Window 40

=  Drone =

Add drone
Adds a drone to accompany any notes played in Tune Smithy

====

Add a drone and set how long it continues after the note you play stops

Continue to play in pauses for
This lets the drone continue after the note off for a while to give continuity...

The idea here is that when you release a note, the drone doesn't just stop immediately, but keeps going for a little while. Then if you continue to play, at the next note, maybe it won't need to be resounded.

Used when you want the drone to sound continuously all the time while you play, but pause soon after you stop playing. It will normally continue for a moment or two after you stop but if you wish you can also stop it crisply with F12.

Resound every
This is useful if the note is percussive or fades away

Resound every
This is useful if the note is percussive or fades away

Parts played by drone
Select which parts from the Parts window play the drone instruments

If you want to use one of the existing parts, just enter its part number here. So for instance, if you want the drone to play the same part as the PC keyboard, then select whichever part is currently used for the PC keyboard (which you can find out from the What to Play options for the PC keyboard). In this case the drone will play the same instrument as the PC keyboard, in the same stereo pan position etc.

If you want the drone to have its own part with its own particular instruments, etc, then find a part that isn't in use for anything in the Parts window, and set it up as you wish. Then come back here and enter the number for the part in the Drone Parts text field.

You can set the stereo pan for the drone part using Out | Options | Pan - useful if you want the drone to one side and the other notes played to the other as Barbara Hero has it for music therapy. You can vary other controllers for the drone independently in the same way.

If you have several drone notes sounded simultaneously, you can use this field to give each one its own part. Then in the various windows for part properties, you can pan those parts all to different stereo positions or give them each their own instrument or whatever.

Or if you want them all to play on the same part, just enter a single number for the desired part, and it will be used for all the drone notes.

If you have more drone notes than part numbers in this window, the part numbers cycle, for instance if you have two parts here, say 4 and 5, and more than two notes in the drone, drone notes will alternate between parts 4 and 5.

Parts...
Set which instruments play in the various parts, and volume etc

Intervals played
Enter intervals here for every drone note you want to play...

Example, to play the drone at the 1/1, an octave below, and two octaves below - all sounding together - you could enter 1/1 1/2 1/4 as the intervals to play

Leave the degree field showing 0 - unless you want to combine both.

(the degree field isn't present in the Lambdoma tasks)

The two can be combined if desired - you can have a note at e.g. 5/4 above the second degree of the arpeggio, or whatever.

From Scale Degrees
Enter the degree to play for each drone note...

Leave the interval as 1/1 - unless you want to combine both

The two can be combined if desired - you can have a note at e.g. 5/4 above the second degree of the arpeggio, or whatever.

Volumes
Volumes for each drone note

Volumes as
How to show volumes - choose which range is most useful...

The 0 to 127 is useful if you want to compare it with midi data as midi velocities use this range.

Layers for drone
Choose which layers of the fractal tune play the drone...

This is relevant if you have the drone set to resound at the start of each seed, and have Parts | Order of Play | By layer with simultaneous notes selected.

This gives a drone that continually changes in volume fractal fashion, with louder and softer beats.

Details:

Whenever the tune in a slower layer goes forward to the next note, it will start a new seed in the next layer, and that will also start new seeds in all the other faster layers above it.

So, whenever one of the slower moving melody layers changes, the drone gets sounded for that one and also simultaneously for all the faster layers too. Many identically pitched notes sounding simultaneously will probably sound like a single louder note (maybe with a bit of a chorus effect type sound to it). Thus giving a volume changing fractal fashion as described.

In fractal tunes: Resound at start of each seed for drone layers
For fractal tunes - see Layers for drone below

Drone Presets (*.dro)
Select from the drop list of presets. To add your own, just set this window up as you want and use Save As

Pause
Pause playback, or continue play

Play
Play midi clip, chord progression, fractal tune or metronome..

What this plays depends on the task selected from the Tasks menu.

SHORTCUT FOR FRACTAL TUNES OR METRONOME

You can use Shift + click to fast forward...

Also Ctrl to fast forward even more. Shift multiplies the tempo by 10 and Ctrl multiplies it by 100, so the two together would play a fractal tune at for instance, 60,000 instead of 60 as the tempo. This is useful sometimes for fast forwarding through fractal tunes.

Volume
Set overall volume. Check also Bs | Play control - Volume, && Parts window...

The volume is also affected by the volume for individual parts in the Parts window. Also in the case of midi instruments you can configure the volume for windows as a whole using Bs | Play Control - Volume.

For the Waveform player (triangle wave etc), go to the Waveform Player Audio Properties window (Ctrl + 188)

For CSound instruments, you can set the overall volume in the CSound Options window (Ctrl + 168)

You can also vary the volume in Out | Options | More | Volume Remapping (Ctrl + 158) and if playing from Midi In there's another setting at In | Options | Keyboard Options | Touch (Ctrl + 91)

See also Help | FAQ - trouble shooting | Why is everything so quiet

>> History
Click here to show recently visited files of this type...

Alternatively, Ctrl + right click on button, text field or drop list

Keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F10

Help = F1
Click for help for this window. Or F1. Other opts: Shift, Alt, Ctrl + click...

F1 or click shows the help for the current window in your web browser.

Some windows may have no help yet in which case the help icon is shown crossed out with a red line.

Shift + F1 or Shift + Click brings up the tool tips extra help window (this window) to show any extra help for a tool tip.

You can tell if a tool tip has extra help if it ends ... like this one.

Ctrl + F1 or Ctrl + click takes you to the list of keyboard shortcuts for Tune Smithy.

Alt + F1 or Alt + click (alternatively Caps lock physically held down + F1 or Click) takes you to the on-line page at the robertinventor.com web site about the current main window task - which gives a short introduction to it for newbies to the program. If there is no on-line page specific to a task, takes you to the main tune smithy page on the web site.

Since the help for Tune Smithy is currently a bit out of date and needs to be redone completely for the new 3.0 release, then you may find the on-line page for some of the newer tasks particularly useful.

Organise Windows = F2
Or F2 - Reset / save / open for individual windows, right click for cat. list...

Shows the Organise windows window - which you can use to reset all the parameters for the current window - or save them all, or open previously saved parameters for just this window. Also has a drop list of all the windows and their shortcuts.

You can also right click on this icon as a quick way to get the floating drop menu of all the Tune Smithy windows organised by category

Fractal Tunes Dialog Star
Tip of the day - Fractal Tunes category - right click for neighbouring windows...

Left click for a tip of the day in this category.

Right click to see a menu of neighbouring windows.

The neighbours are the ones you most often move to after this one or within a minute of this one, arranged by popularity.

So as you continue to use FTS, it will learn your habits, and the neighbouring windows listed here, should be the ones you most often visit after this one.