New user guide available!

Official support for: musicdevelopments.com
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

The new, more detailed user guide is published today on our website. Feel free to study it, and send your comments, requests in this thread.

Direct link for your convenience:
http://www.musicdevelopments.com/manual.pdf

Post

This user guide is just a stop gap. Any comments/requests will only be considered for the v2 manuals.
I miss MindPrint. My TRIO needs a big brother.

Post

Thanks for this ... a very welcome addition to the documentation ...looking forward to v2. My preference is for a single column manual with a little more white space on each page - should help with readability. Assume v2 manual will include more about generators and perhaps something about editing those txt files. Alphabetical index at the end?

Post

There will be 2-3 manuals for v2:

- Reference Manual - Most, if not all, functions in systematic order (by Menu/Tab/Panel etc.). This will include an Index.
- User Guide - The main functions explained in a workflow context. Contents only, no Index.
- Quick Start - A brief overview of the basic functions.

The Quick Start may not be possible, as there may be no basic functionality to single out. It may require a more in depth approach, and so will overlap with the User Guide too much to justify doing one.

That's what happened with the v1 User Guide. Hence this, and the quick turnaround, lead to it being a bit more condensed than usual. Also I thought the supplemental information in the Appendix was important. All this, and I still wanted it to be under 25 pages, led to the format. I can open it up more for the v2 ones.

The 2 column approach was to make the viewable size better in Wide Screen displays, as RapidComposer is better in these too. I do consider iDevices when formatting, and it does displays well on these. However, there will be more screenshots in the v2 manuals, so this may lead to a 1 column format being better.
I miss MindPrint. My TRIO needs a big brother.

Post

Sounds good.

Post

I made some small additions to the manual. They are just clarifications and concern tracks being common to all Lines/Verses.

The updated manual is available now, at the same URL.
I miss MindPrint. My TRIO needs a big brother.

Post

Thanks for the update... believe me, we're going to need a new manual entirely, after version 2.3 comes out... :) in a good way, I mean!

Post

Hi themixtape! :)

You replied to a post which is exactly one year old.
The bad news is Nigel had changed his mind. Even if we agreed that he would work on the V2 manual, he decided that he did not want to do it. Will he change his mind again? I hope so :)

Nigel, we miss you!

Attila

Post

Quick update for all RC users... I've been working very hard on the revised manual for version 2.3... I'm basically at 70 pages now. I would assume when everything is said and done, it will probably be a 100-page PDF. In addition to all the tutorials already completed, and ones that will be referenced to in the manual, I believe both will greatly help all RC users realize the potential and the power of the program.

As soon as MusicDevelopments finalizes the latest update (our goal was today but it might be a few more weeks), the new manual will be launched when the new update comes out (and I'm hoping to get the chapter-based tutorials done before that time, too).

Thanks again for your interest in and support of the program!

-Chris

Post

Thx mixtape! Appreciate the work. I'm using RC more these and am finding your videos to be a great resource.

Post

I was wondering, in the v2 manuals, will there be information and details on what the generator parameters do? They seem cryptic to me, and having info on the many parameters and what they do, would be very helpful and give me more control over creatively generating random inspiration.

Post

Every parameter is described in the V2.5 manual. It will be updated with more information about the new generators. In the meantime, we suggest you check out the video tutorials on the Music Developments site, especially the ones about Generators and tweaking them.

Sometimes it's better to just try things out, than to analyze them mathematically. I find a lot of RC users just love to experiment til they get a generator "tweaked" the way they like best.

Have fun!

Post

themixtape wrote:Every parameter is described in the V2.5 manual. It will be updated with more information about the new generators. In the meantime, we suggest you check out the video tutorials on the Music Developments site, especially the ones about Generators and tweaking them.

Sometimes it's better to just try things out, than to analyze them mathematically. I find a lot of RC users just love to experiment til they get a generator "tweaked" the way they like best.

Have fun!
Yes. And, Chris, you have made a huge work!

The development of RapidComposer is at a point now that if all the details were to write in a manual... it would be necessary to write probably a manual of 500 pages (I don't laugh, here, I really think it is the general idea).

It is sure that a reference manual is an ideal, but I think that the most important will be to present globally the purpose of each of these features and inspectors and generators (all, of course), but after that, come back to a more general explanation of the way the slides work (the bounds, the position 0 at the center or at a bound, the concept of percentages and linear or nonlinear scales, the importance of the randomization in certain computations, etc.) and the different lines of the composition editor (without forgetting the MIDI event lines), then simply make a short descriptive of what are the parameters of each generator, inspector, etc. but without enter in the details, and remind some of the best online glossaries (Wikipedia or other encyclopedies, or the Music Theory KVR forum or even excellent websites of music concepts to prevent the totally beginning user in music to have to buy an expensive book). And something very, very important: ensure the coherence of the mouse gestures and accelerator keys (and the exhaustivity of their list in the manual).

Merely by doing that... it may fill at least 200 pages. At least !

Sure that these explanations will be really necessary, it is an evidence. But I think that all along the text of the manual, it will be important to encourage the user to experiment, experiment, and still experiment. Because with the necessary explanations about the concepts (it is the minimum of course) the best way to learn a tool like this one with so many features (but in fact with very often the same gestures) is... to experiment in short scores as successive exercices for all these concepts. Nothing is never destroyed in an experimentation. It's like the research in sciences: we fix a target to reach, we learn the useful concepts in music if they are not already assimilated (they are necessarily prerequisites) because it is fundamental to understand what we do, and then we experiment, and we analyse quietly the result to understand why we success or why we fail, then we re-experiment, and so on... until the success. Very quickly the good habits will be assimilated by this method and the most important concepts too.

And with the help (questions/responses, exchanges of ideas, homemade screenshots, creations of little videos by one or another one as tutorial for ONE problem, etc.) of the present community around Attila, all that can happen very quickly for everyone, even the newbyes, up to the success.
Build your life everyday as if you would live for a thousand years. Marvel at the Life everyday as if you would die tomorrow.
I'm now severely diseased since September 2018.

Post

The manual was updated to include all new features until v2.7.
It is available now on-line (http://www.musicdevelopments.com/manual.pdf) and will be included in the next releases.

I must thank Chris Caulder (http://oustedrecords.bandcamp.com/) again for his work on the manual! :clap:

Thanks!
Attila

Post

Great job guys! :tu:

RC just keeps getting better! :D

Thanks for all the hard work making it so. :tu:

Happy Musiking!
dsan
My DAW System:
W7, i5, x64, 8Gb Ram, Edirol FA-101

Post Reply

Return to “MusicDevelopments”