Know The Notes for Windows XP SP2, Vista SP1 and Windows 7 Version: 2.00.0102 Issued: 9 May 2010 Note: Windows 2000 is not currently supported, but may be at some point in the future. For Windows 98 Second Edition see http://www.littletyke.myzen.co.uk/ktn98se/index.html DISCLAIMER! PLEASE READ BEFORE CONTINUING: TO ANYONE WHO INTENDS TO TRY OUT THE APPLICATION: YOU MUST BE AWARE THAT I CAN ASSUME NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING THAT MAY GO WRONG WITH OR CAUSE HARM TO YOUR COMPUTER(S). You must assume that any software may contain bugs. While Know The Notes should work without any problems, I cannot be present when persons unknown install it and/or make use of it on their computer(s) and therefore I cannot second-guess all potential scenarios. I will run all files past a virus checker (AVG Free, version 9.0.819) before incorporating them in the Setup or ZIP file. WHAT IS KNOW THE NOTES? Know The Notes is a program to practise keyboard orientation at a piano or organ. You play a MIDI file, then watch the onscreen virtual keyboard 'play' the notes while you attempt to play along. You can slow down the tempo, filter out a range of notes, specify an extract of just a few bars with a start note and an end note, and set playback to loop several times. The help file, which you can download separately, explains how to use the application. NB: On Vista you may need to unblock the help file after unpacking the ZIP file (see below) in order to see its contents. Right-click on the help file KnowTheNotes.chm in the Know The Notes application folder, then select Properties and click the Unblock button. HOW TO INSTALL THE APPLICATION? A new kind of installation procedure has been adopted for Know The Notes. This takes advantage of the registration-free COM technology in newer versions of Windows, such as Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The files comprising the package only need be copied into a new folder on your hard drive or on a USB memory stick. This reduces the risk considerably of existing files on your PC becoming overwritten or deleted inadvertently. No files need be copied into ..\Windows or ..\Windows\System32 or into any other folder. Step By Step 1. Download KTNnnnn.ZIP to your PC where nnn is the current version. The total file size after unzipping is around 3MB. 2. Create a new folder, for example: C:\Program Files\Know The Notes or: C:\Users\Public\Know The Notes or: C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Know The Notes You can choose any suitable location provided you have read/write access to it. You also do not have to name the new folder Know The Notes. You can use any folder name that you wish. 3. Unzip ALL files from KTNnnnn.ZIP into the new, empty folder. Check afterwards that the DEPS folder is present within the application folder. View the picture Folder Structure.jpg for a list of the files contained in the application folder and subfolder DEPS after unzipping. 4. Open the folder and find the application KnowTheNotes.Exe (the icon looks like a piano keyboard). Double-click it to run the application. 5. You can create a shortcut on your desktop to point to KnowTheNotes.Exe so that you can run it immediately in future. Note: When you install the application your target folder should be a brand-new folder and thus completely empty of any files. If you are updating a previous version, I suggest you create a brand-new folder, since several files have been updated, some replaced and some added. Also, in some previous versions the subfolder DEPS was absent. This is now mandatory. RUNNING THE APPLICATION 1. Run the program by clicking directly on KnowTheNotes.Exe or on its shortcut if you have created one. 2. Click on File/Open Sample.Mid, then click on the Playback button. 3. Use Help/Contents or press F1 to open the Help file and read it for more detailed information. MOVING THE APPLICATION TO ANOTHER DRIVE OR PC Once installed, you can move or copy the application folder to another drive or PC. Just make sure that any shortcut to the KnowTheNotes.Exe file is modified accordingly to point to the new location. You can also move or copy the folder to a USB memory stick and run it from there. Modify the shortcut or create an additional shortcut as appropriate. Also see the document Running from CD-ROM or DVD.txt FILE LIST No file is to be copied to the Windows\System or Windows\System32 folders. View the picture Folder Structure.jpg for a list of the files contained in the application folder and subfolder DEPS after unzipping. It is the Manifest file which tells Windows how to run the application and how to load the ActiveX (OCX) controls and other files contained in the same folder or the DEPS subfolder. Do not delete or rename the Manifest file, else the program will no longer run. CHANGES SINCE VERSION 2.0.25 (31/October/2009) New features added: - Display Data in Hexadecimal - Edit Event Data - Build-A-Chord - Drop-Down Lists - Control the program via MIDI input from a piano (must have MIDI interface) - Sample chords file, chords.kch, added All these are fully explained in the help file. The help file has itself been considerably restructured and now contains more detailed descriptions of the various features. The skin has been dropped. This caused too much flickering on newer operating systems, which supply quite a nice look and feel anyway. CHANGES SINCE VERSION 2.0.24 (27/October/2009) - It was possible to type a letter into the Loop Count field. This field should only accept digits. This bug has been fixed in 2.0.25. CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.0.150 (14/August/2009 - limited test release) The following is just a summary. For more details see the help file. - A separate folder, DEPS, has been added to the application folder. This contains particular supporting files which used to be in the application folder. Make sure you retain this new structure. - Type 1 MIDI files are now converted on the fly to Type 0 by creating a temporary file in the application folder named t_e_m_p_m_i_d_i_0.mid, which is used again and again each time a Type 1 is opened. The original Type 1 file is not changed in any way and the conversion is very rapid. - Playback controls have been moved to the main form and the separate Playback form has been removed. - The hexadecimal display form has been removed, as it was only conceived as an aid to bug-fixing. - The application is now much more responsive. In previous versions, playback stopped whenever a form was moved or any similar action was carried out. This no longer happens, or if it does, the effect is minimal. - More detailed help file provided. - Main program settings are automatically saved in an .ini file. This is in line with previous versions. However, in the latest version you can additionally save and load playback settings using separate configuration files. - A Now! button has been added to the playback function to record the current MIDI event to an internal scratchpad. - Addition of a tempo scrollbar to change tempo during playback. - Minor cosmetic enhancements to information grid. CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.0.140 (9/June/2009) - Tab order and shortcut keys corrected on main form. - If a Type 1 MIDI file is loaded, the Convert to 0 button now gets the focus, otherwise the Playback button gets the focus. This is to streamline the sequence of events: File/Open/Convert/Save/Playback/OK should just require pressing the Enter key in each case. - A Yellow Screen (unforeseen) error occurred if Change Tempo was clicked when the adjacent tempo box was blank. Note that the tempo box is immediately highlighted when the tempo is edited, until the Change Tempo button is clicked to confirm the change. - If Enter was pressed on the Playback button on main form while the mouse pointer was over the same button, no playback ensued until the mouse was moved. - Hex display form: Could no longer move to next/previous event in the hex display by using the cursor/arrow keys. This was introduced after the buttons were changed to a different kind. This is now fixed. CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.0.136 (8/June/2009) - Improved error message if read-only media is detected while updating the .ini (configuration) file. Note that you can still use the application from read-only media, although the .ini file won't be updated between sessions. See elsewhere in this document for more information on read-only media. CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.0.109 (February 2009) - Skinning method optimised. This explains why the new version is a lot smaller. Also, some of the buttons look slightly different, but access (hot) keys have been added. Thus, you can press Alt+P to access the Playback key, or Alt+T to 'click' the Change Tempo button. Look for the underscore in the button captions. - Major bug fixed: A Yellow Screen error occurred if Know The Notes was started when another application already had control of the MIDI device. - Major bug fixed: A Yellow Screen error occurred if File/Open Sample.Mid was attempted while playback was in progress. - The hex display form is now resizable so that it can be dragged wider or narrower to align the data and text columns nicely when a different font size is set in Windows Display Settings. The default is assumed to be Small Fonts (96 dpi). The new form size will be remembered between sessions. - The Readme.Rtf file has been dropped. It was too much hassle to keep it in sync with Readme.Txt (this file). TROUBLESHOOTING If the program does not work, please check the following: 1. Does your PC have at least one MIDI output device (see main form)? This is an essential requirement. 2. Has another music-based program (CD player, DVD movie viewer, sequencer etc) currently got exclusive control of your MIDI output device? If so, exit from the other program and try again. 3. Make sure your speaker output is not on mute! 4. If the program's screens do not 'look right' on your PC, please bear in mind that it was developed with Windows 98 Second Edition. Windows XP and Vista provide a Compatibility feature to help ensure that older programs (older in terms of the operating system used for development) continue to run. You can search for Compatibility in Windows Help, but for a quick exercise, try this to improve the appearance of the program if it doesn't look like the image on the Know The Notes web site: Assuming you have created an application shortcut, most likely on the desktop, go to the shortcut and right-click on it. If you haven't created a shortcut, right-click on the application icon (KnowTheNotes.Exe). Select Properties (last menu item). You'll now get another pop-up with several tabs, one of which is Compatibility. The first section on this tab is Compatibility mode. I suggest you first try selecting: Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows 98. If that doesn't help, try checking the box marked Disable visual themes. You can mix and match the various options until you find a combination that works better for you. The setting(s) you choose will be remembered the next time you run Know The Notes. If the program crashes with an error message, please report it, along with a brief description of what action(s) were being performed when the error occurred. Contrary to previous versions, the log file is now disabled by default. If you want to reinstate the log file, add the line LogFolder=App.Path under [Main] in KnowTheNotes.ini. This will create a log file in the application folder. In the case of a persistent error, you may wish to invoke logging for a few program sessions until the error situation arises, then return a copy of the log file with your bug report. The log file can be deleted from time to time if it gets very large. It will be automatically re-created the next time the program starts. Alternatively, if you no longer need logging, edit the KnowTheNotes.Ini file and remove the line in the [Main] section that reads: LogFolder=. Without this line, the application will know to disable logging completely. NB: Windows is a Registered Trademark of Microsoft Corporation Massive kudos to Olaf Schmidt of http://thecommon.net/index.html for his additional thread routines that make the application so much more responsive. Special thanks goes to Arthur Edstrom, who allowed me to base the way the keyboard is drawn on sections first published in Visual Basic Multimedia Adventure Set, 1994. Also, thanks to the following, in no particular order: The author of Make My Manifest without whose efforts this program would not have been released for XP et seq. SoftCircuits for their freeware VB-Helper DLL that contains several useful procedures. Rod Stephens for the MRU (most recently used) code. Neo Components for their Scrollerii control that allows the keyboard to be scrolled nicely. Jeff Pearson for the ButtonEx user control that makes the fancy buttons possible. Numerous other programs gave me the idea for Know The Notes. Probably the one that stands out the most is from a French author, Apophis, for his (maybe a her) "Piano Virtuel MIDI". Thanks to all. Website: http://www.littletyke.myzen.co.uk/ktn/index.html Feedback: http://tykeshed.webng.com/index.html (See topic: Feedback on Know The Notes) If the feedback website is unobtainable, please email me at kylix_is AT yahoo dot co dot uk