AMPLINEX 008 music files – explanation

Tony Walduck

In AMPLINEX 008 two of the pieces of music seemed to have programming problems.

"£1000" (Goodbye to a £1000) gave the error message:

Too many channels in orch4 in player 1

"AxelF" gave the message:

Too many voices in mix1 in player 1

I have managed to make corrections so that the pieces will play as I imagine the authors intended. I have sent the corrected versions to AMPLINEX but here I will describe the techniques I used to investigate the problems in case it might be of interest to others.

Firstly "Goodbye to £1000" as this was the more straightforward to amend.

I started with the error message: 'Too many channels in orch4 in player 1'.

a) Investigated orch4 - everything seemed normal for a 4-channel voice, i.e. 4 CHANS, followed by

1 CHAN...

2 CHAN...

3 CHAN...

4 CHAN...

definitions.

b) Investigated the RUN word:

"1234567-1d3ba2ce4z"PLAY

This indicated that there were 7 players, playing the following parts under the control of 4 mixes:

Player mix1 --mix3-- --mix2-- mix4

1 1d 1b 1a 1c 1e (1z)

2 2d 2b 2a 2c 2e (2z)

3 3d 3b 3a 3c 3e (3z)

4 4d 4b 4a 4c 4e (4z)

5 5d 5b 5a 5c 5e (5z)

6 6d 6b 6a 6c 6e (6z)

7 (7d) (7b)(7a) 7c 7e (7z)

The parts shown in brackets don't exist, but this doesn't matter. Perhaps the important thing to note is that player 7 doesn't actually have anything to do until mix2.

c) Investigated the mix1 word:

1 SHARE 1 VOICES fatsynth4...

2 SHARE 1 VOICES orch4...

3 SHARE 1 VOICES syn...

4 SHARE 1 VOICES puresim...

5 SHARE 1 VOICES fbass...

6 SHARE 1 VOICES syn...

Note there is nothing here for player 7.

This was now enough to identify the problem which lies in the way the RUN word works.

Initially, the system sees there are 7 players, so it reserves 7 simple voices (each of 2 channels) for their use. So 14 channels have been assigned at this point. Then it sees that the first mix to be used is mix1.

In this mix we can see that the first two players are using 4-channel instruments, so an extra 2 channels must now be assigned for each of these players. This can be done for the first (fatsynth4), but by the time it gets to the second (orch4) all the 16 channels are allocated. So the program fails at this point with the message given.

The reference to player 1 seems a little odd, but it could be that this was the last player acted on before the error occurred, or that the player number had been set to 1 in anticipation of it starting to play music (I favour the latter explanation).

Now we know the problem, how do we correct it?

Remember how player 7 was not used initially? What we need to do is to reclaim the two channels allocated, which would otherwise be unused until much later. So almost certainly mix1 needs to have the line

7 SHARE 1 VOICES UNUSED

as pretty much the first thing, so the channels then become available for orch4.

I have also added the word M5MIX at the start of each mix word (even for mix4: this is not really a mix, more a final part), or otherwise the Mixing Desk does not get updated with changing mix names.

So mix1 now reads:

M5MIX

7 SHARE 1 VOICES UNUSED

1 SHARE 1 VOICES fatsynth4...

This now plays correctly.

"AxelF" has different sorts of problems to be overcome, and takes longer to amend.

I started with the error message: 'Too many voices in mix1 in player 1'.

a) Investigated the mix1 word:

M5MIX ..

1 SHARE 4 VOICES synth1

1 VOICE ..

2 VOICE ..

3 VOICE ..

4 VOICE ..

2 SHARE 1 VOICES bass

1 VOICE ..

3 SHARE 4 VOICES

4 VOICE brush ..

4 SHARE 4 VOICES

2 VOICE Drum ..

4 VOICE snare ..

b) Investigated the instrument definitions - all were for 2-channel instruments.

c) Investigated the parts - those for players 3 and 4 tend to start with the word Perc (see Studio 5000 User Guide, page 37).

There is obviously something funny about players 3 and 4, and the total number of voices for all players comes to 13, more than the 8 allowed, even though no more than 8 voices are actually used.

One quick approach might be to change the latter part of the mix word to:

3 SHARE 1 VOICES

1 VOICE brush ..

4 SHARE 2 VOICES

1 VOICE Drum ..

2 VOICE snare ..

This keeps within the 8-voice limit, and will play without error, but following the music on the Mixing Desk will show that voices 3-1 and 4-1 do not strike at all during the piece. So something is still wrong.

Referring to the manual for the Perc word, the problem becomes clearer. Perc enables up to 6 fixed-pitch percussion instrument voices to be played just by specifying the corresponding 'note'. That is,

D uses Voice 1

E uses Voice 2

F uses Voice 3

G uses Voice 4

A uses Voice 5

B uses Voice 6

In part3 words the only note is G, while in part4 words notes E and G are used. These would correspond to voice 4 in player 3, and voices 2 and 4 in player 4. So these are consistent with the original version of the mix1 word. It would seem that this percussion part may well have been developed in a different environment, without the current shortage of available voices.

So, how can we proceed, given that we still want to retain the tuneful bits?

The method that I used was to take the modified mix1 word above (the other mix words do not refer to either players 3 or 4), and then to go through every part3 word changing G to D (i.e. Voice 4 to Voice 1), and every part4 word changing E to D, and G to E (i.e. Voice 2 to Voice 1, and Voice 4 to Voice 2, respectively).

There is probably an easier way to do this, or some trick that could have been used to avoid all this hassle, but I don't know of it - any offers anyone?

Additionally, part3b and part3g contain the line

4VOICE whoosh...

which now needs to be

1VOICE whoosh...

Having done all this, the piece now plays properly.

I hope I have not given any offence to the authors of these pieces. I am grateful for the challenge presented, as I learn far more about AMPLE by solving problems than I do if everything works right first time. And my musical composition skills are completely non-existent!