How to...
Welcome to DSP, which means Digital Signal Prosessering. Don't be frightened by the name. NOTAM has made this program in order to give you an opportunity to make music in a simple and straightforward way. By using the computer, you can make interesting and exiting sounds, take them apart, manipulate and change them, and put them together again.
In addition to the opportunity to make music, the website also contains texts, images and music that show and explain something of what has been done before in the electroacoustic music.
We hope that you will have many exiting and fun hours making music with DSP!
You can run the program on all computers with different varieties of Windows, Mac OSX and UNIX/Linux.
You can use all ordinary browsers, and in addition you need to have Java installed on the machine. Links to how you do this you will find below, for both Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. The program will not work for Macs with an older system than OSX.
If you have not installed Java from Sun eariler, you can do so from the websites below:
- automatic: http://www.java.com/en/download/
- manually: http://java.sun.com/downloads/
We recommend that you use Internet Explorer when runnign DSP under Windows OS. In order to be sure that Internet Explorer uses Sun's version of Java, and not Microsoft's, do the following:
* In the Tools-menu, choose "Alternatives for Internet".
* Choose "Advanced".
* Click "Use Java 2 v1.4.2...".
* Restart the browser.
Running DSP is based on a technology called Java Web Start. Thsi means that the browser passes the responsibility for starting the program to Java that is installed on the computer. It is important that the browser is configured correctly. For most browsers, this is done automatically.
In order to ensure that Opera handles Java Web Start, do the following:
* In the Tools-menu, choose "Configuration..."
* Choose "Advanced" og "downloads".
* Check if an associatino to the file type jnlp already exists.
* If not, click "New..."
* If it exists, choose it and click "Edit..."
* The mime-type shall be "application/x-java-jnlp-file"
* The file-ending shall be "jnlp" and "open with pre-chosen program" must be selected.
* Klick OK.
* Klick OK again.
If you have not installed Java from Sun eariler, you can do so from the websites below:
- automatic: http://www.java.com/en/download/
- manually: http://java.sun.com/downloads/
Safari is the browser that we recommend for use under OSX. You need to go to Safari/Preferences and select "Security" in order to activate Java. Restart your browser.
In Explorer, check under "Preferences" in the Explorer-menu that Java is selected.
Restart your browser.
In Netscape, check under Netscape/Preferences/Advanced that Java is activated.
If you have not installed Java from Sun eariler, you can do so from the websites below:
- automatic: http://www.java.com/en/download/
- manually: http://java.sun.com/downloads/
We know that it can be problematic to run programs with Java Web Start under Unix/Linux. Vi recommend that you download and install the program manually from this page.
Go to the menu Using DSP, and choose Start the program.
You will be asked if you will accept an applet from NOTAM. Click yes.
The program will open, and you will see the mixer-window, looking approximately as above. The mixer-window is the main window in DSP. This is where you place your sounds, and where you do your composition.
The mixer-window has: tracks (1), volume slider (2), buttons for turning on and off amplitude curves (amp) and stereo placement (pan) (3), rewind (4), text-field for giving the compositon a name (5), insert point marker that shows where you are in the composition (6), possibility for turning on/off each track (7), menubar(8).
Click “Sound” in the menubar.
You can now choose between : FM, Buzz, String, Whoosh, Additive, or Editing. Click on one of the tools. If you click on FM you will the the image below (or something very much like it) on you screen.
Here you can change the sound by pulling the lines to different positions. Each line represents a parameter, for example frequency of amplitude. Some parameters can also be changed by adjusting faders towards the bottom of the screen.You can also decide how long you want the sound to be.
Click on "Play" to hear the result.
When you are satisfied, click on "Save".
If you are not happy, and want to start over, just click "Cancel".
If you click on "Help", you will get a help text describing how the program works.
When you are saving, the sound will be named after the program used to gererate or edit it, and it will be placed in the mixer-window on the track that you have chosen (marked with yellow), and at the insertion point. To move the insertion point, you click in the mixer-window. This is also how you can change tracks.
NB! Sound files that you want to use in the program need to be 16-bit, mono and in .wav-format.
Click on "Open soundfile" in the Filemenu, and you will get a window where you can select sounds from you harddisk.
In order to get sounds from NOTAM's library, go here. Download the sounds to your computer using a browser, and use "Open soundfile" in the file menu.
In order to record sounds into your machine through the sound card, you can use one of these supporting programs.
When you want to download sounds from NOTAM's sound archive on a Windows-machine, you need to right-click on the sound, and then go "save target as", or you can use "alt-F" in Windows media player to get the menu that will let you store the sound to disk.
You can record directly into your computer using a microphone, but you can not use DSP for this. In order to record into your computer, you can use one of the programs that are linked under supporting programs. Many composers like to mix recorded sounds with electronixc sounds.
Click on a sound in the mixer window.
Click on Sound/Edit.
You will now come into the sound editing program. Here you can play, cut out, copy and change the amplitude of the sounds. (It might be a good idea to turn off all the breakpoint curves before you start editing.)
Click in the window, pull and let go. Now you have made a selection that you can work on.
The scissors means that cut away what you have chosen.
The two sheets on top of one another means that you copy what you have chosen. The clipboard means that you copy into the area you have chosen the contents of the clipboard. You can also put the content in at the point where your cursor is placed , without having made a selection.
The two "trumpets" means that you either fade in or fade out sound in the area you have chosen, and the loudspeakers mean that you are making the sound louder and softer in the selected region. The arrow means that you are turing your selection backwards.
You need to select a sound before you can process it. The sound can be one that you have made yourself, or one that you load into the program.
Click on a sound in the mixer window.
Click "Distort" or "Effects" in the menubar. You can choose between many programs - click on one of them to open.
Here you can change the sound by choosing which element (parameter) that you want to work with. Each line represents a parameter, pull the line to change the sound. Some parameters can also be changed by adjusting faders towards the bottom of the screen. Click the "Play"-button to hear the result. When you are happy with the sound, you can click "Save".
If you are unhappy and wants to start over, click "Cancel". If you click on "Help", you will get a help text that explains how the program works.
When you store the sound it is named after the program used to change it.
When you have found sounds and processed them, it is time to start to make music. You do this in the mixer, by placing your sounds, copying them, by moving them around, etc. You have five tracks to work with as default, but you can add more. (In order to move several sounds together, you can shift-click and pull them with the mouse.)
In the mixer window you can also adjust the amplitude of all the different sounds by changing the curve yo usee when you choose Amp. You can also decide where the sounds should end up to the right or left in the stereo image by using the curve that you see when you tick off Pan. Yo uwill finsd both these functions below the tracks in the mixer. Remember to turn the curves off before you move the sounds. The curves are bound to the sound, so if you later want to move the sound, the curves will follow.
You can also select a region in the mixer for playing back only the sounds in that area. Hold the mousebutton and pull. To dismiss the marking click outside of the region. You can also turn each track on and off by clicking on the loudspeaker symbol in fron t of the track. This might be smart if you only want to work with a little part of tyhe composition, ine track at the time.
When you are finished with your composition, it is time to save it. (Remember that it is smart to save every so often in the process.)
Click "File" in the menubar.
Click "Save composition".
You can also save a soundfile, and you need to selct the one you want to save first by clicking on it.
And you can save you composition as a diskfile by choosing "Mix to disk".
You can also save your work on an external medium such as cassette, DAT, minidisk, etc.), by hooking the recording device up to the soundcard in the machine and recording while you are playing back your work.
We are interested in comments, ideas and eventual problems that you need help to solve. You can send us all this to this email-address: notam-dsp@notam02.no
Or on paper to:
NOTAM, Nedre gate 5, 0551 Oslo
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