OctaMED tutorials

[Wilse]

@motorolin:

I thought Amiga University had some tutorials on-line but I can't seem to access the site to check.

as someone already mentioned, there were tutorials in AF, issues 64-69. Don't know if you'd be able to find these on-line somewhere?

[Wilse]

@motorolin:

Have you been able to load any samples in? (from memory Instrument>Load)
Once you load a sample in, the qwerty keyboard represents a piano-type keyboard. As long as Edit is ticked you should be able to move the cursor to the first blank space (it may already be there) and punch in a note.
Try punching in a kick drum every four lines on channel one, then hit 'play block', and you'll begin to get an idea of how it works.

Truly wonderful piece of software in my opinion.

-EDIT-
If you don't have any samples yet, go here:
http://www.octamed.co.uk/
Click the amiga link, then '8-bit samples' on the left hand side of the page. ;-)

[Wilse]

As far as effects are concerned, I still don't use that many.
The list of five(?) zeros after the note is where you put control/effects commands. For example, "C" is volume. Volume levels are 0-64, so if you have:
10C32
then you are playing instrument 1 at half volume.
-EDIT-
10000 would play instrument one at default, full volume.
-EDIT-

I don't know if that's any use to you but I'd recommend concentrating on learning how to build up a basic song first, then worry about effects later.

Just my opinion of course.
:pint:

[Wilse]

I personally prefer OctaMED 5 (I do have OSS on disk somewhere with no manuals), and always use the score sheets to compose music. It usually takes me about 2 hours to compose a decent (1 min 30 secs) piece of music.

That's a part of the programme I've never used.

[Wilse]

Karlos wrote:

IMHO, the best way to get used to OctaMED is to load a few existing modules and seeing how the patterns build the music up. I find it's better to deconstruct an existing thing to learn about it than attempt to construct something I have no idea how to implement from scratch ;-)

Very good advice. I've done just that several times myself. Good for learning little tricks, etc.