This is the BushTracker 2.0 Readme-file. This program is completely free, use it as you wish AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! Commersial use is strongly encouraged. If you like this program -spread it! Give it to your friends, put it on the net, pack it with other stuff and re-release it. Just don't change anything, this package is to be spread as-is or not at all. All the legal stuff is as usual, I don't take any responsibility what-so-ever. Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Creative Labs, E-MU, SoundBlaster, AWE, Live!, Pentium are all Registered Trademarks of their respective owners. 1 How to get it running. * Just run the installationfile. * Make sure your AWE/SB32 is properly installed. You must have the AWEMAN32.DLL file installed, otherwise the program won't run. If you don't own an AWE card you have to install this file yourself, it may be found on the internet. When the program is started, click the Settings tab and set the correct MIDIOUT-Device in the combobox. This should be AWE MIDI-OUT or AWE MIDI SYNTH. Changing this during play may make your music sound weird... * Files are associated with the BushTracker to enable autoload-on-startup-by-double-click (you know...) and the famous drag-and-drop procedure. You may uninstall the program by choosing Add/Remove programs in Control Panel. All changes to the registry made by the installer will be deleted. 2 Things that are good to know * Check out the popupmenus, they contain most of the stuff you can do. * This program features the old Tracker-Favourite: "Keyb-Jazzing"! This means that you can play your instruments just by jazzing around on your keyboard. I own no midi-keyb, so don't expect any support for that kind of luxuary. * To get to edit patterns, hit the key below Esc and/or to the left of 1 or click the button called Edit ON/OFF. * To put out effects, hit Enter or Return. * Song Creation features Drag-and-Drop, drag from the list with patterns and drop on the grid surface to the left of the patternlistbox. * Pressing Shift while clicking Play, Play Loop and Play Pattern will rewind before playback begins. * Try things to figure out how they work. The Make Advanced FX Track for example takes a while to explain but is not too hard to understand, so I'll leave it to you to figure it out. * In the Make Advanced FX Track a Frequency setting of 0 means that the effect will occur when a note occurs in the active track. * The Make Advanced FX Track is a tool to help you create some nice effects that can be hard or time-demanding to do "by hand". * Treat as sample means that the previous note will NOT be turned off, useful when you for example want to create echo effects on samples. The sample will be killed with a note off event. * Note off is the <, > and | button, to the right of left Shift. * BPM is as usual, RPB is "rows per beat". * Double-click the SF2-list to load a file, single-click the intrument list to choose instrument. * Since this file is a poor excuse for a help file users that don't consider themselves experienced might want to ask a friend or something to teach them how to track or just explore the program by themselves until a proper help file or tutorial is available. If you feel like writing your own tutorial, just go ahead! I'll appreciate it and if I think it's good enough I'll include it in this package. * All keyboard references are on the Swedish keyboard layout, they may vary from yours -if they do, please try until you find the correct key because it is out there. * Lock velocity means that if you insert a new note over an old one the new will have the same velocity setting as the old one. * Velocity is the speed with wich you hit your keys, like on a piano -pressing the keys softly will give a lower volume, while hitting them as hard as you can will give pretty much power. Velocity is simply the individual volume of each note, a way to vary and "smoothen-up" your music. * "+" and "-" increases and decreases the step length. * "*" and "/" changes octave up and down. * C of the choosen octave will be found on Q or the button next to tab. * You may save patterns for use with different songs. There are a few sample patterns enclosed in this package, they can be found in the Patterns directory. * Don't have more than one track with notes in each pattern, you can but it may give you trouble when turning off notes. Use parallell patterns instead. The reason why you can have more than one track in each pattern is that it allows you to add effects. * The "Join files in song..." option in the files menu takes the current song file and all used sf2's or sbk's and puts them in a directory that the user may name. Then you may pack it or what ever, this utility is for easier shipping. If you unpack someone elses song you DO NOT have to manually move the sf2's or sbk's to your specified Sf2/Sbk dir, the BushTracker 2.0 looks for them where it found the song automatically. 3 Troubleshooting - I don't seem to hear anything. + Try changing Output device in the settings page, this will take effect at once. + Make sure your AWE/SB32 is properly installed. + Check your volume settings. + Make sure you have selected an SF2 file and an instrument from it to play with. - I don't find any songs anywhere. + There are two song included in this package, they will probably be found somewhere near the Btrack2.exe. And YES! the example files sucks, but I can't make better ones. Feel free to change them in any way you like! + You can set your preferred songdir in the settings page. - How do I Record my songs? + Use your favourite wav-recording program and hit it! 4 Contact If you want to contact me, send me bugreports, songs, ideas of improvements or just say hello or whatever I maay be reached at the following e-mail: Gordon_Stryph@hotmail.com 5 Last minute remarks The BushTracker 2.0 has been created on a Pentium 200 MHz PC with 32 Megs of RAM running Windows 95 (and later) Windows 98 with a FAT 32 disk equipped with an AWE64 with 12 Megs of DRAM. It has been succesfully tested on a Pentium 75 MHz PC running Windows 98 and FAT 32 with the very same soundcard and a Pentium 233 MHz PC running Windows 98 and FAT 16 equipped with a SoundBlaster 32 card with 4 Megs of DRAM on it. Recording works fine on all systems as yet. Sometimes the program does some weird stuff, usually you can fix it by just restarting the BushTracker 2.0. If the program keeps giving you trouble, get yourself a new copy. The timing is not too good, so don't load fat programs while recording your songs since it may result in recordings with lousy timing. To increase performance you may check out the settingspage under Play: Checking those checkboxes increases performance a bit. This is a beta version, in the future there will be a complete help file and hopefully a lot more features and less bugs. Remember that Sf2-files may be protected with copyrights! I cannot be held responsible for any copyright violations! Ihave joined the Swedish Marinecore so future upgrades may not be available for a while yet. Updates may occur irregularly since my codingtime is extremely limited. When I return I will try to adapt the BushTracker 2.0 to the SoundBlaster Live! card, making it the BushTracker 3.0 Until then: Keep Tracking! ...or as we say in Swedish: Det görs alldeles för mycket musik, fy fan!