The Test Area

At the bottom of the screen is the test area:

Its use is to test your instruments and possibly find new ideas by playing with them.

First of all, select your instrument with the instrument list in the middle left of the screen.

There are three ways to trigger a note:

  • Click on the "C-4" button to play the note written inside.
  • Once the "C-4" button is focused, you can play with the keyboard of your computer to start new notes. You can change your octave by pressing Shift/Control + O.
  • Click on any note of the virtual keyboard.

According to what happened before, the note may come plain in simple, without any added effect, arpeggio or pitch. But maybe you want to play with them too! The 4 combo-boxes are made for that:

 

Arpeggio combo-box

Click on the "Arp" box to open a list:

  • The "empty" that is selected by default indicates that no arpeggio will be used. What's more, if an arpeggio was triggered in your song, it will be stopped.
  • The "no change" choice indicates that if the sound will use the arpeggio that may be used currently in the song.
  • The other choices ("Minor chord" here) are the arpeggios that you created for your song (see the expression panel).

 

Pitch combo-box

The second combo-box is the same as the arpeggio, except it is for... the pitch, which is useful to add vibrato or slides whenever your sound is triggered.

 

Volume combo-box

The volume combo-box will allow you to force the volume from 0 to 15, or to let the volume as-is.

 

Channel combo-box

The channel ("chn") combo-box allows you to select on which channel to play the sound. By default, the "cursor" choice is selected, meaning that the cursor of the pattern viewer indicates where to play the sound.

 

Repeat combo-box

To the right of the Note button ("C-4") is a "repeat":

It is very handy to test your sounds. By default, the "repeat" is disabled ("no repeat"). Simply select another repeat mode, like "1 second", plays a note, and it will automatically restarts every one second! Press F12 to stop the sound.

My advice is to start the repeat mode, then go back to the instrument editor (F5) and modify your sound. If you want to change the note or play freely with your computer keyboard, press F6 to go back to the test area.

Have fun!