instructions for the jch-editor v2.53

Everything found out and tested by antitrack / legend.
explanation: (*) means only in trackedit, this function is not available when editing a block. (^) means only in blockedit

shift+f... finetuning (?)
shift+a... insert buffer into tracks (*)
shift+z... insert blocks into buffer (*)
shift+d... increase speed of music
shift+s... decrease speed of music (0-9)
=... goto top of music (home)
clr... goto top of music and into blockedit, if not already there
<-... speed up tine while playing it
f6... remove block (in trackedit)
or remove note (in blockedit)
ins... insert block (in trackedit)
or insert note and increase size of block

£... mark the actual area as where to start playing when you press F1.
v... toggle cursor control (cursor will move on after keypress)
C=... toggle keyboard status. (explained later on)
z... goto sound edit (*)
x... goto glide list edit (*)
shift+x... goto main menu (*)
shift+c... clear all (*)
shift+.... copy sequence
shift+i... copy sequence into cursor-sequence
shift+return... enter blockedit (in track) and make block
or increase block size by $10 (when in blockedit)
ctrl+1/2/3... toggle voice 1/2/3 on/off

/... pop up window with wave/pulse/filter edit
l... wave/arpeggio edit (only after popping up the window
:... pulse parameter edit (only after popping up the window
;... filter parameter edit (only after popping up the window

F1... play tune from the (real) start
F2... play actual voice
F3... play tune from mark!
F4... stop playing
F5... toggle between blockedit / trackedit
F6... increase current block size
F8... decrease octave
F7... increase octave

The number keys 1234567890+-£ and the keys qwertyuiop@*^ will act as a keyboard.

in the blockedit

on the left side there is always:
i00 - i1f ... instrument 00-1f
s00 - s3f ... glide parameter 00-3f
*** ... continue note (legato)
On the right side there is always the note itself (c-0 up to b-7) which must be entered by choosing the correct octave with f7/f8, then by using the first two rows of the keyboard.
Or there may be a +++, which you can get by pressing shift+space

the sounds

When you press z you are into the sound edit. You can edit up to $1f sounds, each sound taking 8 bytes.

byte 1   attack / decay
     2   sustain / release
     3   vibrato speed
     4   vibrato control
     5   fx: $01 ... filter
             $02 ... filter ?
             $04 ... filter ?
             $08 ... ???
             $10 ... drumeffect
             $20 ... ???
             õ40 ... ???
             $80 ... ???
     6   pointer to filter parameters
     7   pointer to pulse parameters
     8   pointer to waveform parameters
the parameters

waveform parameters:
Press / to pop up the window then press l to get there. On the left side is always the transpose value, on the right side there is the waveform byte. Loop the waveform with a $7f byte on the left side and a byte where to loop it on the right side. e.g.
00 00-41 waveform $41, transpose 00
01 0c-410c
02 18-4118
03 7f-00 loop to $00

pulse and filter parameters

all pulse and filter parameters are four bytes long ! e.g. pulse: 05 1e c5 e3

05: size of amplitude
1e: speed of amplitude
c : way of counting: up, then down
                     only up
                     only down ...
5 : amplitude
e3: pulse startvalue $03e0 in this case (nibbles vice versa)

filter

even more complicated, try them out! if you don't want them use $0f $00 $09 $01 as the first 4 bytes there.

trackedit

In the left corner of each voice, there is the display of the track, all track numbers are displayed in white while everything else (e.g. in blockedit or in soundedit) is displayed in grey color.
Trackedit displays always a 2-byte number, the first byte is transpose, the second is the number of the block.
You can use quite a lot of blocks (00-7f). transpose $80 means no transpose at all, $8c means one octave higher etc. End your tune with $ff00 (transpose $ff block $00).
Blocks, who have not been edited yet, are displayed as a single line, whereupon already entered blocks are fully shown on the screen. That means you must first enter something like 8000, 8001, 8002 for the 3 voices in the trackedit, then you must go to those lines and press shift+return. the standard block size is $10 bytes, but you can increase or decrease with ins or F6 or with shift+return, which increases the blocksize by $10 bytes.
Also, you can insert new blocks or delete some with the same keys in the trackedit.

I know that the jch editor looks confusing in the beginning, but once you are used to it you will really like it. Compared to e.g. "future composer", the nice thing is, that you do not have to enter something like "dur.$0c" and count the number of notes later, because in the jch-editor, each notes are being shown side by side, you never have to count "dur.xx" or "how many notes are in this damned block?" or "shit, i must have forgot a note in this block, it is stopping too early" or any of those problems again. If a block is too long or too short, you see it immiediately on the screen, thats the nice thing about it.

The only problem is to make your own sounds (drums etc.) but they can be ripped from already existing pieces of music very easily.
Take note that every tune takes 147 blocks on the disk, because good old jch was too stupid to enter a little equal char packer / decruncher when saving or loading. (nasty!) however I will insert that soon.
Also take note that the jch packer is not around yet. It is a little bit difficult to pack those songs, especially several of them into one file, but I will try my best to make a decent cruncher soon. Also, the sound-parameters deserve more investigation, especially filterparameters and fx-byte. But you may expect these problems to be solved rather soon!

to study the sounds

The f2 key is very useful in order to try and study your (or other people's) sounds.

have fun alex!


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