SIDPLAYER SING ALONG -- INSTRUCTIONS (updated 03/08/87) Introduction These instructions explain how to prepare music and words files for use with SIDPLAYER SING ALONG. The music files are created with the Editor program from "All About the Commodore 64 -- Volume Two" by Craig Chamberlain**. They are then modified slightly as will be explained below. Lyrics are first entered with SpeedScript and then converted to a special file with a program called SS/WDS (SP2WDS.IMG in DL10). If EasyScript or another wordprocessor which saves its files as a SEQ file, use EZ2WDS.IMG in DL10. The Words Files The words file should be created first. This way, you will know where to place the "flags" in the music files to coordinate the words to the music. SpeedScript and a small conversion program called "SS/WDS" must be used. There are only a few rules to remember: 1) You can use upper and lower case letters. However, the conversion program SS/WDS will convert the file to all upper case letters. Having the words in all upper case is more readable than upper and lower case text, particularly on blurry old TV sets. 2) Use no more than 38 characters on each line. If you go beyond this point, the words will not be displayed correctly while the music is playing. SS/WDS will stop running and print a "too many characters" message if you go beyond 38 characters in a line. 3) If you are preparing a song with several verses, be sure to break the text at the same point in each verse. When you have the words all entered, save it to the disk using the same name as you will use for the music (except leave off the ".MUS", of course). Then run the "SS/WDS" program. It will create a program file with the same name as the music file plus ".WDS". You will be asked to enter the name of the song. Enter the title as you want it to appear in the Sing Along menu. You cannot use commas or colons in the title. The Music Files The SING ALONG program watches the "flag" location of the music program. When this location changes to "1", it prints the next line of text and changes the flag back to 0. Using the music editor, put a FLG 1 at each point in the music where a new text line should be printed. Flags need only be placed in one voice. Print out the text, and move through the music, inserting FLG 1 wherever needed. Because the first line of music is often repeated, a flag at the beginning of the music will be ignored. When the phrase is repeated, the flag will work normally. There must also be a flag at the very end of the music file. Sometimes verses require slightly different music due to differing numbers of syllables in the lyrics. For example, in "The Christmas Song", "yuletide carols" requires two eighth notes for "carols". When the musical phrase is repeated, the words are "tiny tots", and "tots" requires one quarter note. There are two ways to deal with this problem. One way is to reenter the whole verse. The other is to divide the verse into two or more parts. In the example above, you would CAL 1, play the quarter note, then CAL 2. Questions, Comments and Suggestions SIDPLAYER SING ALONG was written by: Bob Huffman 9607 Dogwood Munster, IN 46321 (219) 924-4881 Comments can be made to the author by writing to the above address, or calling weekends or evenings before 10:00 P.M. Central time. December 7, 1985 ** Craig Chamberlain has authored an "Enhanced" Sidplayer program which was released late in 1986. It is found in the book/disk combo "COMPUTE!'s Music System for the Commodore 128 & 64." Sidplayer files generated with the original Sidplayer Editor are compatible with the Enhanced player. At the present time, COMPUTE! has not allowed the release of a Public Domain loader/player for Enhanced Sidplayer files; they are playable only with the loader/player which comes with the program. This means that Enhanced files may not be compatible with loader/players designed for "original SID files," depending on which new commands are used.
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