Guide:Bosca Ceoil: The Blue Album

In-game Guide

The in-game guide is in a bit of an annoying format: a series of pop-ups you have to click through. Okay for an introduction, but not great if you want to check it later. So I'm putting a version of it here:—

All Tabs

All tabs show the pattern editor in the lower ⅔s of the screen

• Left click anywhere in the pattern editor to place a note.
• You can delete notes with Right click, or Ctrl+Left click.
• You can reach higher and lower notes with the scrollbar on the right, or by pressing the ↑ and ↓ keys.
• Use the Mouse wheel to change the length of a note before you place it (Or press Shift+arrow keys).
• The + and - buttons at the bottom of the window transpose notes in the current pattern: making them all higher or lower.
• You can change the scale and key of a pattern with the menu in the bottom right. When you're using a scale, notes which are not in that scale are removed from the pattern. Limiting yourself to a given scale can be a handy way to make things sound good when you're learning to write music.

Shortcuts

• Space - Play/pause
• Ctrl+z - Undo
• Ctrl+Shift+z - Redo
• Ctrl+s - Save
• Ctrl+Alt+s - Save as a copy
• Esc - Quit

Arrangement Tab

The Arrangement tab is where you put your song together, building it up one pattern at a time.

• Create a new pattern by clicking the 'ADD NEW' button.
• Drag your new pattern from the list on the right to the spot below the original pattern. Now you can edit this pattern and hear both playing together! (image 2)
• You can copy patterns by dragging them, and remove them with right-click.
• The thin line below the pattern arrangements is called the Timeline. If you left-click on a section of the timeline, the song will loop over that section. (image 4)
• Hold and drag over multiple sections to play them all.
• You can double-click anywhere on the timeline to play the entire song from that point.
• When you're arranging your song, something you'll probably want to do a lot is to make slight variations of your patterns. You can do this by making duplicates. To duplicate a pattern, middle-click on it (You can also use Shift+Left-click).
• You can delete a pattern by dragging it to the bottom right of the window, onto the 'DELETE?' button that appears.

Shortcuts

• ← and → - Scroll
• Mouse wheel - Change grid scale
• Middle-click on timeline - Insert empty column before current one.
• Right-click on timeline - Delete all patterns in column.
• Ctrl+c - Copy patterns currently selected by timeline.
• Ctrl+p - Paste patterns at cursor location.

Instrument tab

This is where you choose the instruments you want to use in your song.

• Click on 'ADD NEW INSTRUMENT' to be given a new instrument at random.
• If you don't like that one, pick a new one from the menus to the right. The first is for broad categories, the second for instruments within that category.
• If the instrument is too loud, you can adjust its volume with the 'VOL' slider on the right.
• You can change what instrument a pattern uses from the menu down here in the bottom left. (image)
• You can change how an instrument sounds with the 'filter pad'. Move the square around to play with cutoff and resonance values.
• If you press the 'REC' button on the bottom of the screen you can record changes on the filter pad, so you can change sounds over time.

Other Guides

• How to make Music for your Game - BOSCA CEOIL - Pretty good guide video to the original version, but gets off to a bad start with him making a joke about pronunciation—it's right there on the website pal.

See Also

• Bosca Ceoil: The Blue Album