miniMusic BugBand
Version 1.0 DEMO
11/22/99

Instructions are available on your Palm in the BugBand application.  You can view them by tapping on the question mark in the top left corner, or by choosing "Instructions" from the Options menu.

About Playing Guitar:
When you choose the guitar instrument in BugBand you will only see about half of the guitar's neck on the screen.  You can imagine this neck continuing to the right with the body of the guitar (the big part with the hole in it if it's an acoustic guitar) off the screen to the right.  On the left side of the screen is the top of the neck, off the side of the screen to the left would be the head of the guitar where the screws for tuning the strings would be located.  The long horizontal lines on screen are the strings (there are six of them) and the vertical lines are the 'frets'.  There is a double line at the top (left side) of the fretboard, and then seven frets on screen.

If you are new to guitar, choose "Practice" from the pop-up menu in the top right corner.  This will add labels to each of the strings on the left side.  The thickest or "lowest" string is at the bottom of the screen (the low E string) and the strings become higher pitched as you progress up to the top (the high E string).  To play different notes, you hold down a string BETWEEN the frets and then pluck the string.  BugBand will just assume that you are plucking the strings, so all you have to worry about is where to hold the string down.  If you were to pluck a string without holding it down anywhere on the neck you would be playing the "open string".  The letter name of the string is the note you will hear when you play the open string.  To play the open string in BugBand, tap on the string to the left of the double line.  This is where the letter names are in the practice level so you can simply tap directly on the letter name).  On a real guitar, touching the string beyond this top fret would have no effect on the pitch of the string, so it would be the same as plucking or strumming the open string.

When you tap a string between the other frets, you will hear a note of a higher pitch than the open string.  Each fret you move over to the right will raise the note by a half step (similar to moving one key over to the right on a piano).  So if you tap one of the E strings just to the right of the double line you will hear an F note which is a half step higher than an E.  If you tap the same spot on the B string you will hear a C which is a half step higher than a B.

To move from a B to a C, or from an E to a F you need only go up a half step.  To move between all other letters (from a C to a D, or from a G to an A for example) you must go up a whole step.  A whole step is equal to two half steps and requires you to move two frets to the right instead of one.  If you only move one fret you will hear a sharp note.  For example: if you move one fret over from a G, you will hear a G-sharp (which is the same as an A-flat) and must move another fret over to the right to play an A.

About Playing Piano:
BugBand will start with a piano by default.  If you are new to piano choose "Practice" from the pop-up menu in the top right corner.  In the practive level all of the white keys will be labelled and the musical staff above will also be labelled with the same letters.  When you are playing BugBand you simply need to match the letters on the piano to the letters on the lines and spaces of the staff.

This will get you through the first few levels, but then accidentals will appear (Not available in the Demo version).  An accidental is a small symbol just in front of (to the left of) a note, or in this case a bug.  In BugBand you will see sharps (#) and flats (b) appear in front of bugs in some of the higher levels.  These symbols mean to move one half step up (for sharps) or one half step down (for flats).  To do this you will use the black keys.  To play a sharp note you will tap the black key immediately to the right, and to play a flat note you will tap the black key immediately to the left of the appropriate white key.

For example, lets say you see a bug crawling in the space labelled "F".  You would play this F by tapping on the left-most white key you see on the screen.  If the bug had a sharp (#) in front of her you would instead tap the black key you see just to the right of the F; this is the F-sharp.  You would also tap this exact same black key if you saw a Bug on the G line with a flat (b) in front of it.  This same black key can be an F-sharp or a G-flat.

About MIDI:
If you connect your Palm to a MIDI instrument (like a synthesiser, keyboard, or sampler) you can hear notes actually sound like a piano or guitar.  You can also play notes on the attached MIDI instrument instead of tapping on the screen.  This way you could learn piano on a full size keyboard instead of the little tiny one on the screen.

The easiest way to make this connection is if you have a MIDI instrument with a serial port on the back of it.  This is a small round port (a little smaller than the big round MIDI-in and MIDI-out ports) and is often labelled "host" or "to host".  This port is designed to connect the instrument to a computer without additional hardware (to use the MIDI ports you would need something called a MIDI interface).  Your Palm handheld just happens to be a computer, and the HotSync port on the bottom just happens to be a serial port (the Handspring Visor has a USB port and is more difficult to connect to MIDI).  All you need to connect your Palm to such a MIDI instrument is the HotSync cable or cradle that came with your Palm, and the Mac Serial Adapter (which converts the wide connecter of the HotSync cable to the small round serial adapter used by older Macintosh computers and by MIDI instruments).  You may have to set a switch on the Back of the MIDI instrument to use the serial port.  Consult the manual that came with the instrument for details on connecting to a computer.

For more information, and for older instruments that do not have this serial port, see our web page about MIDI: www.5thwall.com/minimusic/midi.html


We hope you enjoy playing BugBand!  Please visit our website to find out how to buy and download the full version.
www.5thwall.com/minimusic/buy.html

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