Tim Sketchley

I thought I'd write about mixes because the subject is only briefly described in the Music 5000 User Guide and it's an area in which I've developed some ideas of my own.

It is not the purpose of this article to talk about AMPLE music notation in much detail and I will assume that the reader is familiar with AMPLE music notation (or Staff notation or using a keyboard).

I will start by describing how music can be entered directly (and be heard as a one-part piece), and then move on to the situation where there is more than one part and a mix is set up.

Entering AMPLE music directly

When AMPLE is ready for you to type a command, a percentage sign

is shown on the left of the screen. This sign is known as a prompt, and you can type some AMPLE commands thus:

READY 1 VOICES Upright

(remember to press RETURN after each line).

This sets up a voice on player 0 (in the AMPLE BCE User Guide it's called the static player), and uses the preset instrument Upright on that voice. This prepares AMPLE for some music and we can play it by typing, for example,

SCORE 0: CDEFG^

SCORE is used at the beginning of a musical part, 0: specifies the octave to be used, and CDEFG plays the first five notes of a scale ending with a rest, "^".

This can be stored as an AMPLE word by typing,

"part1" [ SCORE 0: CDEFG^ ]

If this is done, typing part1 after the % prompt will play the notes (provided of course the READY 1 VOICES Upright line has been used).

Notepad can also be used to enter and play one-part AMPLE notation words. Firstly, AMPLE should be made ready to play by entering for example, our

READY 1 VOICES Upright

at the % prompt before entering the Notepad editing area. Then, after entering the music notation on the Notepad screen, pressing f1 will play the music. Entering

"part1" NAME MAKE

at the % prompt below the Notepad screen will then create the word "part1", as before.

Setting up a mix

Suppose you have created the word part1 which may be a melody and another part called part2 which may be a bass line. You will want to hear the two parts together.

Here are three ways of doing this.

1. The method in the Music 5000 User Guide (pp. 78-79).

Enter the Mixing Desk (by pressing f0 to get to the Main menu and choosing the "Mixing Desk" option therein), then set it up using the following sequence of commands at the % prompt:

READY
1 SHARE 1 VOICES
2 SHARE 1 VOICES
CLEAR

Then type MAKE to create a word called "mix". Within the mix each voice is automatically set up with the default instrument Simpleins.

We now have three words - part1, part2 and mix - and need just one more, RUN, in order to play the melody and bass together. This can be defined by entering

"RUN" [ "12" PLAY ]

at the % prompt.

To hear the music you can now type RUN at the % prompt.

To use the Mixing Desk whilst the music is playing you can either type RUN at the % prompt and then press TAB, or press TAB first and then press 'r' (lower case) when in the Mixing Desk.

Now you have got this far, you can change instruments and/or other settings on the desk as described on p17 of the User Guide under the heading "a 'live' mix". If the music finishes playing before you have had a chance to change the settings, you can pause it by pressing the space bar, change the settings, and restart it by pressing the space bar again.

2. This is the same as method 1, except you can set up the mix by defining the instruments first, at the % prompt, rather than in the Mixing Desk. For example, to set up a mix with Upright and Slapbass you would type,

READY
1 SHARE 1 VOICES Upright
2 SHARE 1 VOICES Slapbass

then press TAB to see the whole desk, press TAB again to see the % prompt, and then type MAKE. I find this method more direct as your initial choice for the instruments appears, instead of starting with Simpleins.

3. Another method is to set up a mix using Notepad. In our case it would be:

M5MIX
1 SHARE 1 VOICES Upright
2 SHARE 1 VOICES Slapbass
PNUM SHARE

The mix could be changed using Notepad, although I think you will need a reasonable knowledge of AMPLE to do so. For example,

M5MIX 160=T
1 SHARE 1 VOICES Upright
1 VOICE 100 VOL
2 SHARE 1 VOICES Slapbass
PNUM SHARE

will speed the music up, and make part 1 quieter.

Having set up a mix using one of the three methods above, you may create your third part called part3. You will want to include it in the mix.

Method 1 above doesn't help here, because CLEAR sets all the instruments to Simpleins, causing you to have to change them back again to what you want!

Proceeding along the lines of method 2, with the Mixing Desk loaded we can type, at the % prompt,

READY
mix

followed by RETURN to ensure the settings we have previously defined are in operation. We can then add the third player,

3 SHARE 1 VOICES Panflute

press TAB to see it on the Mixing Desk and TAB again to return to % prompt. Then MAKE the word.

The word RUN needs modifying to account for the extra voice so a definition would be changed to

"RUN" [ "123" PLAY ]

At this point we could go through an example to illustrate what has been said. (I know it seems laborious but I don't think there's an easier way.)

Start with a tune:

Then add a bass line:

"part2" [ SCORE
48, 4BAR
    0: c/// | g/// |
       CDEG | f/// |
       c/// | DcDD |
       c/aD | E/// |
       0,^
]

Then load the Mixing Desk, and at the % prompt, type,

READY
1 SHARE 1 VOICES Vibglock
2 SHARE 1 VOICES Upright

Then press TAB twice (the first press shows the whole desk and stores its settings in memory, the second press returns you to the % prompt). Then type,

MAKE

Then create the RUN word by typing,

"RUN" [ "12" PLAY ]

and then type

RUN

to hear the music.

We can now add a third part. With the Mixing Desk loaded, type at the % prompt,

3 SHARE 1 VOICES Panflute

then press TAB twice and type,

MAKE

That defines the mix. We can now define the third part (still at the % prompt) as

"part3" [ SCORE
48,4BAR
192, 2: G | G | e | F |
G | B | C | c |
0,^
]

We can now alter the RUN word by typing

"RUN" [ "123" PLAY ]

and then type RUN to hear the music

What I have done in the foregoing sequence is set up player 3 in the mix before defining the part itself. It's up to you how you do it.

This method allows some 'bad planning' in that you can decide what players to add as you go along. I find this helpful and still regard it as good technique.

In the second of these articles I will be using a two-voice part, so until then why not practise setting it up with

READY 2 VOICES Vibglock

and then typing the part, for example,

SCORE 0: C(E)D(F)E(G)E(G)E(G)^(^)

Published in AMPLINEX 009, January 1989

Mixes for beginners – part one

Entering AMPLE music directly

Setting up a mix