Difference between revisions of "WYZTracker"

Revision as of 18:40, 13 May 2010

About

Crossplatform tool written in .NET 2.0 for AY music creation by AugustoRuiz, former ComputerEmuzone Games Studio member, and now part of RetroWorks. The music files can be played with Artaburu's CPCRSlib for Z88DK.

WYZTracker is a pattern-based music editor, being a pattern a sequence of notes and effects. Patterns can have any length (a song can have patterns with different lengths too).

Usage Instructions

To add a pattern, click the "Añadir Patrón" button (looks like a sheet with a + symbol). A new pattern will appear in the pattern list that is located at the left of the tracker.

To delete a pattern, click the "Eliminar Patrón" button (like a sheet with a minus).

To clone a pattern, click the "Clonar Patrón" button (like two sheets together).

To edit notes, click on the pattern viewer (the black and green part of the screen). You can move the current selected note clicking with the mouse or using the arrow keys and Next/Prev Page.

The keyboard acts as some sort of "Virtual Keyboard", where the Z letter is the C note of the current "Base Octave" selected (which is visible on the top of the screen as "Octava Base"). The S key will be C#, the X key is D, the D key is D#, the C key is E... Also, the Q key is the C note of (Base Octave + 1) octave.

If the selection is in the FX channel, all keys work the same way, putting the current FX into the selected note.

Also, you can configure if inserting a note makes the cursor go forward (and how many rows) using the "Incremento Automático" option at the Toolbar. You can use the 0 value to make the cursor stay where it is after inserting a note. Using F4/F5 you can change this value also.

To change the base octave you can use the "Octava Base" combobox, or use F2/F3.

Instrument and FX edition

To edit and create instruments and FX, you must use the upper right controls.

An instrument is a set of volumes (shown as green bars). Loops can be created easily (in spanish it's "Bucles"). To edit them, just left click in the grid shown in the Instrument Editor.
Clicking with the right mouse button you can select whether the instrument current position will also change the current octave (up or down).

The Sawtooth instrument cannot be edited. It's used mainly for bass lines, using the AY envelopes.

FX are a little more complex than instruments. For each FX position, three values can be defined: Volume (green bars), noise frequency (red bars) and note frequency (yellow bars).

Other features

• Import/Export instruments and FX (see the toolbar below the instrument/FX selector),
• Export to MUS files (which are used by WYZ replayer) - this option will also generate an ASM file with the instrument/fx definitions.
  

Additional notes

Currently the user interface is only available in spanish, but there will be localized versions soon.

Downloads

You can download the latest version here.