"SIDPIC V3" "The Music Player that wouldn't Die!" By Kermit R. Woodall - June 1987 Introduction SIDPIC was written for myself and various friends to replace and provide an alternative to SINGALONG and the commercial SIDPlayers like KPLAY. At the request of a friend, who happens to be a KOALAPAD(tm) artist, I added The ability to display HIRES pictures (.PIC) with your music. As the player evolved I added support for song lyric (.WDS) files and MANY other things. New Features Summary Grand Staff replaced by a KEYBOARD display similar to KPLAY and StereoSID. Also displays the letter of the note playing for each voice. Lowercase with color codes in ALL modes. Regular SINGALONG or HIRES! Color allowed in .WDS when used with a PICture. Koalapad pictures no longer cause the lyrics (.WDS) to be blurry. Up to 95 blocks or more of music. Even when used with a PICture. Black and White 32 block format HIRES PICtures supported. CTRL-SHIFT-F3 to scratch unwanted music files. F3 = Play FROM instead of ALL. The F3 (Play From Key) can repeat endlessly with use of SHIFT-LOCK. P to Pause/Freeze during play of music. (also useful for sync'ing up dual computer songs like AXEL-F) F1 switches back and forth between the PICture and the keyboard display. Title Screen As soon as you RUN the SIDPIC you will see the title screen where a very brief explanation is given of how SIDPIC works. Just hit RETURN to have SIDPIC read a directory from the disk of all the SIDPlayer (.MUS) files. All the .MUS filenames will be displayed on the screen. At this point you do not need to worry if one file has words or a picture to go with it. When you select a certain piece of music, SIDPIC will figure out if it is just music or if there are words and/or a picture too. Main Screen To select one music file, just use the cursor keys to move the blinking cursor to the name of the music you want. Hit the "F1" function key to pick that music. If the message "F2 - NEXT PAGE" is displayed at the bottom of the screen this indicates you have more than 51 music files on your disk. To see music files 52 and on, just hit "F2". The next 51 files will be displayed and if there are even more than that you will get the "F2" message again. (A short pause will occur before the 2nd set of music files displays due to SIDPIC's reading past the first set) To select to play ALL of the music files on the screen, just hit the "F3" function key. Starting with the file the cursor is on, all the music from that point on to the last one will be played-along with any words or pictures that go with them. Remember, unlike the earlier SIDPIC, "F3" now plays only from the current location of your cursor. If you want all the music to repeat over and over, just push in the SHIFT-LOCK key while the first song is loading. As long as SHIFT-LOCK is down, the songs will repeat one after another endlessly...or until your power fails. To use the MULTIPLAY feature, move to a song you want played. Use SHIFT-RETURN to just highlight the name of the song in light green. Continue highlighting all songs you want to hear. Once you have selected all the songs you want to play, now hit the "F3" key. SIDPIC will now play only the selected songs, not ALL. To return "F3" to the mode to play ALL songs, just use "F5" to re-read the directory. Once the directory has been reread, then "F3" will select every song. ( It is really the act of highlighting ANY song which switches "F3" to the special mode that only plays the highlighted songs. Rereading the directory simply cancels it. ) If you want a new directory off another disk or the same disk, just change disks then hit the "F5" function key. SIDPIC will then re-read the directory. If you have finished, just hit the "F7" function key and you will return to BASIC. To restart SIDPIC, just type RUN again. Do you have a bunch of music on your disk that is not exactly to your taste? You can quickly scratch them. Just highlight the unwanted songs as if you were going to multiplay them. (Be VERY careful.) Now hold down these THREE keys together: "CTRL-SHIFT-F3". When only these keys are held together, SIDPIC will erase every highlighted song and any .WDS or .PIC's that go with them! Playing Music The first mode is the "Just Plain Music" mode. SIDPIC will display a stylized keyboard with each SID Chip voice shown as a colored note on the keyboard. (to lovers of the three legged Martian dancing girl, my apologies. As you can see, she is now working on three finger harmonies.) The colored keys move around in near perfect sync to the music. The notes can also change their color from the defaults if you use the AUX command in the manner of KPLAY to do so. To stop playing the music hit F7 key to return to the main screen. This will return even if you are using F3 to play all or selected songs. If you only want to pause the music then continue, (like if a telephone call interrupts you) just hit the P key. The music will freeze until you hit another key. If you hit F5 you will return to the menu and the directory of songs will be reread. If you hit F3 you will abort the current song and go to the next song you have selected to play. If you hit F1 and you are using words or pictures with your music, then you will return to the keyboard display while playing the song. Use F1 again, and you can get your picture back. (but only the picture...you cannot get the .WDS back as the music/words sync is lost) The second mode will play any SINGALONG words for you while the music plays too. The SINGALONG words are stored in a file that has the exact same name as the music file, execept that the music file name ends with a ".MUS" and the word file name ends with a ".WDS". Any words file will work just fine with SIDPIC. SIDPIC now uses the lowercase characters that have become popular in SINGALONG and other players. Due to dire threats, I fixed SIDPIC to also allow lowercase! (For further information on SINGALONG word files, I suggest reading Craig Chamberlain's SIDNEWS files that deal with them.) The third playing mode, supported by SIDPIC, is the display of HIRES pictures while playing music. To make a picture file you will need to start with a HIRES picture made by KOALAPAD, Doodle or a plain 32 block HIRES (no color) picture or convert your picture to any one of these formats using a conversion utility program. SIDPIC can ONLY use KOALA, Doodle or B/W type picture formats for it's display. Any other format will be displayed improperly...probably as pure garbage. Once you have a HIRES picture that is in an appropriate format, rename the file containing the picture to have the same name as the music file, except use ".PIC" instead of ".MUS". This follows the same type of standard in names set up by the word files. Remember, instead of a ".MUS" ending to the name use a ".PIC" ending. The ".PIC" tells SIDPIC that the file is a picture. SIDPIC knows what to do with it after that. There has been one limitation of using .PICs with your music in the past. The .MUS file could not be any longer than 35-37 blocks when used with a PICture. This is NO LONGER TRUE! Due to a much more intelligent method of loading the pictures, you can have up to 95 or more blocks of music with your picture. (this is the FULL amount of memory available even without the picture.) You can also use your .MUS with .WDS AND .PICs! Just leave the two lines at the bottom for your words to appear on, and name all THREE files, .MUS .WDS .PIC, to have the same prefix as each other and SIDPIC will figure out the rest. You can use B/W, Doodle or Koala pictures. Some notes: when starting your .MUS, put a 1/2 note rest in the music to give SIDPIC time to display your song's title. When using the F1 key to switch to the keyboard display, remember that the .WDS cannot be reactived...only the picture. If you own the Commodore 1350/1 MOUSE, you are encouraged to use this handy little critter when selecting a song or two to play, (joystick may be substituted). Just move the mouse around to move the cursor onscreen. To select & play a song hit the fire button. When playing a song, the fire button will take you to the keyboard display. Any other mouse movement will abort the song. Known bug warning: If you have a line in your lyrics (.WDS) file that has enough color codes to create a total character count greater than 38 characters, then you run the risk of having part of the end of the line "chopped off". The rule is, ONLY 38 characters to any line of text! Tip: Many people are using some sort of ADDTEXT type program to add color and graphics to the credit block that appears at the bottom of the keyboard and lyrics display. You can have longer lines by putting up to three cursor right codes (Decimal 157) at the start of the credit lines. If you have further questions about how to use SIDPIC-first RE-READ this documentation. Then if you still do not understand, just send me EMAIL on QuantumLink ( CURVE ) or on PeopleLink ( Kermit ). I don't PROMISE to reply, but I usually will! - Kermit Woodall