OpenMPT Wiki - TutMakeSong

How to make your first song

Introduction

Welcome to this tutorial. This tutorial will be a step-by-step guide on how to load samples and use them to create a simple song. This tutorial will not cover each screen in depth. There are other pages in this wiki that do this.

This tutorial will use the default.mkb keyconfig. Its adviced to load it if thats not what you usually use, taken that you have a standard QWERTY keyboard.

This tutorial will use the song Aryx.s3m as a reference. You can download Aryx here: ARYX.zip

Getting Started

If you haven't even downloaded OpenMPT RC2, then I suggest to read the Getting Started page first, for instructions on how to download and install OpenMPT RC2.

Assuming that you did everything on that page, you can now start OpenMPT. If its the first time that you start this program, the setup dialog will pop up. You can configure OpenMPT to your needs now, or you can do that at a later stage by pressing View->Setup.

The only important thing is to set the soundcard right. Go to the soundcard tab. Check the available sounddevices by pulling down the list. If you have an ASIO device, select it. Otherwise a DirectX device is preferred (blue circle with yellow X in it). If you have ASIO, you could set the bufferlength (latency) to 10-30ms. If its DirectX then 30-75ms. WaveOut usually works best around 100ms and higher.

The lower this latency is, the better. Too low will result in crackling your music.

Also, make sure a keyconfig file is loaded. This should be by default, but there have been cases reported where it didn't worked. Go to the Keyboard tab and verify that on the bottom right textbox, a correct file to an .mkb is being set. If not, you can use the load keys... button to load one.

Press Ok to close the dialog.

Before I continue with the actual tutorial, make sure you download the song Aryx which has been attached. ARYX.zip

Create a new song

The first icon in the toolbar is a white empty document. Press this button to create a new song.

Load Drum Samples from Aryx

OpenMPT can easilly handle working on several songs at once. You probably not want to actually edit 2 songs at the same time, but you can view one while working on another. :) We're going to use this principle to load in samples from Aryx.

The second icon in the toolbar is the open button. Press this button to open an existing song. If you haven't set a default path in the settings, it should open in My Documents. Browse to the Aryx song. Note, OpenMPT can load a Zip file if only that song is in the zip file. This is the case with Aryx. You must set it to All files to let the zipfiles be shown though… and saving is not possible to a zip file. :)

Once you've loaded Aryx, you'll see that it appears in the treeview on the left. It will also be the active song.

Click on the menu window and then on 1. Module1
Click on the Samples tab
In the treeview on your left, Locate ARYX and under it, unvold Samples.
Drag "3: Time: 2:21" to the big black screen on the right to load that sample.
Click on the 1st icon in the toolbar that comes with this screen (New Sample)
Drag "6: Tune composed using" to the right to load it too.
Click on the New Sample button
Drag "5:" to the right and load it too.
Click on the New Sample button
Drag "4: _____________________" to the right to load it too.

When you see these waveforms, note that you can use any key on your keyboard (A-Z) to get sound out of them. This works like a piano. In fact, most keyboard configs will actually set it as a piano with the white and black keys positioned as that too. The default config however allows you to have more notes to work with. Note that if you press QWERT, the tonehight slowly raises. ASDFG is the same but one octave higher, and ZXCVB is the same too but another octave higher.

We've now loaded some basic Samples which we can use to make a drum pattern. Before we're going to continue, lets make instruments of them.

Click on the Instruments tab.
Click on the 1st icon in the toolbar that comes with this screen (New Instrument)

A question now comes if we want to convert the existing samples first. This saves us much work, so answer it with yes.

Make your first 4/4 drumpattern

Basically a 4/4 drum pattern is like a trance beat. Really simple stuff so its great to start with that. First lets go to the Patterns tab to be able to enter notes.

Since making a beat is like working with beat measurements, its nice to actually see the beats in your pattern. It appears that by default the row hi-lighting is turned off, so we're going to make it us easy and turn it on.

Click on the menu View followed by Setup.
Click on the tab Colors.
Check both Primary highlight and Secondary highlight options.
Press Ok to leave the setup screen.

Now, that looks much better. As you see, every 16th row has a darker color than every 4th row. These are beats with sub beats. By default, a pattern has 4 beats with 4 subbeats. This can be changed, but we're not gonna do that now.

In the toolbar, you see Main instrument. Set this to 01:...
Also in the toolbar, you see Row spacing. Set this to 4 too. (makes your cursor move down by 4 rows)
In the toolbar on top (below the menu) there's Octave:… Set this to 4 if its not already.
Click on the 1st row inside Channel 1.
Make sure that inside this big cell, your cursor is positioned most left. This is for entering notes.
start tapping A until you have a C-5 01 at row 60.
Press F6 to play your first pattern. :D

At any time, you can press F8 to stop the sound, so you can continue to work. Now would be a good time to press F8 :)

Add more percussion to your rythm

Ofcource this simple 4/4 drumbeat sucks. Lets add a hihat every moment in between.

Select instrument 04 from the Main Instrument panel above.
Scroll up so you can see row 0 again.
Select the cell in Channel 2 at row 2
Yet again, make sure you're on the left side of this cell.
Start tapping Z until you have a C-6 04 at row 62.
Press F6 to hear the result.
Set the Row Spacing to 1 using the toolbar above.
Select the cell in Channel 2 at row 29 and press Z to enter a note.
Scroll down, select Cell: Channel 2, Row 61 and enter a note there too.
Note how it automatically comes to Row 62. Press Delete to remove the note.
Move right to and press delete again to also remove the 04.
Move left again, and one down to row 63 and press Z to enter a note.
Press F6 to hear the result.

Adding a snare to give it even more depth.

Select Instrument 2 from the Main Instrument panel above.
Set Row Spacing to 8
Select Cell:Channel 3, Row 4
Start tapping Z until you have a C-6 02 at row 60
Press F6 to hear the result.

A note in between

You have now succesfully made a drumloop. Before you should continue, note how I made use of every 4th line for the beat to emphrase it, and every 2nd line after to get a balanced feeling. Also note how between lines 29 and 31 and 61 and 63 I used the other 2 lines to make it out of balance to get a nice variation. You should learn how this exactly works if you want to become a good mucision. I therefor would advice to experiment with different settings and see if you can create different kind of drumloops.

This however just takes time, so don't worry and lets continue to the next part of our tutorial.

Adding a Bassline

Before I just tell you what notes to enter, I'd like to explain a bit what you should do as bassline. A bassline is not just a melody played on a lower octave with a bass instrument. A bassline actually forms part of the rythm. The bassline usually sets the basenote for your rythm. The bass section in a song can be seen as part of the background. Although it is strong and present, it usually doesn't play a melody of its own. In certain musical styles, it can be done to play a repetivelly melody so that you get more groove.

Okay, so lets add that bassline to our track!

To start, we'll need a sound for our bass.

Select the sample tab and create a new sample (scroll up if you don't remember how). From the treeview, drag in sample 8: _________ from aryx to your sample window. This will be our bass sound. Before we'll enter our bassline, lets play the pattern one more time to get some ideas on what to enter, and stop playback once you get an idea. As this is a tutorial, I don't expect you to actually get idea's yet, but atleast you now know a way to look for inspiration. :)

Entering a simple bassline.

Go back to the pattern screen.

Select sample 5 from the toolbar if that hasn't been set yet.

Go to the cell in Column 4, row 0, and press E, which will put in a D-4 05. Play the pattern to hear the result. As you can hear, the sound is there, but it certainly is not a bass sound. Its too high for that. We'll need to adjust the octave in order to get the right range of notes. On top of the window, below the menu, there's an octave setting. Set it to 3 using the arrow keys.

Again, go to the cell in column 4, row 0, and press E. This time it will put in a D-3 05. Play it again, to hear the difference. Lets make it more fancy. Remain in Column 4 and press the following keys in the following rows:

Row 16: Press Y
Row 32: Press Q
Row 48: Press I

And play your pattern.

We've just created a really simple bassline, but frankly, It sounds rather dull at the moment. Lets make it a bit better by adding silence.

Enter the following notes:

Row 8: Press ~ (will put a Stop note:^^ on the screen.)
Row 24: press ~
Row 40: press ~
Row 56: press ~

Entering a more complex bassline

Okay, so this is indeed a better bassline, but you'll probably are like: but how about those fancy dance basslines? Sure, We'll make one. To start, remove the notes in column 4 first. Make sure that you're in column 4, and press CTRL-L. This will make a selection in that column. If you accidentally press CTRL-L again, it will select the entire screen. Press again to set it back to the channel. Press Delete to delete the content.

Go back to row 0. At this time, we're going to make it easy for us. Set the rowspacing to 2, and do the following 4 times:

Press ~
Press E

Then do the following 4 times:

Press ~
Press Y

Do the same 4 times with Q and I.

If you've done it right, you should have this nice dancy baseline.

Adding a Melody

Basically this is the same as adding a bassline, except that you'll be focussing on that what plays in the foreground.

The melody is something that can continiously change throughout the entire track, or can be a repetition with certain variations. In order to know what types of melodies there are, listen to music, and start noticing. :)

But at this stage, we just want to add a melody to our tutorial song, so lets add a sample for that.

Go to the Sample tab
Create a new sample
Drag sample 2: to the right.

Now, lets enter a nice simple melody.

Go to the pattern editor

Select Sample 6 from the toolbar

Assuming that you still have the rowspacing set to 2, do the following.

Go to column 5 row 0, and enter the following notes:

C, ~, B, N, ~

Then go to row 24 and enter the following notes:

<, ~, N, ~, Z, ~, C, B, ~

Then go to row 56 and enter the following notes:

N, ~, B, ~

You have now have made a basic dance pattern.

Adding depth to your melody to make it cool!

Yes, I have to admit, the melody is a bit dry like this. So lets make an echo on it. There are several ways to do it actually. You can program the echo and you can use a plugin to do it for you.

I will do both actually to show you various techniques.

First the easiest one (although I prefer the 2nd one)

Adding an echo using a plugin.

Go to the general tab.
Below you see plugins, where it says FX1: undefined.
Press Select
Unvold DirectX Media Audio Effects
Double Click Echo

FX1: undefined has changed to FX:1 Echo. Lets add it to our lead melody to hear its effect.

On top, where the tabs 1-4, 5-8,… etc are, press 5-8
The melody is in channel 5, so thats why we pick 5-8.
Below Channel 5, it says Effect: No plugin. Select FX1: Echo
Surprisingly, it sounds nice already, but we're going to make it sound more nice.
Press Edit below, next to FX1: Echo and the Select button we pressed earlier.
Set WetDryMix to 44.40 (val 444)
Set Feedback to 50.00 (val 500)
Set LeftDelay to 360.82 (val 180)
Set RightDelay to 720.64 (val 360) <-- Notice that its twice the Left delay)
Set PanDelay to Yes (val 1000)

And there you go, a nice echo on the lead.

Adding an echo using programming.

First, lets remove the echo from the previous step.

Go to the general tab (left from the sample tab)
Check Bypass, so FX1: echo will be set to be bypassed.

You can completelly remove the echo, but lets just bypass it for now.

Go back to the pattern editor

Put your cursor in Column 5, row 0, and press CTRL-L, CTRL-C.
Go to Column 6 and press CTRL-V.

An exact copy of your channel has been made.

Press insert 3 times.
Press CTRL-L, CTRL-M
Enter Amplify by 50%
Repeat the above steps to Channel 7, so CTRL-C, tab, CTRL-V, 3x insert, CTRL-L, CTRL-M, 50%, ok.
Repeat the above steps to Channel 8, so CTRL-C, tab, CTRL-V, 3x insert, CTRL-L, CTRL-M, 50%, ok.

If done correctly, the notes in column 8 have a v08. This means, they have a volume of 8, which is quite soft.

Continuing your song from there

You now know how to fill a pattern with notes so you can create some music. Lets explain how to create different patterns and play them as a song.

On top, below Main Instrument you see one big bar with squares. The 1st one is filled with 0, the rest with ---. This is your order list, that contains how the song is being played.

The numbers are the pattern numbers. (In the patterns, you can see this on the top left corner (above the row numbers). It says #0.

Right click the 0 in the order list, and select duplicate pattern.

Use the mouse to make a selection from column 4, row 0 to column 8, row 63

Press CTRL-Q 5 times. Note that you've transposed the notes, which is one way to alter patterns.

You can also remove/add or both with notes to change the pattern. Here is creativity your key.

In the orderlist, you can also right-click a pattern, and press insert pattern, to make a new order with the same pattern. That way, when you play your song, it will have the same patterns played behind eachother.

Select pattern 0 from the orderlist, rightclick it, and select insert pattern.
Select pattern 1 from the orderlist, rightclick it, and select insert pattern.

On top in the toolbar, below the menubar, there is a play button. This plays your song instead of your pattern. Press it. You can check follow song to see how it plays.

You can basically build from here. When you rightclick a pattern, you can also choose create new pattern. This makes a new empty pattern. Sometimes usefull after you made a transition, and you want to start with something new.

A neat trick is adding +++ patterns. Basically, they are markers that are being skipped, but allows you to see the orderlist more orderned.

To insert one, Rightclick a pattern, Select insert pattern, and on it press numpad + as much times as needed to get the +++ pattern. Note that you can also enter numpad 0 followed by numpad -, numpad - (3 keys that always give you a +++ pattern. :)