Introduction to Bars&Pipes (B&P)
Introduction
This document gives an introduction to the MIDI-sequencing program
Bars&Pipes. Bars&Pipes is the best sequencing program to Amiga and
some features are also a lot better than sequencing packages on other
platforms.
However, it is not easy to get into Bars&Pipes the first time. When
you know the technique it is not hard at all, but you have to
understand some basic concepts before you are able to use it.
Unfortunately, the company that developed Bars&Pipes, The Blue
Ribbon SoundWorks, Ltd., went bankrupt a time a go and the company
was bought by Microsoft. A good thing about this, is that Bars&Pipes
are availeble free for the Amiga users (don't ask me where to get it
though). Few of the people that have Bars&Pipes, have the user guide
and thus can not use the program. I want to give new Bars&Pipes users
a push to explore the program and to create wonderful music using the
Amiga.
I bought Bars&Pipes in 1992 and have used it a lot since
then. Bars&Pipes is not good at everything, but most things when it
comes to producing MIDI-music. Good luck with using Bars&Pipes
How to start ?
I will not describe how to install the program on floppy or harddisk
in this document, and I will not describe how to hook up you MIDI
device (if you don't know how to do this, you should read some more
about how to use MIDI).
- Double-click on B&P's icon. B&P will then open with
an empty Song. You can also double-click on a song icon to open a song
in B&P.
- Choose a track. The B&P screen will contain a track window
with a number of tracks shown as pipelines (track1, track2, etc...).
To choose a track, simply click on the arrow-icon to high-light
it. This icon show whether a track is choosen or not.To the right of
the arrow-icon, you can see the icon for the midi-input. If you
double-click on this icon you can change the MIDI-in setup.
- Choose Record for the track. To the right of the MIDI-input
icon you can ses a bar. The bar lead to another icon with that shows
either P, R or M. This stands for Play, Record or Merge. To change the
icon, simply click on it. If you choose P, this track can only play
the track (you can't record anything). If you choose R, you can record
what you play and it overwrites old stuff in the track. If you choose
M, you merge new records with old stuff in the track. Choose R
now to be able to make a record.
- Chose MIDI-channel. On the most right part of the track you
can see an icon with a
number in it. This is the MIDI-channel selector. Here you must choose
a MIDI-channel that is availeble on your synthesizer/keyboard. If you
choose MIDI-channel 10, most synthesizer will play drumsounds. To the
left of this icon is the MIDI-output icon. Double-click on this icon
to change the MIDI-output configuration.
- Start recording. The next step is to start recording. You
must then find the control buttons (they look like buttons on a
CD-player). To be able to make a record. you must click on the R
icon. You can simply now press the play button (after you have
pressed the R button) and play something on you keyboard. To playback
your composition, press the Play button on the control panel.
- Edit track. To edit a track, you simply double click in the
middle part of a track. You will then get a new window containing the
track, where you can change what you have recorded using tools
provided. Take also a look in the drop-down menus for more features.
For a more detailed description take a look here.