.Melody Maestro FAQ

What is Melody Maestro?
How is it different from SuperJAM?
Why Use Melody Maestro?
How do I install Melody Maestro?
How do I install the extra Styles?
What do they mean by the "Abracadabra" button?
I can't record anything!
How do I open the Volume Control?

What is Melody Maestro?

Melody Maestro was intended as an advanced musical toy and educational tool. It lacks much of the power and flexibility of SuperJAM! but makes up for it with step-by-step onscreen instructions and the ability to convert a melody, sung into a PC microphone, to MIDI data. It also allows you to print your music, with the included Notation Station software.

How is it different from SuperJAM?

The most obvious difference is that everything is laid out in one large window, rather than broken down into a Band window, a Keyboard window, etc. You build your song one Section at a time, and can change many of the options for each Section while doing so. The program gives you complete instructions along the way.

As the name of the program implies, it also gives you more extensive automatic help with creating a melody for each Section. You can input it with a MIDI instrument, draw it with the mouse, have the program create one randomly... or sing it into your PC microphone. You can then tweak it in a number of ways.

The most profound difference is that almost all of your choices affect an entire Section, rather than getting down to the measure-beat-note level of SJam. This makes it great for ideas, useful for projects that need brief pieces of original music (such as films, presentations, kiosks, answering machine tapes, etc.), and lousy for serious musical arrangement. You can create a new (and often bizarre) song fairly quickly, but you can't do much more than influence the creation and hope for the best.

Fortunately, a Melody Maestro song can easily be loaded into SuperJAM! So you can use the two programs together to create a complex project.

Why use Melody Maestro?

Because it's easy, and it's fun. Even experienced musicians can appreciate the ability to hum their melodies into the computer. Kids love goofing around with new music, and making it as crazy as they want. And it's often easier to sing a melody into Melody Maestro and then load the song into SuperJAM! than it is to enter the melody into SJam.

How do I install Melody Maestro?

Installation is simple, but for the benefit of those unfamiliar with .ZIP archives I'll go through it step by step.

1. Make sure you have an archiving utility (these instructions use WinZip).

2. In WinZip, click on the Open icon. Use the requester to select the MMaestro.ZIP archive, in whatever directory you've downloaded it to.

3. Click on the Extract icon. This will take you to the extraction screen.

4. In the field labeled "Extract to:", enter c:\temp\mm. Make sure that "All Files" and "Use Folder Names" are checked.

5. Click on the Extract button. This will unZip the archive into a folder called "mm" in the "temp" folder on your c: drive.

6. Close WinZip.

7. Select Run from the Start menu. Enter c:\temp\mm\Setup.exe and Run it. This will begin the installation. The installer will ask for your name (required) and the name of your company (optional).

8. When the installation is complete, Select Melody Maestro 2.0 from the Start menu. When you first run the program, the Auto-Configure system will allow you to select which MIDI device you'd like to hear, and also make sure your drums are on the correct channel.

How do I install the extra Styles?

Each of the following Style Collection (which can all be found on the Download page) are self-executing installation files. Just Run them from the Start Menu, and they will install themselves (assuming you installed Melody Maestro in the default directory).

Blues

Barroom Blues, Boogie II, Diddly, Howlin' Wolf, Memphis Blue, RiffRock, Blue Rain, Texas Swing, Strummin', Midnight Train

Classical

20th Century Chorale, Bach, Beethoven, DeBussy, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Minimalist, Rachmaninoff, Rameau, Stravinsky

Country

Backbeat, Bluegrass, Country Folk, Country Pop, Country Rock, Country Swing, Last Dance, Rockabilly, Two-Step, Workin' Man

Cutting Edge

Brazilian Pop, FunkJungle, FunkSeven, Funky 7/4, Fusion, Fusionist, Latin Five, New Age II, Punkarama, ReggaeRock

Dance Mix

Chill, ClubMix, Disco, Fever, FunkEasy, Groovitis, HipHep, PowerDance, ShuffleMix, Strut

Jazz

Basie, Big Band, Blue Groove, Blue Shuffle, Jazz Ballad, Jazz Folk, Jazz Gospel, Latin II, Latin Funk 3/4, Ragtime

Movie Soundtrack

Adventure, Americana, Chase, HiJinks, Horrific, Love Theme, Nobility, Otherworld, Sir Real, Suspense

Pop/Rock

FunkMellow, Fusak, Go-Go, Gospel Waltz, PopMellow, R&B, Rock IV, Rockapeggio, SuffleEasy, Southern Rock

World Music

Appalachia, Argentina, Carribean, China, Eastern Europe, Gypsy, India, Italy, Mexico

What in the heck do they mean by the "Abracadabra" button?

The button with the picture of a rabbit in a hat. After all, the program does write music "like magic".

I can't record anything!

Ah, the joys of configuring a PC microphone. What should be an easy and straightforward task is sometimes like trying to stack billiard balls. Melody Maestro helps by providing a Setup Microphone screen, which you can access from the Step 2: Add A Melody screen. That screen has a level meter on it, the block of four green bars (with one red and one yellow) in the upper right, which show how much signal you're getting from the microphone.

If you're not getting any signal at all on the level meter, even if you're going "PTOO! PTOO!" with your lips right up against the microphone, well, something's wrong... besides your going "PTOO! PTOO!", I mean. Fortunately, there are a few tips to help you through.

1. First -- and please don't be insulted when I say this -- make sure that the microphone is plugged in, if necessary turned on, and if necessary has fresh batteries.

2. Try the microphone again. If the microphone seems to be physically ready, but you're still not getting any signal, then perhaps the system isn't set up to record. To fix that, we need the single most important system tool for musicians, the Volume Control, which (a) controls every the input and output level of every audio device in your system, and (b) does so dynamically -- that is, you can have it running with other programs, and the changes will be made instantly, so you can make sure what you're doing works. The upshot of which is that, when you have problems recording in Melody Maestro, you can keep the program open and test it to make sure everything works, rather than close MM, adjust the Volume Control, open MM again, see if it works, etc.

3. Open the Volume Control. (If you don't know how, see below.) It should have several top-to-bottom volume sliders labeled "Volume Control Balance", "Wavetable Balance", "Wave Out Balance", etc. (The "Balance", by the way, is not actually part of the name. It refers to the panning control -- the little shield-shaped slider between the two speakers, just below the word "Balance" -- which lets you set precisely [well, okay, not precisely] where in the stereo field that sound is. Never move this from the center position in this utility, unless (seriously) you have a hearing loss in one ear. The Balance control changes the panning for everything in the system using that device, and I promise you, you will only cause yourself a whole lot of annoyance later, as you try to compensate for it in every single application you own that uses sound.)

4. Click on the Options menu, and select Properties.

5. In the "Adjust volume for" section, choose Recording.

6. In the "Show the following volume controls:" section, make sure that at least the following three boxes are checked: Microphone, CD-ROM, and StereoMixer Input (this might be called What You Hear). This allows you to record input from your external PC microphone, a music CD playing in your computer, and the computer's internal sound card. If you want to select other inputs, such as Line-In (refering to the "Line In" jack on your sound card), go for it.

7. Click OK.

8. Note that the name of the Window has changed from Volume Control to Recording Control. Note also that you've probably got a slightly different list of top-to-bottom sliders, such as "Microphone", "Line-In", and "StereoMixer". Each one has a "Select" box at the bottom. If it's not already checked, click on the "Select" box for "Microphone" to put a check mark in it.

9. Now go back to Melody Maestro, and speak in a normal voice with your mouth a few inches away from the microphone. Does the level meter show some signal? If so, is it going all the way up to the yellow and red bars, or just the bottom one or two green ones? If you're getting the yellow and red, you're peaking the system, and you're all set.

10. If, on the other hand, you're not getting any signal, or you're just getting one or two green bars, first do the "PTOO! PTOO!" thing, close up to the microphone, to make sure that the microphone is indeed working. If you don't get the yellow and red bars now, you've got a problem with the microphone itself. Fortunately, replacement PC microphones are dirt cheap -- more than five or ten bucks and you are getting seriously overcharged, and you don't need a better microphone than that for this. Go buy a new microphone and start over.

11. If you do get the yellow and red bars, go back to the Volume Control program, and click the Advanced button in the Microphone section. This gives you access to the tone controls (which you may not be able to change, depending on your sound card), and Other Controls, which has one box we're really interested in right now -- the Gain control, which boosts the incoming signal from the microphone. Click on the "1 Mic Gain (+20 dB)" box to put a check mark in it, then click Close.

12. Go back to Step 9 and test the microphone again. Everything should be working fine now.

How do I open the Volume Control?

You can open the Volume Control from within Melody Maestro by clicking on the Mixer button (or selecting Options > Mixer Setup from the menu) in the Setup Microphone screen. In the "Program" field, put the name and path of your mixing program; the usual location for the system Volume Control is c:\ windows \ sndvol32.exe.

You can also open the Volume Control by double-clicking the little icon in the Taskbar that looks like the cone of a speaker. If you don't see it there, you can run it from the Accessories > Entertainment > Volume Control section of the Start Menu, but usually you'll want it more accessible than that. Here's how to set that up:

• Open your Control Panel (either right-click on the My Computer icon, select Open, and then double-click on the Control Panel Icon, or select Settings > Control Panel from the Start Menu).

• Double-click on the icon labeled Multimedia. The tab labeled Audio should be active, but if not, click on it to bring it to the front.

• Make sure the box labeled "Show volume control on the taskbar" is checked.

• Click OK.

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