Overview - Seeds etc - User guide - Musical note intervals - Scales - Midi in - Other pages

(FTS version 1.081)

Main window controls

Getting started , Making seeds , Adding extra voices , Playing in any of the scales and modes yourself , The links at the head of these pages , Updates , Accessibility , Registration , E-mail , Installer

Getting started

Tune Smithy automatically generates tunes. When you open it, it is all ready to start with a new tune. Click the Play button to hear it.

Click File | New at any time to get back to the tune you hear when you first run the program. (For more details of what New does, see: Resets ).

The tunes are all based on musical Seeds . You can change the parameters using the boxes to transform it into your own tune.

Main ones to start with:

Time for one note makes the tune faster or slower.

Scales - the basic scale in which to play (the list of Intervals below it changes in synchrony to show the numbers that define the scale).

Arpeggios or Modes - selection of notes within the scale to play. For instance, the pentatonic scale, which sounds nice, consists of note 0 that starts the scale, then the 2nd 4th 7th 9th and 12th notes of any of the 12 tone scales. (again, you don't need to select the Note numbers below it, they are synchronised with the mode or arpeggio).

Pitch (menu option) - use to raise / lower the pitch of the entire tune. Click anywhere on the light blue bar for the pitch of the first note of the tune, or use the arrows to move it up or down by octaves, notes, semitones, Herz, or to fine tune.

You can select other musical seeds from the Musical Seed drop list.

To hear the main tune on another instrument, select a voice from the Voice Menu. Click the Voices... option at the top to bring this menu up as separate window. Use Shift + click if you want it always on top - see New windows always on top for details.

To select other tunes, click on Tune smithy drop list at the top of the Musical Seed drop list

You can also get to these by using File | Open to open some Tune Smithy files.

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Making seeds

You can also make your own seeds. by entering numbers into the Musical seed box.

Leave spaces between the numbers. Use 0 1 2 0 rather than 0120 (which would be read as a single number 120 ).

Try small numbers for the musical seed to start with.

This especially applies to the first number - good choices for your first experiments are 0 or 1 (or maybe -1).

High numbers will quickly send the tune extremely high, however it will then rebound to lower notes again. Alternatively, you can set it to go silent when too high, or too low, and various other options, depending on the settings under Channels | Ranges

The numbers specify how far up or down to go from the note that starts the seed.

Some of the seeds in the musical seeds drop list have some extra numbers prefixed with a semicolon:

1 -1 0 ; 0.5 1 0.9

These are note timings. 0.5 means 0.5 of the value in the Time for one note box.

Listen to these seeds, and you will hear various rhythms with varying note lengths.

You can edit the timings just as you can edit the musical seed.

One of the lines has a third list of numbers, prefixed with a v :

0 1 3 2 0 -1 ; 0.1 2 1 0.1 0.3 0.1 v 1 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.8 1

These are volumes for the individual notes. Range 0 for no sound to 1 for the volume set for the Volume bar, then higher than 1 to go louder still if the volume is set to less than the max value.

Compare this musical seed with the previous entry without the v .

The musical seed drop list can also be edited . To do so, show it first (otherwise you will edit one of the tune smithy drop lists), and click the Ed. button to the right of it. Each line corresponds to an entry in the list. The drop list is updated when you exit from your text editor. For details: Musical seed drop list format .

You can also play new seeds using the p.c. keyboard enabled for sound.

For this, click Make New Seed . Then move the mouse over the picture with the blue dots. The drop list above will change to Edit mode.

Then park the mouse out of the way somewhere.

Type the Escape key to erase the present seed.

Then type keys 1, 2, 3 , etc, in the top row of the p.c. keyboard to play the new seed.

Finally press Return to end it.

To hear your new seed again type Shift + Return (or press the play button, which looks like this: > ).

To use it in a new fractal tune, press Apply .

You can choose to place all new windows on top of the main window. This means that

For more details, see Make new seed

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Adding extra voices

To see how this is done, find a Tune Smithy file with several voices playing (by File | Open , or from the Tune Smithy drop list , which you get to from the musical seeds drop list).

Choose Channels... from the main menu.

You will then see all the voices. The number of channels in play is shown at the bottom of the Channels window.

To change one of the voices, highlight one of the channels in play by clicking on it.

Then select a new voice from the Voices... menu. It will be selected into the highlighted channel (the first channel if none are highlighted).

You can also select a non melodic percussion instrument from the Non M. Perc. menu. These are instruments such as drums, bells, cymbals etc that either have no definite pitch, or are played in only one pitch.

You can change the number of Channels in Play from the main window.

Any voices beyond the ones in play are ignored.

Click here to find out more about the Channels window or tthe Order of play , menu.

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Playing in any of the scales and modes yourself

You can use FTS simply as a way to play in any of the scales or modes yourself, without playing the fractal tune.

To play from the p.c. keyboard enabled for sound, use Make New Seed....

Check that you have enable sound ticked.

Move the mouse over the picture of a piano keyboard to activate it to receive key presses. The drop list will change to show Play Mode .

Then play in the scale by typing keys of the p.c. keyboard. The mode / arpeggio starts at top left with the key to the left of the number 1 , and continues through the other rows of the keyboard, missing out the key at bottom left.

Another way to play along is to to show the Tune.. . window. Then click on the picture, to activate it to receive key presses. Then play along. If you do it this way, then the first note of the arpeggio starts as the letter A of the p.c. keyboard.

Select the scale you want to play in from the drop lists.

For scales marked with an (M), you can select an appropriate mode from within the scale. Make sure you have Sync. Modes ticked, so that the drop list always shows an appropriate modes for the scale.

For the other scales, you will probably want to leave the mode as Follow Scale .

You can save a recording of your playing to a MIDI file - a type of file which tends to be small, and so especially suitable for sending over the internet by e-mail or adding to web pages. To do this, choose Record as you play along from the Make New Seed window.

For details see: Record to MIDI as you play along .

The size of a MIDI file depends on the number of notes in it. It will be very small if it has just the notes you play yourself.

However if you record as you play along with the fractal tune, it may get quite large as some of the fractal tunes are exceedingly fast, so have many notes in them.

If you just want to record the fractal tune itself to MIDI, you could use the same method, but will get better results if you use File | Save As , and save the file as type MIDI Files . If you do it that way, you don't need to listen to the tune as it is saved, and so it will probably be saved much faster than it could be played. It is also saved with the desired times, while the times actually played can be delayed slightly, depending on what other programs you have running at the same time. See Save as Midi File .

To play in any of the scales or modes from a MIDI keyboard, use In | Options... , choose whichever of the presets is closest to what you want, then change things to customise it further.. For details see Midi in .

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The links at the head of these pages

Seeds etc More detailed overview and experiments to try. Describes how to use the New Seed, New Arpeggio and New Scale windows.

User guide Reference for most of the buttons, Windows, etc. Also reference for topics such as how to play along following a score, and how to make a Gallery of sound clips.

Musical note intervals Background on musical note intervals, scales, on how the seeds are made, and so forth.

Scales Options for searching for scales in the vast SCALA archive, making new scales, sorting the lists of scales / arpeggios in various ways, and so forth.

Midi in Anything to do with options for the Midi In keyboard.

Other pages Lists all the other help pages. These are linked to elsewhere in the help, and grouped here together in one place for easy reference.

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Updates

You can check for the most recent updates at the Fractal Tune Smithy download page :

http://go.to/tunesmithy

If you wish to be notified whenever a new version is released, add your name to the mailing list which you can get to from this page.

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Accessibility

Windows Start Menu | Settings | Accessibility | Display | Use High Contrast .

If you have your display set up for large easily legible fonts, then you need to resize some of the Fractal Tune Smithy windows, and menus.

To do this, type

#ax

into the Time for one note box.

To go back to the default window sizes, type

#bx

into the Time for one note box.

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Registration

For up to date details of how to register, visit

http//go.to/fts_reg .

To register, enter your name, and the reg code. Both are case insensitive, and you can add white space anywhere.

First half of reg code registers for unlimited Play, and second half registers for unlimited play along from MIDI In. So for instance, to upgrade from unlimited Play to fully registered, purchase the second half of the reg code, and add it to the first half.

Either fill in the form at the start of the session, or use File | Register .

Your name will be shown in the About... window when you register.

Names are shown in lowercase, and all initial letters capitalised. If you want to change this to some other capitalisation, prefix your name with a '.' when registering, and your captialisation will be preserved.

If you have already registered completely, and wish to re-register to change capitalisation of your name for the About... window, enter

#reg

into the Time for one note box, since the File menu will no longer show the Register entry.

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E-mail

Any bugs in the program, broken links, or mistakes / omissions in the documentation:

fts_bug_report@rcwalker.freeserve.co.uk

Questions not answered, or topics you'd like to see covered in the future in the help files:

fts_readme_updates@rcwalker.freeserve.co.uk

Commets, or suggestions for future versions of the program:

fts_future_versions@rcwalker.freeserve.co.uk

Any of the above, or anything else:

Robert_Walker_FractalTuneSmithy@rcwalker.freeserve.co.uk

Thanks - I enjoy hearing from you, Robert.

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Installer

The installer for this product was created using Installer VISE from MindVision Software. For more information on Installer VISE, contact:

MindVision Software
7201 North 7th Street
Lincoln, NE 68521-8913

Voice: (402) 477-3269
Fax: (402) 477-1395
E-mail: mindvision@mindvision.com
http://www.mindvision.com

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