC could do was what we have already done, it would be enough.

Of course we have hardly even scratched the surface... but at least we 
can give that surface a darn good polish! The menu at the left of the 
Mute Mode window contains a host of amazing tools and effects to tweak 
your riffs note-by-note. If you are now serious about your music-making, 
it will keep you occupied in experimentation for hours and hours.

I recommend playing around with EVERYTHING. Take it one step at a time 
and step back after every change to assess what effect different features 
have on the current instrument. For now, I can suggest a few things just 
to give you the idea and you should take it from there.

Move the cursor over any note in the Riff editor (you should be looking 
at your custom snare drum riff). Take a look at that window.



fig.2.14 - NOTE EDIT window
           ________________



        ,-=========================================================.
       |                   |                   |                   |
       |     MUTE NOTE     |      VOLUME       |      STEREO       |
       |                   |       and         |       PAN         |
       |       Mute        |      REVERB       |     POSITION      |
       |   the currently   |     on / off      |                   |
       |   selected note   |                   |                   |
       |===================+===================+===================|
       |   ADSR ENVELOPE   |      VIBRATO      |       SLIDE       |
       |                   |                   |                   |
       | Modify the volume | Top bar = Vibrato |  Slide in pitch   |
       |     envelope      |           depth   |   note-to-note    |
       |    of the note    |Bottom = Modulation|                   |
       |                   |   speed/frequency |                   |
       |===================+===================+===================|
       |    NOTE REPEAT    |   SAMPLE OFFSET   |   NOTE EFFECTS    |
       |                   |                   |                   |
       |       Edit        |       Edit        |   Apply Chorus    |
       |   Note position / |      Sample       |        or         |
       |    Convert to     | 'start' position  |   Phase effects   |
       |     triplets      |                   |                   |
        '=========================================================='




Read the manual for a comprehensive explanation of what these effects can 
do - there are two pages alone that list some of the variations you get 
from applying Chorus, Echo, Phase and Reverb and show you how to get a 
Chord from a single note and much, much more than I can go into here. The 
main effects we are interested in for tweaking our drum sound are the 
Volume, the Sample Offset and also Note Repeat. Some of the others affect 
different instruments in different ways, so we can't set hard rules here.

The problem with our drum pattern is that all the notes sound exactly the 
same (because they ARE the same - we pasted the same note over and over). 
This is a machine, after all, and so each pasted note is 'perfect' and 
identical. If you imagine a real drummer hitting a snare, then each 
stroke will have a very slightly different sound, almost imperceptibly 
so, but definitely different. People are not perfect and many things can 
affect the sound of a real person playing an instrument. Each drum hit 
may be a little harder, or fall on a slightly different part of the 
drumskin, or maybe his arm just got a twitch so he nearly missed that 
stroke, or he got distracted by a fly on his nose or... you get the 
point. What I am suggesting is that you need to deliberately 'roughen up' 
this machine-made sound to get it to sound 'human'.

The human ear is incredibly sensitive (two even more so), it's just that 
mostly we don't use them enough. You don't have to try hard to know when 
a sound is 'human' or 'machine'. The features of the Note Edit part of 
the Riff Editor can be used very sparingly just to give your songs a 
subliminal 'warmth'.

A moment ago I suggested that every note in our riff was identical, but 
in fact that isn't so. Place your cursor on the first note and scroll 
across them one by one and check the Note Edit window. Notice anything? 
(Apart from the fact that the window goes 'out' if there is no note in 
the column.)

If you copied my riff suggestion exactly, then you have six notes. 
Numbers 1 and 4 were existing notes from the original "Flares are cool" 
riff, and we pasted 2, 3, 5 and 6 after we set "jazz dry" as our 
instrument. Check them again, and you should see those subtle 
differences.

The original notes feature 'Vibrato' (the central window has its Blue bar 
on maximum). This doesn't seem to make much difference to our drum sound, 
but is quite effective for notes which are held for a long time such as 
strings. These notes also have the Sample Offset at '000000' whereas our 
pasted notes have '000001'. Not much difference there, you might think, 
and you would be right. [I notice that all the ready-made samples seem to 
have '000000' as their default, but any pasted note will not go to 'zero'  
- maybe it is something to do with the programming?] Anyway, what is 
important here is to see that the numbers CAN be different, so let's find 
out how and why.

_________________________________________________________________________


S L I P  S L I D I N G  A W A Y
_______________________________


Exit the Riff Editor and point the cursor at an empty block and open up a 
new Riff Editor window. Go to the Instrument Manager, and scroll down to 
number 8 ("number 8... number 8..."). This instrument is "tab large" (and 
that is either a kind of drum or a big can of pop). Place a note anywhere 
and hit X. It is quite a loud percussion sound, with a hollow 'woody' 
tone. Now for the fun part - press R2.

The box in the centre of the Note Edit window is now surrounded by a 
green band which flashes gently if you hold R2. If you now scroll around 
with the D-pad, you see that you can highlight any of the nine boxes, and 
when you let go, that is the one you will edit. Check the Help Menu in 
the middle of the screen each time for a description of the effect. 
Highlight the bottom centre window.

There is only one thing you can do here, and that is to move the slider 
from '000001' and it goes to '000368'. The Help menu says 'X play note', 
but if you do that then nothing at all seems to have happened..? Keep 
tapping X as you ease the slider back, and on about '000200' you will 
hear the sound gradually increase in volume until you arrive back at 
'000001' and the note is restored. What is happening is that this 
particular instrument (and most of the others) makes a sound that starts 
off loud and then dies away. Literally with percussion, the sound makes a 
HIT and then fades. You were hearing the sound as it has passed the peak 
of its volume and was already fading until at the end it had stopped.

Very interesting, but so what? Well, move the slider just a little bit 
forward. From that loud echoey note at the beginning, by only about 
'000030' it has become like someone tapping a block of wood and by 
'000100' or so it sounds like a lavatory cistern and then like a very 
quiet lavatory cistern and then it is gone. Any of these sounds is 
available to you from this one note.

Try moving the slider up to about '000030' and leave Note Edit with R2. 
If you paste some notes, you see that they all have the same setting from 
now on, so remember to re-set the slider after changing any individual 
notes. This goes for ALL the boxes, so unless that is what you want, 
always set the defaults after using them for the note you want changed, 
or all subsequent sounds will bear the same characteristics. (They are 
automatically reset when you change instrument however.)

The effects of this tool can be very impressive. You can create a nearly 
infinite range of sounds and tinker with all those otherwise 
disappointing samples and come up with some real surprises.

_________________________________________________________________________


A  S A M P L E  E X A M P L E
_____________________________


Press R1 to exit the Riff Editor for the moment and COPY one of the 
original "Frisky" hi-hat riffs. Now move the red box over out of the way 
to paste it and then clone THIS version of the riff (we don't want to 
disturb our Tune after all that work). Take a look at it again in the 
Riff Editor.

We had quite a lot to do last time, so you probably didn't notice the 
settings in the Note Edit window. Run your cursor over the notes and look 
particularly at that Sample Offset window in the middle of the bottom row 
of icons.

The first hit of the hi-hat reads '000000' which we expect, but the 
second reads '000021'. The third note is a different instrument of 
course, but then the fourth (which is also "cheap close") reads '000042' 
and in fact all of the notes are slightly different in no particular 
order. If you care to check it, the "cheap open" notes show similar 
discrepancies. 

The composer of that riff has expertly manipulated each note so that the 
sound starts at a very slightly different place each time, and quite 
subliminally our ears detect this little difference and our brains are 
satisfied that this is a 'real' and not 'manufactured' sound! Now that 
you know what you are listening for, spin back and play this riff a few 
times and hear the effect of each variation - Tic-TACK-a-TIC-tack etc.

Well, maybe the difference in that example is so slight that you don't 
think you'll bother with it, but it IS worth it. 

Experiment a little: first run along the notes and DELETE all the notes 
after the first - just throw a green box around them and press Square as 
you do in the Track Editor. Then copy the single note and paste three 
more at blocks 3,4 and 5. Notice that as you press X to lay the first one 
down, the red box will leap to the next available block in readiness. 
Nice touch. Just keep pressing X then, to lay a stream of 'cheap close' 
hi-hat notes right along the screen and then lose the red box and press 
Start at the beginning of the riff.

It sounds like a machine-gun - TICK-tacka-tacka-tacka... an unremarkable 
pattern, quite dull in fact.

Keep the first four notes and delete the rest. With the cursor on the 
third note (which is the one squashed between two others), hold R2 and 
scroll to the Sample Offset box at bottom centre. See how well you can 
nudge the slider to get it to '000021', just like the example mentioned 
above. Now try the fourth note and get this to exactly '000042'. Tricky 
isn't it? (All right, you don't HAVE to muck about - just press Down and 
now you can adjust it precisely.) You then have a note and a space and 
then three notes, each with an incremental rise in 'Sample Offset'. Play 
it. Like it? It goes by a little quickly, so now throw a box around that 
group of three notes and copy them. Press X and the red box appears, so 
that when you press X again it will once more jump helpfully across to 
the next available set of blocks as you keep pasting, right across the 
window. There isn't space for the last set, so deselect the red box and 
cut and paste the first two notes in any set of three to complete the 
row. Success! Now play THAT and what do you think now?

If it still sounds like a machine-gun, then it must be an Uzi 9mm! It's 
beautiful: TICK-tacka-ticker-tack-a-ticker-ta-ticker-tacka! The notes are 
exactly the same as they were, but we have added in enough variety to 
give the impression of an actual person tapping out a rhythm and not just 
a machine marking time. 

You can go much further, but that is something to get you started - once 
you delve into that little tool box, it will become essential. For now, 
close the Riff Editor and delete that stray riff and the other if it is 
still there.

_________________________________________________________________________


A  D I F F E R E N T  D I F F E R E N T  D R U M
________________________________________________


Think about our snare drum pattern. Remember that we just added a couple 
of notes, and now because they are close together our ears can detect 
that the sound is a little mechanical. I suggest we tweak a couple of the 
notes to make each sound a bit different to the others.



fig.2.13 - Custom "Funky drum 1" riff
           __________________________



       |               |               |               |               |
       |===============+===============+===============+===============|
       |               | 03          03|     03        | 03      03  03|
       ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
          
                         5           8       10          13      15  16

The major problem area I think is those last two notes sounding in 
succession. There is no way anyone could hit two notes that fast and have 
them sound EXACTLY the same, is there? For these last two notes, I would 
suggest we go for an effect like as if the drummer has slipped in a 
triplet just to give it a final flourish. You can turn just about any 
sound into a triplet with the aid of the Note Repeat tool.

_________________________________________________________________________


R E P E A T  B E S T  (groan!)
______________________________


Open up a blank template in the Riff Editor once more, and as "tab large" 
is still your featured instrument, plant a note anywhere in the Riff 
Editor. Now use R2 again, and go into the Note Repeat section this time 
(bottom left corner), and start switching those red buttons on and off. 
Just tab along to each note and press Up for 'On' just like flicking a 
light switch. It is a little misleading that the '3' is NOT above button 
number three (we'll call them A, B and C), but alongside it - keep 
pressing Right to scroll to it. 

Try combinations of switches and press X to hear the result. It is 
sometimes quite subtle, but with a couple of combinations you should get 
a definite 'rapping' sound like a double or triple hit. Particularly 
attractive is the clean double hit with the Red Note + button C only. If 
you switch on that number '3' whenever C is lit (or vice versa), you will 
see it go out. You can have one or the other but not both. Why? I don't 
know.

What these buttons are doing is repeating a part of the note down to a 
fraction of 1/64. For most sounds, this has only a very slight effect, so 
you'll need to experiment. I can't explain this exactly - as usual, have 
fun and try everything!

Red Note ...........  =  Dunk
Red Note + C .......  =  D-dunk
Red Note + B + C ...  =  Drrunk
Red Note + A + B + C  =  Ddrrnnkk!

(There are LOTS more combinations; some instruments will sound better 
than others of course.)

Lose the practice Riff Editor window when you are done checking out the 
Note Edit features. Delete the stray riff and pick up that second "Funky 
drum" snare riff again. Scroll over to the fifth note (next to last) and 
press R2. Tab down to the Note Repeat box and switch on just the Note and 
button C as recommended earlier. When you press R2 again to exit this 
window, try pressing Circle to demo just this note. Impressive! (Nudge to 
note 6 for comparison). It still isn't exactly right though... somehow it 
is a bit too prominent.

Press R2 again and this time let's try taking the edge off that note with 
the slider in the Sample Offset window. Take it to somewhere around 60 
and exit with R2 and then demo the note again. That note has been muted 
slightly, and now if you play the whole riff you will hear it 'slide' 
into the last note so that instead of that robotic RAP!RAP! we have a 
groovy para-diddlUP!

That worked well, so why not try mixing up the rest? There is no need to 
do all of them - maybe just notes two and three. Take the edge off note 
two very slightly with the slider and give note three a touch of the 
triplets - try Red Note + B for contrast. Keep checking the effect of 
each change, and don't get too carried away! Less is More.

As an alternative to the slider (which can severely dent a lot of riffs) 
use the Volume on/off control at top centre, and just roll it back out of 
the Red. Your ears will tell you how much is enough.

When you are satisfied, call up the alphabet screen and name this riff 
"Funky drum 2". Paste a copy in the vacant space we left and demo the 
whole song once more. The time spent on that snare drum was well worth it 
I hope you'll agree.

_________________________________________________________________________


S T A T U S  C Y M B A L
________________________


Do you remember back in Part One when we looked at 'Tracks' and 
considered whether 16 were enough to accommodate all the sounds we 
wanted? As you see, our song is really taking shape, and perhaps only 
needs a couple of instruments and some vocals and we would still only 
have used about half of them.

If you really are going for the full 'Wall of Sound', then here is that 
workaround I was hinting at:

Find "Portal 3" (it should be 008/6) and take a look at it in the Riff 
Editor. You remember that we left a gap when we deleted the second note? 
I know you thought at the time it sounded a bit odd, but there is a 
reason for it.

Summon the Instrument Manager with L1 and scroll to an empty space - 
number 10 is free I think. Have a look under the 'percussion - cymbal' 
menu for "gate sweep". Use X twice to have it ready at the Riff Editor. 
Paste just one note on block 5 and take a listen to the riff. 



fig.2.6.2 - Custom "Portal 2" riff - Variation
            __________________________________

                                                         ---+---+---+---|
                                                      ||||||||||| 07|||||
                                                 =======+===============|
        |               |               |               |               |
        |---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---|
        ||||||||| 07||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 07||||| 07|||||||||||||
        |===============+===============+===============+===============|
        |               | 10            |               |               |
        ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
                  3       5                       11      13      15


We are after a 'splashy' cymbal to fill in the gap left by the missing 
note. This sounds OK, but actually that first bass note is being cut off 
just as the cymbal crash arrives. In this case we'll let it go, because 
there is enough going on at that point of the song, but that is the 
technique for cramming in the sounds - just look to find two sounds at 
alternate beats of the same bar in your songs as they occur and maybe you 
can run them together. 

By the way, sometimes that 'cutting off' may be just the thing you need. 
If you lay three or four vocal tracks close together you can get a "N-n-
n-nineteen" / Max Headroom effect! [Ask your Dad - he was a bit like 
Kryten out of Red Dwarf] If you want a note to STOP! abruptly for some 
reason, paste another note right after it and use the Mute Note box (top 
left) to switch this second one off. All you will hear is your abrupt 
note, as the second cuts in silently. Remember - try everything. (In fact 
that sounds like a good idea - we might try that a bit later.)

_________________________________________________________________________


S C R A P E R  L O N G
__________________________


That 'space-saving' technique we just looked at works best for short 
background sounds, especially percussion. Very often there is the kind of 
beat that alternates two percussive sounds - Thank you Stock Aitken and 
Waterman for bringing us the "Whoo!Yeah!/Whoo!Yeah!" - but there was also 
that "Stars On 45" Bump-Clap/Bump-Clap... You know what I mean.

We can be a little more creative, so make a start by bringing up our 
"Funky Drummer 1" riff again. Find an empty space in the Instrument 
Manager list and go to 'percussion-wooden'. Scroll down to find 
"scraper". If you look at the "Funky drum 1" riff, then you notice that 
the first four beats are completely free, so simply paste one note at the 
first beat.



fig.2.13.2 - Custom "Funky drum 1" riff
             __________________________



       |               |               |               |               |
       |===============+===============+===============+===============|
       | 11            | 03          03|     03        | 03      03  03|
       ]---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---'
      
         1               5           8       10          13      15  16

Go and get the other riff ("Funky drum 2") and do the same. The effect we 
want should be quite subtle, just enough to add a forward motion to each 
riff. You should turn the Volume of the scraper down a little in Note 
Edit - you can't hear it very well anyway, but it is supposed to be very 
subtle.

Using this trick with percussion makes sense, because the drummer only 
has one pair of hands, so he's usually hitting either one thing or the 
other. Try not to cram your compositions with too many effects - we are 
doing it here just to learn the techniques - because it will make your 
song sound instantly 'fake' if there are two cymbals, a snare and a 
cowbell at the same moment.

Actually, I think we have just about finished the percussion section of 
our tune, so it is time for some melody - and that means we need vocals.

_________________________________________________________________________


S I N G.  S I N G,  S I N G,  S I N G...
________________________________________


Despite the fact that there are many hundreds of vocal elements on the 
disc, it has to be said that most of them will be useless to you most of 
the time. Nothing to do with the quality of the singing or anything like 
that, it's just that... well... they just don't 'fit'.

Of course it is nearly impossible for the creators of the program to 
anticipate your needs, and it really is impossible to string meaningful 
sentences together to make proper lyrics that fit into a particular 
melodic structure, so you will have to content yourself with lots of 
vocal interjections such as "Oh, Baby" and "Everybody say Yeah". Having 
said that (what I just wrote, not "Yeah"), if you take a listen to each 
of the demo songs on the disc, you may agree that these make excellent 
use of short phrases despite the same limitations.

Perhaps you can just concentrate on the music parts more, and use that as 
a backing track when you manage to hook up with someone who can sing if 
your aim is to get lyrically creative. For now, let's make the best of 
what we've got.

When you are composing your song, a short burst of vocal might be just 
the thing to suggest an underlying melody without the need for elaborate 
verses. You can always write a piano part that will be your melody later 
on if you feel the rest of the track is worth recording properly. Don't 
worry about it just now.  

Try to listen to each of the vocal samples, and build up a picture in 
your mind for grouping several of them together to approximate a melody. 
Most of the samples are listed in 'groups' already, such as all that 
wailing about 'Freedom' or 'Temptation, so some of the thinking has been 
done for you. For consistency, it is a good idea to use one or other of 
the vocalists throughout the song, with maybe just a couple of extras 
from another as backing in the chorus parts. 

After a while you will get to know each vocalist like an old friend. 

_________________________________________________________________________


E V E R Y B O D Y  S A Y  "M A Y B E"
_____________________________________


Earlier on we cleared Channel 5 and that is as good a place as any to 
place our vocals. Move the cursor to 001/5 and open up a new template in 
the Riff Editor. Go to an empty slot in your Instrument Manager and take 
a look through the 'singing' section of the Instrument Library. 

Mandy seems to have a wide selection of vocal samples, so hers is a good 
menu to start with. Listen to as many as you like; of course by now you 
will have your own ideas about where this short section of a song may be 
going, so pick something to suit. For this tutorial I suggest you find 
the one called "spell on you".

Take a glance at your 'Memory' bars. The Red one at the top shows us how 
much available PlayStation memory there is for loading instruments, and 
at the moment seems only about 10 per cent full. Use Square to load the 
sample and - WOW! 

We have to make a compromise somewhere, and vocals are such an important 
part of the song that they are not usually candidates. Just bear in mind 
that you shouldn't load dozens of vocal tracks just for effect.

Place "spell on you" on the first beat, and take a listen.

There is an immediate problem. The vocal simply dies away: "I put a spell 
on..." What? Toast? Why isn't the sample called "I put a sp..." if that's 
all she says? Something is going on here and we're going to get to the 
bottom of it. Press R2 and go to the Sample Offset menu at the bottom in 
the middle. Adjust the slider as far as you can and you find it goes to 
'009736'. That's quite a long sample, and certainly explains why it took 
so long to load and used so much memory, so let's get the benefit. As you 
bring the slider back, press X a couple of times and at about '004500' 
you can definitely hear "...on yooouu..." so like the title says, that's 
who she's put the spell on. So why is it cut off from our riff?

The answer lies in another very important Note Edit box - ADSR Envelope. 
Like I know what that means!

'A-ttack/D-ecay/S-ustain/R-elease'. Oh. I do know what it means - but 
what does it MEAN?

_________________________________________________________________________


A T T A C K!  A T T A C K!  ...R U N  A W A Y!  R U N  A W A Y!
_______________________________________________________________


The ADSR Envelope is the one with the green 'graph line' at centre left. 
The line is a visual description of the volume of a typical note. The 
sound builds quickly (Attack) and starts to fall (Decay) and then the 
sound can be held (Sustain) different amounts for different instruments 
before it ends (Release).

Once again it is harder to describe the effect than it is to listen to 
it, so bring any instrument here to practice on and try everything. You 
can adjust a bar up or down for each of those four parameters, but 
actually the most important ones here are the last two, Red and Blue.

Make sure the Sample Offset is at '000001'.

In the present case, you see the Red bar is nearly on maximum, which is 
fine, and we need to adjust the Blue bar upwards. Satisfy your curiosity 
by ramping up the first Green bar and you find it fades the sound rapidly 
the higher it goes. We need the opposite effect for this vocal. The 
Yellow bar has the effect of halting the note abruptly. This may 
sometimes be quite effective, but not here. Encouragingly, the higher we 
bring the Yellow bar, the more of the riff appears, but it isn't the one 
we want, so return it to zero. The Red bar seems to work in the opposite 
manner to the Green bar, in that the less you have the quieter the sound. 
We want to sustain the sample for its duration, so leave it on maximum. 
Now (fingers crossed) let's ramp up the Blue bar...

Mandy sings: "I put a spell on yoooouuuh..." Success! 

If anything, we have too much note. Bring the Blue bar down to just two-
thirds, so that the final '...uh!' on "yooouu-uh!" is clipped. 

Exit the Note Edit menu with R2 and go and listen to your song. Not bad, 
considering. Notice that the vocal seems to 'carry over' through the next 
empty block as the cursor advances. That is why the sample was cropped to 
fit I guess. So what's the problem? Well, if we place another block right 
after it, we 'lose' that ending we have just taken the trouble to create. 
We need a solution...

_________________________________________________________________________


W O U L D  Y O U  L I K E  T H A T  S U P E R - S I Z E D?
__________________________________________________________


...and there is one. First delete the test "spell on you" vocal riff. 

By now you don't even have to think when you need a blank template in the 
Riff Editor - just press R1. However, if you press and HOLD R1, you will 
see a Purple-Blue bounding box appear over your target block. Keep 
holding R1 and tap the Right button and the box 'grows' to cover two 
blocks. Release everything and the Riff Editor opens up as expected, but 
if you scroll off to the right, you see that after the usual 16 beats 
there is an additional set of (mauve-coloured) blocks containing another 
16 beats! In fact, when you hold R1 and press Right when selecting blocks 
from the Track Editor, you can round up as many as 8 blocks. So now you 
can create Super-riffs which contain long 'sustained' string notes for 
example, or long vocal samples like the one we have now.

Paste the "spell on you" sample on the first beat and press Start. You 
see the blue blocks sweep by and run out just before she sings 
"yooouuu..." which demonstrates pretty well why it had to be truncated, 
but now the cursor can sweep on into the second section (the mauve colour 
is just for visual separation) and the full sample fades out nicely at 
the end. 

Make a quick adjustment in Note Edit - throw the Volume to maximum. When 
you return to the Track Editor, you see the double block and because it 
has 'reserved' the following block, Mandy can now sing without being 
rudely interrupted.

_________________________________________________________________________


R E P E A T  T O  F A D E
_________________________


Paste another "spell on you" at 005/5. The particular sample 'leaps' out 
a bit sudden, so we are going to blend it in a little - it won't ever be 
perfect, but remember we are working with what we've got.

Open a new 'double' riff at 002 on Channel 7 (Hold R1 and tap Right). We 
still have "spell on you" loaded as our instrument, so paste a note on 
beat '8'. What we are going to do is create an 'echo' of the first "spell 
on you". With the cursor on the note, press R2 and go to the Sample 
Offset. Move the slider up to '002400' and notice how the abrupt 'I - put 
a' has been dropped off the start of the riff to leave us with "...spell 
on yooouu".

Back in the Track Editor, stick another 'echo' riff on block 006/7 to 
follow the second "spell on you" sample playing on Channel 5. This starts 
at 005/5, so you see we have a nice offset which lets the first "spell on 
you" continue even as our echo comes in. Nice.

If this doesn't sound quite 'right' to you, it may be that you have taken 
a little too much off with the Sample Offset. Try a couple of variations 
anyway just so you can tell what is going on. Just by chance, the slight 
tremolo in the "yooouu" nearly follows the notes in the bassline melody. 
That was the reason for that nice 'shuffle' rhythm we created - so that 
the vocal moves along nicely. Take the time to get it bang on the beat, 
daddi-o.

Now paste yet another copy of this 'echo' at block 007/5, right after the 
second "spell on you" there. This will mean that we have another offset 
with the echo down on Channel 7, giving us a 'triple echo' and what 
happens to an echo? It fades away... away... way. CLONE this last riff 
and highlight the note. Press R2 and go up to the Volume box and move the 
slider down just below halfway. Back in the Track Editor paste another of 
these fading echoes in the space at 003/5. So what have we got?

"I put a spell on you... spell on you... spell on you..." repeated.

There is an obvious problem at the second time around. There seems to be 
a 'lag' before the "I..." and actually this sound is a bit abrupt as 
well. There are several things you can do to resolve this, and we'll try 
a bold one: clone the fading note riff on 003/5 (to leave the other one 
undisturbed). Scroll along to the end of the mauve section and paste a 
note on beat 31 (the next to last block). This still has the Sample 
Offset, so press R2 and slip the slider back to '000001' for this one 
note, and also re-set the Volume but not quite to maximum. A-ha, you say 
- but there isn't any space for that note to play in! Quite.

When you play your song again, you get the fading echo and then you get a 
'Stutter' just as the second vocal riff sequence cuts in. We are after an 
effect like that record that went "I-I-I-I-I-I Couldn't Dance With A 
Mother..." Remember? Well, you get the picture anyway. (We are just 
trying stuff out here, so anything you don't like - CHANGE!) The idea is 
that the stutter will hit just on the rising note of the bass riff at the 
end of column 004 to drive the vocal on.

Try Selecting everything, copy it and place the whole lot straight after 
the first on column 009-016. That will give you enough to hear it through 
comfortably. You can carry on pasting as many times as you like, but even 
a stunning composition like this will pall after a while :)

_________________________________________________________________________


C O D A
_______


There is one final touch. Go to the next column after the end of your 
song (so how many times did you paste? If none at all, I mean block 009-
010/5.) and open a new double riff. Find the sample "under spell 2" which 
is Mandy breathily pouting "I'm under your spell!" and after importing it 
at highest quality to a blank space in your Instrument Manager, place a 
single note on beat 6. Use R2 to get to the Volume control and take it 
down just out of the Red (we want it nearly whispered), and flick on the 
Reverb (just above the Volume slider) while you are there for a nice 
ethereal effect.

Then go to the SECOND column after the end of the song on another row, 
(to overlap with the other new riff still playing above it) and open a 
blank template three blocks long (this means 010-012/6 in the case 
above), and then find "bar sweep" at the head of 'percussion-metal'. 

Far from being a Sad-sack stacking chairs on tables at last orders, this 
is a magical tinkling sound. Import at MEDIUM quality - very important! 
or else it will sound like door chimes - by using the X button and place 
a single note on beat 8. Bring the Volume to halfway, and again flip the 
Reverb in that box On. Adjust the Blue bar in the ADSR Envelope box to 
full and lastly delve into the Effects box at lower right to apply "ECHO 
GUITAR 1", which will send the magic spell echoing off into the night. 

_________________________________________________________________________
 

W H E R E  D O  W E  G O  F R O M  H E R E ?
____________________________________________


That's it, there is no more.

It's pretty much up to you now anyway. All we have is eight bars... Does 
it sound like an Intro or an Outro? A middle eight? A chorus? Where COULD 
it go from here? On the decks or in the bin? You could copy the whole 
thing as above and repeat it ten or a dozen times along the timeline and 
there is the body of a song once you've added in some variations. 

Don't go mad on this little tune anyway, the main thing is that without 
even trying you now know how to:

 Open the Track Editor
 Open the Riff library
 Use the Instrument Manager
 Open the Instrument Library
 Create your own riffs
 Copy and Edit existing riffs
 Fine-tune your riffs for a professional sound (well, almost!)

That's everything you need to know to start making your own compositions; 
all that is missing is your own inspiration. Try listening to your 
favourite CD's and take notes as you listen. How long does the track 
last? How many instruments are there? Which parts are repeated? Would it 
be better if other bits were repeated more/less? Don't forget to try 
checking that '1-2-3-4' structure and see if you can break it down into 
its parts to understand why the bits you like seem to work so well, and 
maybe think up ideas to make it better. You are not trying to copy 
anybody, but it doesn't hurt to learn from the best.

There are a load of other small 'starter' tunes on the disc, so go 
through them one at a time and dig around just as we have done here, 
changing instruments and altering beats. (Go to 'options' at the Main 
Menu and choose 'clear music' each time to load a fresh one.) Listen to 
each one several times and see what leaps out at you. Take a glance at 
the counter and once again keep notes, so you can go back and figure out 
how they achieved an effect or a certain sound. What instruments do they 
use and what effects are put on them? Listen to the percussion and study 
how the vocals are placed to complement the melody. These tracks were 
made by professionals pushing this little program to its limits, so you 
should still be prepared to learn.

Try thinking up intro's for the short demos - building the sound 
gradually with a bassline and the first bars of the melody, or diving 
straight in with a giant chord or a drumroll. Think up choruses for them 
and maybe work towards an instrumental break and so on; you have ideas of 
your own of course so I'm sure you'll be hooked on MUSIC at least for as 
long as it takes you to write that No.1...

See you at The Brits!

_________________________________________________________________________


M Y  M E M O R Y  I S  G O I N G
________________________________


I think I promised in Part One a look at memory issues, but apart from 
the obvious - keep the number of instruments to a bare minimum and don't 
pile on unnecessary effects - there isn't much to know. Notice that even 
in our simple Tune, the Red Memory Bar is nearly half full and we only 
have a dozen Instruments. It goes without saying that it takes a lot more 
PlayStation power to load even these few at 44khz.

In case you haven't worked it out, those Memory Bars are:

 Red ....... memory used to load Instruments
 Blue ...... memory used to store Musical notes
 Green ..... memory used to hold Video graphics
 Orange .... memory used to store Video Chases
 Purple .... will it fit on Memory Card? (Yes if space left on bar) 

You may see these bars flash if there is any problem - hopefully it just 
means that you need to prune the track a bit. Sometimes it may be best to 
just keep part of the tune instead of the full mix rather than compromise 
on sound quality.

On the bright side, the Purple Bar in our example barely registers, so 
you should have no bother saving those eight bars to a Memory Card 
anyway! 

SELECT + START at any time takes you to the Main Menu. Now that it is 
time to Save, highlight that option and press X.




fig.2.15 - LOAD AND SAVE SCREEN
           ____________________




            -----------------   ---   -------------------------
           |\   /|     |     | | 1 | |                   name  |
           |/   \|     |     | |___| |               Dwr Glan  |
           |-----|-----------|  ___  |                         |
           |     |     |     | |   | |                 author  |
           |     |     |     | |_2_| |           CoLD SToRAGE  |
           |-----|-----------|       |                         |
           |     |     |     |  ---  |                 blocks  |
           |     |     |     | | CD| |                     01  |
           |-----|-----------|  ---   -------------------------
           |     |||||||||||||  -------------------------------
           |     ||||||||||||| |                               |
           |-----|||||||-----| |                               |
           ||||||||||||| ___\| |             A back            |
           |||||||||||||    /| |             X load            |
            ------------------  -------------------------------
            =======    -------    -------    -------    ------- 
           ||     ||  |       |  |       |  |       |  |       |
           || _|_ ||  |       |  |       |  |       |  |       |
           || \ / ||  |       |  |       |  |       |  |       |
            =======    -------    -------    -------    -------
            



The 'load and save' screen opens. There is a groovy background of swirly 
red circle shapes on black. Overlaid, there is a grid to the middle and 
upper left side with 15 boxes stacked five high and three deep. If there 
is no Memory Card inserted then the first time you see this screen, the 
first ten of these boxes will contain icons which you will now recognise 
as a lightbulb/musical symbol combination. These icons represent the 
sample tracks on the disc, which contain both Video and Music. The last 
box contains a Green arrow pointed to the right.

To the right side of this grid in the centre of the screen are three 
small boxes stacked vertically. The top one has the number '1' on it, the 
one below that has a '2' and the bottom one has a CD icon. The '1' shows 
whether there is a Memory Card in slot One, and obviously the '2' shows 
if there is also a card in slot Two.

Along the foot of the screen are five large square icons:

i)   The first of these is Yellow and is flashing; it has an arrow 
pointing downward. There is a Memory Card shown on this icon.

ii)  The second is Red and has a smaller arrow also pointing downward, at 
six tiny red boxes stacked 2x3. This also features a Memory Card on the 
icon.

iii) The middle icon is just an arrow pointing upward. If you have no 
card inserted it will be blank.

iv) The fourth in that case will also be blank, and this contains an 'X'.

v)  The last icon in the row has what appears to be a pink padlock, but 
is actually a jukebox.

On the other side of the screen above these icons are two oblong windows. 
The one at top right has 'name-author-blocks' written in it but is 
otherwise blank. The other window has 'back' and 'load' next to a 
triangle and X respectively.

If you have no Memory Card inserted then the clear indication is to press 
the X to activate the flashing Yellow icon.

There is a beep and now the icon at top left is flashing with a Green 
border. The menu to the right has filled up as shown in fig.2.15.

You can see that you can use the Direction buttons to move to any of the 
ten tracks on the first 'page', and although they are all by the same 
author, the name will change accordingly. Fairly obviously in fig.2.15, 
the name of the track contained by the flashing icon is "Dwr Glan" (I 
suspect that is Welsh). When you move the Directional buttons to 
highlight any track, the Yellow icon stops flashing, so it seems logical 
that any press of the X will then load this track.

You can scroll around to highlight any of the different sample songs, and 
when you reach the bottom the Green arrow will flash and you can press X 
to 'turn the page'. There are eight more much shorter samples on the next 
page, and since these have only a Music icon, you can tell there is no 
Video contained in them. Again you can scroll around using the D-pad and 
now there is an additional arrow facing left, since it is now possible to 
go back a page as well as forward. The third page contains the "Disco" 
sample we have been using, and the following two pages contain examples 
of the Video capabilities of MUSIC. On the last page are the credits for 
Jester, the programmers.
 
Pressing X will load any of these examples. You are then given the chance 
to load Video, Music or Both (if both are available). Take the time to 
play each of these samples; there is much to learn from them. 
 
_________________________________________________________________________


D O  Y O U  T A K E  C A R D S ?
________________________________


If you do have a Memory Card inserted, there will be a couple more 
options available relating to this menu. The Yellow icon will still be 
flashing and this time you can load a previously Saved MUSIC file. These 
will be shown in the order that you saved them, one block each starting 
from the top left. This is also a good place to bring all those old 
Memory Cards you have lying around, since you also get a block for every 
game on that Card - they have an icon and their name in the menu and 
everything! (Not all games are able to support this function.) Now you 
can clean out those old saved files using the fourth box, with the Pink 
X, which is the Delete function. Careful!

When you have a card installed in either of the slots, you will be able 
to press UP to send the cursor over the CD icon and then the '1' (or the 
'2' as well if there are two cards) and you then press X to load from any 
of these or come DOWN again to the row of icons at the bottom. If you 
have not created any Saved files for MUSIC then none of the icons shown 
on your card will be useful of course.

If you have just finished doing something in the Track Editor, then when 
you exit to the 'save and load' screen the final icon will become 
available, and this is of course the SAVE function (with a Red arrow 
pointing upwards in the centre at the bottom). You are offered a similar 
alphabet menu to the one you used to name your riffs. 

I mentioned previously that you can save around 12 tracks onto a card, 
but this obviously depends on how complicated they are. If the song you 
are working on contains just short sections of work in progress, then it 
might be a good idea to 'append' files with that second icon (with the 
mysterious red boxes). This means that you can load any track from the 
card and 'add' any other track to it in the current Track Editor window. 
This is the easiest way to transfer riffs from other songs, and sometimes 
you may be able to completely re-mix two tracks into one this way. 
Experiment. Of course you can 'borrow' riffs from the songs you hear on 
the disc for use in your own tunes this way too.

The Jukebox is very simple. First clear any music from the PlayStation 
memory (with the 'clear music' function in the 'options' menu) and then 
simply Select each track from your cards or the MUSIC CD icon in the 
order you want to play them. You get an automatic lightshow to accompany 
your choice.

Remember before saving that it is always worth pruning your tracks if 
there are unnecessary elements such as a deep reverb on a note that can't 
be heard as it gets buried under a crash cymbal for example. Always be 
critical and think what elements you can afford to lose. That way, not 
only will you be keeping the 'Insufficient Memory' messages at bay, but 
your tunes will sound better too.
 
Good luck and good MUSIC making.



_________________________________________________________________________


O H  Y E S... T H E  'D R U M M E R'  J O K E -
__________________________________________________


-What is the difference between a Drummer and a Drum Machine?

"You only have to hit a Drum Machine once to get it to keep time?"

-Hmmm. I was going to say that only one of them keeps drinking all the 
beer and f*rts on the tour bus, but I like yours better...

_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________



(c) J Woodrow 2002