Ok, I found me a copy of Musica, too. But can someone give me a very short introduction, like "Musica for dummies"? I just need to know the very basics: load a file, start replay, pause and resume replay.

(No, trying another tracker, editor, whatever is not gonna help me, unless you know another program that reads/handles Musica's MML files)

[edit: I've loaded the MML file into gvim (yes, that's jst a plain text editor) at the moment and that doesn't really help. I can figure out only about 50% of the commands]

I've used it quite a bit during the MSX days. You can use mml language specified in for example the FM-pac. Musica has extra additions for detuning channels (Qx - x=amount) and pitch slide (Zx = x=portamento speed):

I have here some samples which might get you 'on track' so to speak.
http://www.rgp.nl/cx5m/musicamusic.zip
There's also a voice file with it, load it first, I might have made some custom instruments.

I also had a working BGM replay routine so basic programs could play the musica files in the background but unfortunately that disk now has a lot of 'cyclyc redundancy errors' so that's lost... maybe it's on some japanese disc magazine? The player binary can be found on msxarchive.nl

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detuning channels (Qx - x=amount) and pitch slide (Zx = x=portamento speed)

Ah, thanx, thta's the kind of info I'm looking for
I guess that [ ... ]4 repeats the part within the brackets 4 times?
I've also seen commands like /1 and /2 ... What does that do?

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I have here some samples which might get you 'on track' so to speak. http://www.rgp.nl/cx5m/musicamusic.zip There's also a voice file with it, load it first, I might have made some custom instruments.

Well, there you have problem number 1: how do I load a file into Musica?

Hint: use ESCAPE (to switch to mode80 - a far better read) and the function keys F1 to F5.

Hm... Problem number 2 is that the MML file I'm trying to read has a different format than the ones from the above mentioned ZIP file, so I'm starting to wonder whether the file I'm looking at actually is a Musica file at all

This LZH file contains the MML file which I'm trying to decypher...

MGS = MGsel, that's another Japanese MML player. AFAIK there is no editor/tracker for it, but you can convert musica to MGS. See more information, entirely in Japanese, over here.

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MGS = MGsel, that's another Japanese MML player. AFAIK there is no editor/tracker for it, but you can convert musica to MGS. See more information, entirely in Japanese, over here.

Apparently there is a tool, MGSC, that 'compiles' the MML in text format (.MML) to binary format (.MGS). Specification of the MML format is here, but of course in unreadable japanese gibberish

grit: is it OK to add your MML examples to our Downloads database?

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Hint: use ESCAPE (to switch to mode80 - a far better read) and the function keys F1 to F5.

Interesting...
ESC brings up some menu (one line of options on the bottom of the screen) , but I can't find an option to switch to 80 columns mode
F1, F3 and F4 don't do sh..t,
F2 makes the cursor jump down and
F5 just gives "syntax error"

Different version maybe? I found mine deep down in the dungeons of my disk collection...

You press ESC and then DEL or END something, can't remember completely, you can add the MML to downloads, I remember now that Q is not channel offset but note cutoff for staccato playing, I think it's also in the FMPAC MML. I can dive into it a bit later on, have more MML examples. There used to be a musica disk from -i think- 'The Techno Crew' where these examples are compiled and played, 'omega' might know more about this.

That omnifario is indeed not MuSICA format.

I put a disk image with the MuSICA I used online. Translated it myself in the old days and converted it as a bootdisk because sometimes the program hanged when there were two drives present. When you boot, it asks you if you use a normal SCC (any other then (SD) Snatcher) when there's not enough free BASIC RAM it resets and asks you to boot with CTRL pressed.

http://www.cx5m.net/msx/musicadisk.zip

So: Z = channel detune
() = bind notes, together with P<x> (x=speed) it can produce a glissando effect

I found another replay.bin on another disk, put it all together on this one and made a working basic example so you can play exported .bgm music in the background of your basic programs.

Cool! Thx