Cakewalk Copyist Conversion Copyright (C) 1987 by Greg Hendershott. All rights reserved. "Cakewalk" is a trademark of Twelve Tone Systems. PLEASE NOTE: Twelve Tone Systems does not publish The Copyist; it is a product of Dr. T's Music Software. We fully support Cakewalk and the file conversion utility, but cannot give technical support for The Copyist itself. Please contact Dr. T's if you have questions about The Copyist. Thanks, and sorry if this causes you any inconvenience! ALSO NOTE: You must fill out and return the enclosed registration form before you may obtain technical support. We will not assist persons who are not registered owners. Please consult this documentation and your Cakewalk documentation before calling for support. Often the answer to your question is already in the manual! If you are really stuck, however, we are happy to help you. >>> Introduction The Cakewalk-Copyist File Interface is a pair of utilities that let you translate between Cakewalk's work files and The Copyist's stream files. There is a separate program for converting in each direction. Cake2Cpy converts files from Cakewalk to The Copyist. Cpy2Cake converts files from The Copyist to Cakewalk. Cakewalk ======= Cake2Cpy ========> Copyist Copyist ======= Cpy2Cake ========> Cakewalk You run these programs from the DOS command prompt, by typing their name and pressing . The utility will then prompt you for the names of the source file and the target file. This is discussed in more detail below. These utilities work by taking the source (original file) as input, and creating a new file that is the translation. The source file is not deleted or replaced. If, however, the target file exists, it will of course be replaced by the new translation. >>> What Is Translated? The Copyist is a conventional music notation (CMN) editor. It only understands notes, not the other kinds of MIDI events such as patch and wheel changes. Therefore, the conversion utilities can only translate MIDI note events. Unfortunately, this means that if you translate a work from Cakewalk to the Copyist and back, all events that aren't notes will be lost. The Cpy2Cake utility is, however, smart enough to check for an existing Cakewalk work file with the name you supply. If it finds one, it will preserve the track information from the original file: e.g., track names, active status, pitch and key transpositions, and so on. So at least you won't lose this information when converting back and forth. >>> Using Cake2Cpy: Converting from Cakewalk to The Copyist. Let's assume you have a Cakewalk file called BLUES.WRK. You want to create a Copyist stream file called BLUES.STR. To do so, enter the following at the DOS prompt: Cake2Cpy The program will then prompt you for the "source" file. This is the Cakewalk .WRK file you want to translate from. Enter BLUES.WRK The program will then prompt you for the "target" file. This is the new file you want to be created. By defalt, it will prompt you with a name that has the same base name as your source file but with a .STR extension: in this case, BLUES.STR. It will display: Target Stream File [BLUES.STR]: The name in brackets is the default name it will use if you press . Notice it formed the correct name for you. If you wanted to enter a completely different name, you could type it in now and press . >>> Loading the New Stream File Into the Copyist. Now that you've created a Copyist stream file, you will want to run the Copyist and edit it. You should consult your Copyist manual for details. But basically, you go into the edit mode and load the stream file using the "pr" command. After typing "pr", you will be prompted for the name of the stream file to read. The Copyist will then read in the stream file and display the results. >>> Converting a Copyist Music File to a Stream File. The Copyist does not normally store its material in stream files. Instead, it stores them in "Music Files." So, when you want to convert a Music File for use in Cakewalk, you must first convert the Music File to the intermediate stream file. The SYNTH program supplied with The Copyist lets you accomplish this. Consult your Copyist documentation for details. Just keep in mind that you want to convert a Music File to a stream file, and use the same root name for all of them. >>> Using Cpy2Cake: Converting from The Copyist to Cakewalk. Cpy2Cake converts stream files to Cakewalk work files. Refer to the previous section for how to produce a stream file from a music file. Cpy2Cake works just like Cake2Cpy, but in reverse. The "source file" is the Copyist stream file, and the "target file" is the Cakewalk work file. Refer to the section on using Cake2Cpy for details. >>> Using The CAKESHEL.BAT Feature Of Cakewalk To Automate Switching Between The Two Programs. As documented in the Cakewalk Reference Manual, the Shell command will look for a batch file named CAKESHEL.BAT. If it finds this file, it will execute it, rather than giving you the DOS command prompt. Morever, it passes an argument to the batch file, which is the root name of the current work. A "batch file" contains a series of commands, one per line, just as you would type them at the DOS prompt. When a batch file is run, this series of commands is executed one after another. (Consult your DOS manual for details.) This feature makes it possible to largely automate the sequence of events that you perform to go back and forth between Cakewalk and The Copyist. We have supplied a sample CAKESHEL.BAT file. You may need to change the drive letters and/or path names to suit your system setup. Note that the file is called CAKESHEL.$$$ on the Distribution Disk. You must rename it to CAKESHEL.BAT if you want Cakewalk to notice and use it! Here's an outline of the sequence of events. Items with a '-' are things done automatically for you by the CAKESHEL.BAT file. Items with a '*' are things that you must still do manually. * Record music in Cakewalk (obviously!). * Save your work, so it will be in the disk file for the conversion process. * Call up the File Shell command. - The CAKESHEL.BAT file will run: - Cake2Cpy is run and converts the work file to a Copyist stream file. - The Copyist is run. Once in the Copyist, you must: * Go into edit mode. * Use the "pr" command to read in the stream file. Its root name will be the same as your Cakewalk work file. * Do your editing stuff! * Save the music file. * Quit the Copyist. - Synth is run to convert the music file to a stream file. * You must supply the file name when it prompts you. - Cpy2Cake is run and converts the Copyist stream file back to a Cakewalk work file. - You are automatically returned to Cakewalk. * Load your work from the just-translated work file. In other words, you can use The Copyist in conjunction with Cakewalk as a conventional music notation (CMN) editor. You can record and play music in Cakewalk, then go edit it in The Copyist using CMN. When done, you can re-translate your work back to Cakewalk for more recording and performance. This whole set-up works fairly well for short pieces. The Copyist can be rather slow converting a Music File to a Stream File. So, you may want to try this out with a short piece at first. >>> Using "Switcher" Programs. An alternative to using the batch file method described above is to use a "switching utility" to quickly switch between Cakewalk and The Copyist. Examples of switching programs include "The Software Carousel" from SoftLogic Solutions. A switching utility lets you have more than one program loaded into memory at the same time. It does not let more than one actually execute at the same time, but the fact that they are co-resident means you do not waste time loading them. Even better, the utility preserves the state of each program, so it is just as you left it when you return to it. Just remember to Save and Load your work from Cakewalk. The conversion utilities work on disk files: it does not magically know what is in Cakewalk's memory!