Introduction to Melodia Table Sequencer

Melodia/TS is one of a family of algorithmic composer programs
that share nearly identical MIDI voice interfaces but each has
a different method of generating the notes.

Melodia/TS uses a single type of note generator, called a
Table Sequencer.  There are 12 of them and each one is
identical so when you learn one, you learn them all.

This "getting started" overview assumes you are using a VGA
display and have selected 50 line Zoom mode from the menu at
the bottom right of the screen.  The display should show the
Play page with 16 (4 groups of 4) voice lines on the top half
of the screen, and the Compose page with 12 (3 groups of 4)
Table Sequencer lines on the bottom half of the screen.

Keep in mind that Melodia is self documenting.  Every active
area on the screen has a built in help line that is printed at
the bottom of the screen when you press the right mouse
button. The rule is simple: click the right mouse button to
see what an area does, click the left button to do it.

You can hold the right button down and move the mouse about
the screen to get a quick scan of what all the controls in the
area do.

When you first start TS the first 4 voice lines are active,
and you should immediately get sound.  You can change the
volume of the sound by clicking on the Fade lines toward the
upper right of the screen, and sliding the mouse left to
decrease volume or right to increase.

A quick way to turn sound on and off is to click on the green
"M" on the far left of the screen just above the column of
blue and red squares. This switches between Mute and Solo.  At
this point there is no difference between the two except that
Solo has all voices turned off. Later, you will use Mute to
set the voices on and off as part of your composition, and use
Solo to just test individual voices.  In either mode, the
squares turn the voice on and off, with red indicating the
voice is on, and blue that it is off.

When the voices are on, there will be a red flash similar to a
blinking LED in the column between "Clk" and "Kb." Notice that
this follows the sound produced by the voice line it is in.

The Program Change input, which changes your synth's
instrument selection, is the second column of numbers on the
left of the screen, labeled "Pc" and initially set to all
white 00's.  On most synths, program 00 (or 01 if numbered
from 1) is a piano and you are probably hearing a 4 line piano
pattern at this stage.  Try changing these numbers to get
different instruments.

Note that if you dial left past zero the readout changes from
white to green and displays characters instead of numbers.
This is how you make patch connections to the Table Sequencer
outputs.  The first, lower case part of the label is the
output column of the Table Sequencer, and the upper case part
is the Table Sequencer Line.  

For example the Kb (Keyboard) column is already connected to
the pitch outputs of the Table Sequencer.  The first voice is
connected to the pitch output of the first line, so it reads
"pA." The first line of the Table sequencer is A (magenta
label on the left of the bottom half of the screen), and the
pitch output column is labeled "Kbp" with the "p" highlighted
in light magenta.

Back to the Play area in the top half of the screen, just to
the right of the Pc column is the Transpose column, "Tsp."
This value is added to the Keyboard input before going out to
MIDI. Try changing one of these and listen for the sound
pattern of that voice line to change in pitch.

Near the bottom of the screen there should be a bouncing
"ball" inside a gray rectangle.  In the default setting the
first four voice lines are triggered by the ball hitting the
four sides of this Box Clock.  Before proceeding be sure these
first four voices are generating sound (Mute buttons red, Fade
controls set to a comfortable listening level).

The Box Clock that is active is labeled "A" in its upper left
corner. Box Clocks are activated by clicking on the column of
letters to the far right of the screen.  White indicates
active, gray is inactive. Each clock has 4 outputs, one for
each side. The outputs are assigned letter names starting with
the label character. The "A" clock has outputs A=left side,
B=top, C=right side, D=bottom; the "E" clock's outputs are
E=left, F=top, G=right, H=bottom.  And so on.

Try changing the A clock's dimensions by clicking on the green
square on the lower right corner, and dragging it around.  You
should hear a change in the rhythm pattern.  You can change
the speed of the ball by changing the number in the lower left
(click and drag the mouse left/right).  The box can be
positioned anywhere in the Box Clock area by clicking on the
label letter and dragging to a new position. 

The Table Sequencers are the 12 (3 groups of 4) lines just
above the Box Clocks.  The first four of these should be
active, responding to the four outputs of the "A" box clock.

There is a detailed description of the Table Sequencers in the
file "MANUAL.TXT" and it would be helpful to read it at some
point.  For now here is a brief overview:

   Each Table Sequencer line is actually two sequencers linked
   together so that an outer loop sequencer is stepped by a
   faster running inner loop sequencer.

   The inner loop sequencer, called the Pitch Sequencer, is
   stepped directly by the Box Clock outputs, which is
   selected in the column labeled "CdRp," which stands for
   Clock, Direction, Repeat count.

   The outer loop sequencer, called the Control Sequencer, is
   stepped by the Pitch Sequencer, which bumps the Control
   Sequencer when it has run through its pattern some number
   of times, as set by the Repeat input.  You can see this
   happening by watching the gray repeat count count down.
   When it finishes with the 0th repeat, it will trigger the
   Control Sequencer, which will show a new Stage number
   (column of numbers on the left between angle brackets), and
   new values will be loaded into all the parameters (this is
   hard to tell in the default setup because many of the
   parameters are all set alike). 

The inner loop sequencer is called the Pitch Sequencer because
its output is usually connected to the voice Kb input where it
controls the voice's pitch.  

This pitch output can be seen moving in the light blue column
of the Table Sequencer area labeled "Kbp" which stands for
Keyboard Pitch. Switch between note and value readout by
clicking on the output. Pitch ranges go from C/0 (C of MIDI
octave 0) to G/X (G of MIDI octave 10).  The MIDI numeric
value equivalents are 0 to 127.

The large blue area of dots, labeled with gray "0123..." shows
the step patterns of the Pitch Sequencer as it is running.
The blue squares represent the sequence within the Pitch Table
that is being read, and the red square shows the current value
being read.

The Pitch Table itself is simply a table of pitch values that
is 12 lines long and 36 columns wide.  You can read and edit
this table with a text editor if you like but this isn't
necessary. See the manual file for details.

Just to the left of the blue dots area there is a column of
magenta dots.  These stop the Pitch Sequencer from sequencing
so you can make changes to it.  The topmost dot, just to the
left of the gray numbers, stops all 12 sequencers at once.
Try clicking on this, then click on "Halt" in the upper left
corner of the screen.  Halt will highlight and all the
sequencers and clocks will reset.  Click again on Halt to
release it, but leave the magenta dot set to keep the
sequencers still.

With the sequencer stopped, you can now change the sequence
pattern and/or change the pitch values in the Pitch Table.  To
change the pattern, click on the blue dot area outside of the
row of squares, then move the mouse left or right to adjust
the pattern.  To change a pitch value in the Pitch Table,
click inside the blue squares.  The mouse cursor will be
replaced by the red locator square, which you can move left or
right within the bounds set by the blue squares. This locates
the pitch value in the pitch table; to change the pitch just
dial the new value into the "No" (Note) column.

The column of 3 digit numbers under the label "Stage" and
between blue angle brackets is the outer loop Control
Sequencer stage.  There are 256 steps, 0-255.  The actual
sequence range can be set individually for each line by
dialing to the last step desired in the sequence and then
clicking on the magenta label on the left edge of the screen,
which sets that step as the end of the sequence.

The five columns of numbers on the right, just after the light
blue column of Kbp outputs, are general purpose control
outputs that can be changed at each Control Sequencer stage.
These are not used in the default setup, but they should be
used as part of any music composition because these are what
will give expression to your sound patterns.  Typically you
would connect them to control inputs such as Velocity or
Modulation, in the voice lines.

The first three of these have an extra digit, colored cyan
(light blue), which is the slew value.  If this is anything
other than 0, the output gradually slews to the value set.
This is used to make gradual rather than abrupt control
changes.

Once you have a set of patterns going that you like, the next
step is to put them together into a full composition.  This is
done with the Page Sequencer, the long blue horizontal line at
the top of the screen.  You can change pages manually by
sliding on the number indicator on the slider line; when a
composition is running the pages are changed according to the
measure count.

Briefly (the details are in MANUAL.TXT), the best way to
develop a composition with Melodia is to set the M= value to
however many measures you want the current page to play.  Then
go to the next page of the Page Sequencer, and click on "Prev"
to copy the previous page to the current page.  Make whatever
modifications you like to the patterns, then go to the next
page, and repeat the process.

At any time you can click on "Strt" at the top left of the
screen to play through the pages, up to a page that has
M=Stop.

As you work with Melodia, don't forget that each active
control has online documentation.  You only have to place the
mouse cursor on it and click right instead of left.

To exit the program, press the ESC key or click on the File
menu on the lower right of the screen, then select Exit.  You
will be asked if you want to Save or Discard your work.  Click
on your choice or press S(ave) or D(iscard).

If you loose sound in your DEFAULT file, simply erase it from
the File menu and exit Melodia.  The next time you run the
program, there will be a fresh DEFAULT.  If you prefer to have
DEFAULT as an empty workspace, erase it as above then
immediately click on SAVE.

[end]