DPLAYER NEWS FILE #1 7/85 11/85 Welcome to the first news file for Sidplayer, the music system published in the book "ALL ABOUT THE COMMODORE 64, VOLUME TWO" by Craig Chamberlain, published by COMPUTE! Books. This documentation file describes how to use KPLAY, how to hook your Commodore 64 up to a stereo, how to play a song for two computers, where to submit songs, and more. The SIDCAT files provide a complete listing of Sidplayer songs in groups of fifty. These files will be updated periodically to bring you the latest information about Sidplayer. KPLAY is an enhanced version of the Player found in Volume Two. It plays all Sidplayer songs and features a piano keyboard display. KPLAY and Sidplayer songs may be freely distributed but not sold. When you run KPLAY, the program will first ask you for your name. Type your name, up to ten letters long, and press the Return key. Don't worry about upper/lower case. After displaying two more screens, the program will list the names of all the Sidplayer songs on the disk. (Sidplayer songs are identified by .MUS at the end of the filename.) To play a song, just type its name (without the .MUS) and press the Return key. The program will load the song, the screen will change to show a piano keyboard, some text lines will be printed, and the song will start playing. When the song is done playing, the program will return to the screen with the song directory. You can then choose another song. To stop a song before it is finished playing, just hit any key, such as the space bar. To replay a song, type * in place of the filename and press Return. The program will skip the loading process and start playing the song again. If you make a mistake in typing a filename, or a requested song is not on the disk, the program will print the message "I DON'T KNOW THAT SONG". To play songs on another disk, simply insert the disk and press Return for a new song directory. If no Sidplayer songs are found on a disk, the message "NO MUSIC FILES ON DISK" will be printed. To save some typing, you can use the wildcard character in the filenames. Just type the first few letters of the filename, followed by a '*', the wildcard character. For example, to load and play the song HOMECOMING, type HOM* for the filename. Be sure to type enough letters to distinguish the name from any others. Typing only HO* could cause the program to load and play the song HOLST instead. Also be aware that using wildcards may make the program try to load a file other than a song. Typing K* might cause the program to load and attempt to play the program KPLAY rather than the song K.C.O.. When you are done playing songs, hit Run/Stop Restore to exit the program. The first time you do this, remember to Scratch the KPLAY on the disk and use the SAVE command to replace it with the personalized version. If you do this, the next time you run the personalized KPLAY, it will not ask you for your name, and will go right to the song directory! To change the name or remove it, LOAD the KPLAY program and enter the command RUN 100 to start the program at line 100. Sidplayer songs are very memory efficient. Their small size means that they can be loaded from disk faster, can be transferred by modem in a shorter amount of time, and take less storage space. Although the songs are compact enough that you could store as many as a hundred on one side of a disk, it is recommended that you not put more than fifty songs on a side, since this will make the screen scroll when KPLAY prints the song directory. Also, the extra songs will not be playable by the MULTIPLAY (MPLAY) song player. Sidplayer songs sound great, but they will sound even better if you play them over a stereo instead of through the cheap little speaker on a television or monitor. It's so easy to connect your Commodore 64 to a stereo. Any standard monitor cord splits into one or more video lines and one audio line. Just plug the cord into the monitor output of the 64 and connect the audio line to the auxiliary input of your stereo. You may also want to get a "Y" patchcord to split the signal, so that you can hear it through both the left and right speakers. An unfortunate limitation of the SID chip is that it supports only three voices. Contemporary songs often need at least four. One way to get around this problem is to have a song use two computers, for a total of six voices. This allows the use of a melody line, a bass line, chords, and percussion, and opens the door to stereo effects. The first Sidplayer song for two computers is the Axel F Theme from the movie "Beverly Hills Cop". The file AXELF-L is for the left speaker and the file AXELF-R is for the right speaker. The two files must be played simultaneously on two computers. To play two computers together, load and run the Sidplayer Editor on each computer, then load the file for the left speaker on one computer and the file for the right speaker on the other computer. Press the '1' key from the MAIN menu to select the PLAY option, and finally press the Return keys of the two computers at the same instant. The four timing beeps at the beginning of the song should be synchronized if the Return keys were hit together. It may take a few tries to get a "good start". Adjust the volumes for a good balance (the audio output is stronger on some 64'S than others) and enjoy the song. The simultaneous playing can also be done with KPLAY, but sometimes the two computers will not stay synchronized. Unlike the Editor, KPLAY uses the raster scan interrupt, and for some unknown reason the computers may "drift" even if they are started together. If you try to use KPLAY, turn on each computer, hit Run/Stop Restore on each one, then load and run KPLAY. Load the respective song files, but hit a key to stop the playing. Type '*' for the filename on each computer to choose the replay feature, and then hit the Return keys together. Listen for a while to determine if the playing on the two computers stays synchronized. One way to tell for sure if the computers stay together is to play the same song on both computers. An alternate method to start the playing from KPLAY is to release joystick triggers together instead of hitting Return keys together. Plug a joystick into port two of each computer and have one person hold both joysticks. The person should press and hold down the triggers on the joysticks when the Return keys are pressed. The playing will not start until the triggers are released. If the playing on the computers does not stay synchronized, try a different pair of computers. To submit songs, you may send them to the author. Craig Chamberlain C/O Compute! Books P.O. BOX 5406 Greensboro, NC 27403 If you subscribe to the Delphi telecommunications service, a more direct way to submit your songs is to upload them to the Commodore music database of the Micro Artist Network (MANIAC) SIG. The song will be assigned the next available catalog number and be listed in the next catalog. You will also find the latest songs from other people in the MANIAC music database. The author can sometimes be found in the Micro Artist Network SIG. Delphi mail should be sent to the username CRAIGCH. Here are a couple technical notes. The version of the player used by the KPLAY program has been modified to improve the timing. Because of these timing changes, a song with sensitive envelope settings may play just a little differently in KPLAY than it does in the Editor or the Player from the book. The other note is that to change the color of a piano key in KPLAY, use the Editor to enter an AUX command on the appropriate voice with a color number from 0 to 15. Do not use values outside of this range. The SONGCOPY utility is used to copy several songs at once. Enter song filenames one at a time. Sorry, but wildcards may not be used. Hit only the Return key for a song directory showing which songs have been selected. Enter the command BEGIN to start the copying. The PRINTER utility is a version of the LISTER utility revised to list the voices in three columns on a printer, to save paper. The program will work only with a printer. See the later SIDNEWS files for more information, including instructions on how to use MULTIPLAY, tips on making songs with Sidplayer, and instructions on how to use the POLYCON utility. *********************************** THE PROGRAMS PUBLISHED IN THE BOOK "ALL ABOUT THE COMMODORE 64, VOLUME TWO" ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT. THEY ARE NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, AND MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED IN ANY FORM. THIS INCLUDES THE EDITOR AND SID.OBJ PROGRAMS. A DISK OF ALL THE PROGRAMS IN VOLUME TWO MAY BE PURCHASED FROM COMPUTE! FOR $12.95.