SIDPLAYER NEWS #5  March 1986



Introducing Sidplayer Singalong, an exciting new way to enjoy Sidplayer songs.

Singalong is a special player for Sidplayer songs which displays song verses

that change in time with the music.  It is great for many different kinds of

songs including holiday, religious, popular, and comedy songs.



Note: The program will play only Singalong songs which have corresponding word

files on the same disk as the music files, and will not play other Sidplayer

songs.



This news file describes all of the features of the Singalong player, and also

tells you how to create your own Singalong songs.



The Singalong player was written by Bob Huffman and may be freely distributed,

along with Sidplayer songs.



Sidplayer is the music system published in "All About The Commodore 64, Volume

Two" by COMPUTE! Books.  Sidplayer songs are created using the Sidplayer

Editor, which is a copyrighted program that may not be freely distributed.



A Singalong song consists of a Sidplayer music file (with a .MUS filename

extension) and a words file which has the same filename except for a .WDS

extension in place of the .MUS extension.



When you run the Singalong player, it first reads the disk directory to find

all of the .WDS files on the disk.  If there are no .WDS files on the disk,

the program will ask you to insert another disk and press the function key f5

to rerun the program.



Once all of the .WDS files have been found, the program runs through the files

again to read the full title of each song.



The program next displays a menu listing the full titles of up to ten

Singalong songs, under the heading PAGE 1.  If there were more than ten .WDS

files on the disk, a prompt message will be printed at the bottom of the

screen indicating that you can press the space bar to see the next page of

songs.



To play a song, just press the appropriate letter key from A to J.  The

program will switch to a new screen, print the full title of the song, and try

to load the corresponding .MUS file for the song.  The Singalong player

requires that both the .MUS file and the corresponding .WDS file be on the

same disk.  If the .MUS file is not on the disk, the program will print an

error message, wait for you to press a key for acknowledgement, and return to

the song menu.



Always remember that both the .MUS and .WDS files for a Singalong song must be

on the same disk.



After the .MUS file for the song has been loaded, the program loads the .WDS

file.  If no error occurs, the program prints the text lines for the song and

starts playing the music.



The verses for the song are printed on two lines.  The current verse line is

printed in light blue, and the following verse line is printed in dark blue

under the current one.  This lets you read ahead one line.



When the song is done playing, the program returns to the song menu.  To stop

a song before it is done playing and return to the menu, press the space bar.



To repeat a song, just press the corresponding letter key again, and the

program will skip the loading process and play the song still in memory.  You

may also press the R key to replay the most recently loaded song, if that is

more convenient.  Note that the "R" key feature does not work when no song has

been loaded yet, or if an error occurred during the last attempt to load a

song.



Another feature of the Singalong player is that you can play all of the

Singalong songs on the disk with one keystroke.  Just press the "*" key to

select the autoplay mode.  The program will load and play each Singalong song

on the disk in the order they appear in the song menu.



While songs are being played in the autoplay mode, you may press the space bar

to stop a song and advance to the next one.  To stop the playing and return to

the song menu instead, press the f7 function key.



When you are done playing songs on one disk and want to play songs on another

disk, insert the new disk and press the f5 function key to make the program

run again.  To exit from the program, press Run/Stop Restore.





To create a Singalong song, you must use a word processor to enter the verse

lines in a text file, run a conversion program to convert the text file into a

.WDS file, and embed special "flag" commands at the appropriate places in the

music to signal where the verse lines should change.



Begin by using the Sidplayer Editor to enter the notes of the song in the

normal way.  When you are done editing the notes and commands in the song,

insert a FLG 1 command at each place where the next verse line is to be

printed.  This needs to be done on only one voice.  Be sure that there is at

least one note between each FLG command.  Save the .MUS file when you are done.



The next step is to create the text file containing the verse lines.  Two

different types of word processors are supported; Easyscript and other

compatible word processors (such as Paperclip) which create a SEQ file, and

Speedscript, which creates a PRG file.



Enter the verse lines of the song, one line for each FLG command in the music,

with a carriage return at the end of each line.  Upper and lower case letters

may be used.



Be careful to not let a line contain more than 38 characters, as the Singalong

player cannot handle longer lines.  Also, if the song plays a lead-in before

the verses start, a blank line at the beginning of the file may be necessary,

depending on where the first FLG command was used.  Save the text file when

you are done.



Now run either the ES/WDS conversion program if you used Easyscript or a

compatible word processor, or SS/WDS if you used Speedscript.  The program

will first ask you for the name of the text file.  Enter the filename and wait

for the file to load.



Next the program asks for the title of the song.  This is the full title that

is printed in the Singalong song menu.  It may be up to 36 characters long.

The program will not let you type characters that may not be used in the title.



The program will then ask for the filename of the words file to be produced,


excluding the .WDS extension.  This name should be the same as the root name

of the corresponding .MUS file, and may be up to 12 characters long.



If you also used the root name for the text file, you may instead just press

Return and the program will add the .WDS extension to that name to form the

filename.



The program begins the conversion process by scratching an earlier version of

the .WDS file if it exists.  The screen is then changed to the colors used in

the Singalong player and the text lines are printed to the screen as they are

converted.



If a line is detected to have more than 38 characters, an error message will

be printed, the incomplete .WDS file will be scratched, and the program will

end.  A verse line may not exceed 38 printable characters, or the printing

will be screwed up in the Singalong player.



After the conversion is done and the .WDS file has been completely written, it

is a good idea to play the song with the .WDS file all the way through at

least once, to check that the verse lines match up properly and that none have

been missed.



One final touch for a Singalong song is to add color or reverse printing to

the verses.  When the Singalong player prints each verse line, it always

resets the cursor color to light blue or dark blue as appropriate.  To change

the color for the rest of the line, just insert the appropriate character code

in the line.  Refer to the chart below for the proper character codes.



If you are using Speedscript, the character codes cannot be entered directly,

so a slightly different scheme is used.  When you want to enter a color or

reverse lettering code, first press the Lira (English pound sign) key while

holding down the CTRL key.  Speedscript will then prompt you to press a format

key.  Press the appropriate letter key as shown in the chart below.



 CHR   SS

CODE  KEY  EFFECT



 144   K   BLACK

   5   W   WHITE

  28   R   RED

 159   C   CYAN

 156   P   PURPLE

  30   G   GREEN

  31   B   BLUE

 158   Y   YELLOW

 129   O   ORANGE


 149   N   BROWN

 150   r   LIGHT RED

 151   d   DARK GRAY

 152   m   MEDIUM GRAY

 153   g   LIGHT GREEN

 154   b   LIGHT BLUE

 155   l   LIGHT GRAY

  18   V   REVERSE ON

 146   v   REVERSE OFF



This scheme is pretty straightforward and logical.  The letters usually match

the color name, and upper and lower case denote a dark or light color.



Even though these control codes do not increase the printed length of a verse

line, they are each counted as one character by the conversion programs.  A

conversion program may therefore report the error that a line has more than 38

characters when in fact the number of printed characters does not exceed 38.

To get around this problem, change the assignment of the variable LL in line

120 of the conversion program from 38 to a larger value, such as 48.  Just be

extra careful, then, that the number of letters and other printable characters

in each verse line does not exceed 38.



This concludes the documentation for Sidplayer Singalong.  We hope you enjoy

the new dimension of fun that Singalong brings to Sidplayer music.



For any questions on how to use the Sidplayer Editor, or more information on

the FLG command and how to add Sidplayer music to your own programs, please

refer to Volume Two.