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Music
This feature is in early alpha - things may change or break.
The Music tab builds songs: a sequence of reusable patterns, each holding one or more instrument tracks of notes, played back using Sound tab presets as instruments.
The toolbar above the songs has these tools, left to right:
Export song bank — saves every song in the project, plus the Sound tab instruments they use, into a single .vcsmus file (the same database icon as the Sound tab's sound bank).
Import song bank — loads a song bank file. A song whose name matches one already in the project has its contents replaced (it keeps its ID, so blocks pointing at it still work); every other song in the file is added as a new song. Instruments are matched by name, like importing a single song.
Export song / Import song — save or load the current song as a single .vcsmus file (older .json files still import).
Auto-switch to whichever pattern is playing (target icon) — when on, the visible pattern follows playback as the song moves through its sequence.
Loop / Stop (Space) / Play the full pattern sequence (Space) — the playback controls. Loop, when on, repeats the song's preview playback until you stop it. Stop ends preview playback. Play plays the current song's sequence in the browser, and the button shows a speaker icon while it plays. Space toggles between Stop and Play.
Sits in the toolbar to the right of the Play button. Same DIM switch/percentage slider as the Sound tab - shared, project-wide setting (changing it here changes it on the Sound tab too). When on, every note plays at this percentage of its set volume instead of full volume.
Click the + button in the bottom-right corner to add a new song. Each card has:
- Song name / Tempo (BPM) — the song's name and default tempo.
- ID (the badge in the card's top-left) — a permanent number, separate from the name or list position.
Export / Import — save or load a song as a .vcsmus file (older .json files still import).
Auto-switch to whichever pattern is playing (target icon) — when on, the visible pattern automatically follows playback as the song moves through its sequence.
Loop / Stop (Space) / Play the full pattern sequence (Space) — the playback controls for this song, previewed directly in the browser. Loop repeats the song's preview playback until stopped. A playing song keeps going if you switch to another tab - come back and press Stop to end it. Space toggles between Stop and Play depending on whether the song is currently playing.
Delete this song — asks for confirmation. Only shown when there's more than one song. The songs after it are numbered again, and the blocks and Data table cells that named a song follow it (what named the deleted song is set to nothing).
Click the chevron in the top-left corner to collapse a song down to just its name/tempo row. Drag the strip at the top of a card to reorder songs in the list.
The order patterns play in for this song - a row of chips, each referencing one pattern:
Add pattern — appends a chip for one of this song's patterns to the sequence.
- Click a chip to make it the active pattern shown/edited below.
- ×N on a chip / dragging its right-edge handle — repeats that pattern that many times in a row before moving to the next chip, without needing N separate identical chips.
- The × on a chip removes it from the sequence.
- Each chip's "ID: N" badge is its position in the sequence (1 = first) - used by the "When sequence chip has finished playing" block on the Actions tab. This is a position, not a permanent identity - it changes if chips are reordered, inserted, or deleted before it.
- Drag a chip's body to reorder the sequence.
The active pattern (picked via the Sequence chips, or the name field below) shows:
- Pattern name — a combobox: pick an existing pattern from this song, or type a new name to create one.
Add pattern / Duplicate this pattern — create a new empty pattern, or a copy of the current one.
- Length (steps) — how many steps long the pattern is.
- Use pattern tempo checkbox + Tempo (BPM) — override the song's tempo just for this pattern.
Export (Shift+E) / Import (Shift+I) (a .vcsmus file; older .json files still import), Loop, Stop / Play this pattern (Shift+Space toggles between these two) — save/load just this one pattern as a standalone file, plus preview controls scoped to it.
Delete this pattern — only shown when the song has more than one pattern.
Click the chevron in the top-left corner to collapse a pattern down to just its name/length/tempo row. Whether the Pattern Editor is open or collapsed is one setting for the tab - it stays as you left it when you pick a different pattern, or add or duplicate a pattern or song - and it starts collapsed each new browser session.
Each pattern holds one or more instrument tracks - one row of notes per track, all drawn together in the piano roll below. Click Add instrument to add a track. Each track row has:
- A radio button — selects this track as the one currently being edited in the piano roll below.
- A color dot — this instrument's note color, set on its Sound tab card.
- Instrument — which Sound tab preset this track plays. Only sounds tagged with the Instrument icon on the Sound tab show up in this dropdown.
- Channel — which of the two sound channels (0 or 1) this track plays on. With the DPC+ kernel's sound chip the list also has channels 2 and 3: the chip's three voices are channels 0, 2 and 3, and channel 1 stays on the TIA (see DPC+ music below).
Show/Hide in piano roll (eye icon) — hides this track's notes from the piano roll view without muting or deleting them.
Mute — silences this instrument during playback, for every pattern in this song.
Solo — silences every OTHER instrument in this song during playback.
Copy this instrument's notes / Paste copied notes onto this instrument — copies a track's notes onto another track (in this or another pattern/song).
Remove this instrument row — only shown when the pattern has more than one track.
Click the chevron next to "Instruments" to collapse the section down to a row of instrument chips - click a chip to make that instrument the active one.
The piano roll is where you actually place notes for a pattern - a grid with pitch running down the rows and time running across the columns (one column per step, per the pattern's Length setting). Every visible track's notes are drawn on this same shared grid, but only the currently active track (selected in Instruments above) can be edited here.
- Click a cell to place or remove a note for the active track at that pitch/step.
- Drag a note's right-edge handle to change its duration.
- The Vol row below the roll shows a volume bar per note - drag it to change that note's volume, as a percentage of the instrument's base volume, for just that note. Notes from other (visible, non-active) tracks show as faint "ghost" bars for reference.
- Click a step number in the header to move the playhead there - seeks immediately if already playing, otherwise playback starts from there next.
- Under the Hit row are Freq 0 to Freq 31 rows, one for each frequency of the sound chip (the lowest number is the highest pitch). A note on one plays that frequency with the instrument's sound type, so noise and the other sound types with no in-tune notes can be played at any frequency, and a sound type with in-tune notes can also play frequencies between its notes. The Hit row stays: it plays the frequency set for the sound. Percussion sounds only have the Hit row, and the DPC+ chip's channels have no Freq rows (their pitch is a piano key).
- Everything set on the instrument's Sound tab card plays here: its volume Envelope (with the Staircase option), Frequency sweep (from the note's pitch), Frequency envelope and Arpeggio. A sweep or envelope that changes the pitch or volume every few frames takes one note event for each stretch of frames with the same pitch and volume. A note placed on top of a sweeping note cuts it short, plays, and the sweep carries on afterwards.
The piano roll's toolbar, left to right:
Undo (Ctrl+Z) / Redo (Ctrl+Y) — steps back and forward through this pattern's edit history (name, tempo, step count, tracks/notes). Each pattern keeps a separate history.
Move (V) — drag a placed note to a different pitch or step. With a selection made, dragging moves all the selected notes together.
Draw (B) — click a cell to place a note.
Erase (E) — click a placed note to remove it.
Rectangle select (M) — drag a box to select several notes; use Move to drag them together.
Note duration snap (magnet icon) — toggles whether placing and resizing notes snaps to the slice count below, or moves freely.
- Slices per step (dropdown) — how many equal slices each step is divided into for snapping.
Zoom — Fit (scales the roll to the pattern's length), the current percentage, Zoom out, a slider (25% to 1600%) and Zoom in. They resize the piano roll's step width.
Export pattern (Shift+E) / Import pattern (Shift+I), Loop, Stop and Play this pattern (Shift+Space) — the same pattern controls as in the Pattern card, repeated here so they stay reachable while the Instruments section is expanded.
With the AtariVox on (Options tab), a Sound tab card of the kind AtariVox can play a Vox tab voice as an instrument. Its channel list shows the AtariVox channel. A voice note holds a word or a few words: double-click it to type the text, with buttons that insert speech commands (FAST, SLOW, the pauses). The pitch of the note sets the voice's PITCH, so words can be sung, and the speech stops when the note ends. Only the notes C0 to B3 can be placed, as the chip's pitch ends there. One voice instrument plays on one channel in a song, and a song can hold up to 255 notes of it.
With the DPC+ kernel the Music tab's notes play on the sound chip's three voices (channels 0, 2 and 3) plus the TIA's channel 1. The piano roll only offers the notes the chip can play, instruments use the waveform drawn on their sound card, and arpeggio intervals are semitones. Percussion goes in the Hit row. An envelope on an arpeggio applies to the last step only.
See the Actions tab's Music category for every music-related block: playing/stopping/pausing a song (by name or runtime ID), watching for a song or sequence chip finishing, and watching for a specific instrument's notes being played.