Boot up OctaMED V4 from floppy disk or hard disk.
You should then be presented with the “play” screen with 4 columns of numbers and above options to play stop etc at the top. These are actually 2 screens in effect. You should notice that the top right corner option is also highlighted showing 4 rows of 3 sliver lines on a black background. That’s your tracker screen, and each of the 4 columns bellow the play screen is a mono audio track.
Now we are going to load up a sample of your choice from a PD [public domain] disk or from a disk of samples you may have made yourself or perhaps got on an old cover disk. Click “files” and providing you have your samples disk in the drive and have removed Octamed the disk it should list all the files and directories on that disk. If it doesn’t then click “DF0:” to the left in the list.
Select your sample from the list of files on the disk. For example a kick drum. When you have selected your sample, it’s should appear in the “File:” field. Now click “Load Instr” which is Load Instrument. Make sure you don’t click “Load Song” by mistake, as that’s for loading a whole tracker tune.
You should notice after you’ve loaded the sample, that it’s name has appeared next to “01” just below and to the right of the “File” field. That’s the space in Octamed's memory that it will hold that sample.
To load another sample, lets call it a hi-hat. Left Click on the “01” it should turn over to “02” another space to load your sample. Click “Load Instr” again and that’s your second sample loaded into Octamed’s memory. If you’ve clicked too many times, don’t worry, just Right Click on the numbers until it’s back to what you want.
Now return to the “Play” screen by clicking on the “Play” button. You should notice a red rectangle around 3 dashes “---” those dashes are where a musical note will appear when we go into editing mode.
To enter editing mode press “esc” and “~” they toggle editing mode and spacing on/off respectively. You can also Left Click them to do the same.
For this tutorial I’ll be pressing “i” which should produce a beat in note “C-3” then push down on the cursor key followed by “i” again them down again. Keep doing this until you have filled the whole block.
It should look like this all the way down...
000 C-3 10000
001 --- 00000
002 --- 00000
003 --- 00000
004 C-3 10000
...to...
056 C-3 10000
057 --- 00000
058 --- 00000
059 --- 00000
060 C-3 10000
061 --- 00000
062 --- 00000
063 --- 00000
I believe the number refers to the octave, so if you hit “q” which would make “C-2” appear instead, you’d get a deeper, longer sustained kick which doesn’t sound so punchy.
Anyway turn off editing mode and spacing with the mouse or buttons mentioned previously. Left Click the “Play Song” button and you should be greeted with the sound of a basic 4/4 kick pattern. To start and stop a track you can also press “Amiga+Space” to start and just “Space” to stop it.
Next we are going to add a “hi-hat” between the “kick drum” beats. To do this enter edit and spacing mode via mouse or keyboard. Be sure you are at the top of this track and block by pressing “F6” the red cursor should be back where it started.
Press the “down” cursor and press “i” and “down” and “i” continue to do so until you have filled all of the spaces between the kick beat, as illustrated bellow.
000 C-3 10000 NB: the 1 before the 4 zeros
001 --- 00000 is the samples number. So
002 C-3 20000 10000 tells you sample 1 is
003 --- 00000 being played, and 20000 is
004 C-3 10000 sample 2 being played. So
005 --- 00000 it’s the kick and the hi-hat.
006 C-3 20000
007 --- 00000
...to...
056 C-3 10000
057 --- 00000
058 C-3 20000
059 --- 00000
060 C-3 10000
061 --- 00000
062 C-3 20000
063 --- 00000
Exit edit and spacing mode and play it back again. You should be greeted by the sound of a classic pounding disco beat.
You might want to start work on your next track in the block now. So stop the beat with “Space” or mouse. Hit “F6” to get back to the start again. Now press the “Right” cursor button until it the red rectangle is in the next track and has 3 dashes “---” inside it again.
Go back to the “File” screen by clicking on the file button respective button. Now select a “Bass” sample from the file requester. Make sure Octamed’s sample memory is on “03” remember that’s the number bellow and to the right of the “File” field.
Now click “Play” enter editing and spacing modes. Now press “q” “i” “q” “i” until you’ve got the same as bellow.
000 C-2 30000
001 --- 00000
002 C-3 30000
003 --- 00000
004 C-2 30000
005 --- 00000
006 C-3 30000
007 --- 00000
...to...
056 C-2 30000
057 --- 00000
058 C-3 30000
059 --- 00000
060 C-2 30000
061 --- 00000
062 C-3 30000
063 --- 00000
Turn off editing and spacing modes and press “Amiga+Space” or Left Click “Play Song” and enjoy an ear splitting tune. :-)
Hope this is of some help to anyone new to OctaMED.
