Music Construction Set !!

[6/15/2009] THIS JUST IN!... I've deciphered the MCS file format and have written some tools that can accurately parse and produce information about MCS files!! I'm well on the way to producing a tool that will convert any existing MCS tunes into MIDI... and even better, a tool that can create MCS tunes from simple text files! Keep posted on this page - I'll be posting all the details here!

I'm not going to attempt a MIDI to MCS converter... sorry, MIDI has way too many variables and the limitations of the MCS format would be way too much of a challenge for 99% of MIDI files out there. But I will be making a tool in which you can punch out tunes in a text file and have them converted to playable MCS songs!

Welcome! This website is a shrine and a tribute to what could be considered one of the best (and earliest) music composition programs for in-home use. Forget Cakewalk, forget Pro Tools, forget all of your fancy multitrack stuff... This is classic stuff! On this website you'll find information about Music Construction Set, what it is, how you can run it, and be able to download some tunes that I myself have composed in the program (in both native MCS format and in MP3 audio format).

This website focuses on the IBM PC version of Music Construction Set. It was also available for such computers as the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Atari ST, and the Amiga.

So just what is Music Construction Set?

Music Construction Set was originally programmed by Will Harvey. He wrote it for the Apple II computer in assembly language at the age of only 15. For more information about the history of Music Construction Set, please consult the Wikipedia article.

The version we're focusing on with this website is the IBM PC version. This version could run on any classic IBM PC computer (such as the IBM XT) but it was best run on a Tandy 1000 or an IBM PCjr computer. Why? Because on these computers, the program could make use of the TI SN76496 sound generator chip featured on these systems to provide true three-note polyphony!

If you ran the Music Construction Set on an IBM PC, you were in fact offered the option of four-voice polyphony, but this was "pseudo-polyphony" and did not sound all that great. It was accomplished by precisely controlling the PC speaker to attempt to produce and multiplex four note frequencies. Many combinations of notes just didn't sound right at all, and others sounded kind of ok but still sounded fuzzy and not very discernable. With the PCjr or the Tandy 1000, you could experience true three-voice polyphony without any special speaker tricks.

What can you do with Music Construction Set?

Music Construction Set is a musical notation program. It was quite possibly the first program to allow a home computer user to program music into the computer simply by laying down various musical notation symbols on a musical staff. The program did the work of converting the musical notation entered into music which could be played through the computer speaker.

The program also has some other great features such as these:

• 13 different sounds, from piano-ish sounds to flute-like sounds to percussive noises. Assignable independently to the treble or bass staff.
• Independent volume controls for the two staves, 12 levels plus mute
• 13-position speed (tempo) slider
• Four time-signature options: 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, and 2/4
• Song key selection; after selecting the key the proper symbols are placed before the song to ensure all sharps and flats are in place.
• Cut and paste (!) up to 9 measures from either staff.
• Scrolling musical staff scrolls during playback
• Enables output of staff to compatible graphics printers
• Demo mode will cycle through designated songs on the currently loaded diskette

While the program may not seem very powerful, for its day it was quite a move forward. Today, people take musical notation software for granted; there are many available titles for all varieties of operating systems. But largely, it started here, with the classic Music Construction Set.

Why this website?

When I was a young boy I received Music Construction Set as a present. Our family had an IBM PCjr computer that it ran perfectly on. I myself have been a piano player since a very young age, and thus was immediately hooked on the program. I found myself spending hours composing tunes, experimenting, and just having a good time. Sadly, many of the tunes I did compose are lost to bad 5.25" floppies, but some have survived (and are archived here, as you'll see shortly.) Even to this very day I sometimes take a little break to punch out a tune that's stuck in my head into Music Construction Set. Now that I'm older I have more appreciation for what is happening here: three square wave generators being carefully manipulated to make what you hope sounds like music. You'll see a clear difference in tunes I composed as a young child and tunes I've composed recently.

This program truly was my introduction to computerized music. Today I work with MIDI, using keyboards and various software programs to compose music. But I had to start somewhere, and for me that somewhere was MCS. I'm amazed that I can still run it today, even though our PCjr is long gone.

What's that? You can run Music Construction Set on a modern computer?

Yes! It's possible to run Music Construction Set on most any modern computer today.

Well, how??

It's a secret. ;-)

Just kidding. You can run it using DOSBox, a free open-source DOS emulator that runs under any modern operating system, from Windows to Linux to Mac OS X (on Intel hardware as far as I know). DOSBox fully emulates the TI SN76496 sound chip so you can experience three-voice polyphony exactly as it would have sounded on a PCjr or Tandy 1000!

The basic procedure of getting MCS running works like this:

• Get DOSBox installed and running. Go to http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ to read up on DOSBox and download a copy.
• Configure DOSBox to emulate a Tandy computer. You'll need to edit the configuration file to do this. If you're running Windows, you'll find the configuration file as an option in the Start menu group for easy access. You will want to change the "machine" parameter from "vga" to "tandy".
• Get a copy of Music Construction Set. Music Construction Set was published by Electronic Arts. As far as I know they still hold the copyright on this title, hence I do not feel comfortable distributing it here. If you do a little Web searching, though, you just might find it. ;-) The version most often used for this is the "hacked" version, which runs as an .EXE file. The original version was a boot disk that ran directly from startup. I don't know if this version will work in DOSBox, however.
• Create an MCS diskette. At this point I'm going to assume you're using the hacked version. This version comes in two variants: MCS.EXE and MCSDISK.EXE. The MCS.EXE program is highly modified to be able to operate from a hard drive. I've had mixed success with this but I don't really trust it. MCSDISK.EXE is basically the original version from the floppy, ripped into an EXE with a custom loader tacked on. This is the version we will use.
• Windows users. You can use a program such as WinImage (free shareware version available) to create a 360KB disk image containing MCS. Launch WinImage, create a new image, and choose 360KB. Then drag MCSDISK.EXE along with any song files you want onto the floppy. Save the image, but make sure you save it as an uncompressed image (.IMA)! If you use compressed image format (.IMZ) DOSBox won't be able to load the floppy.
• Linux users. Linux has everything you need built in. You can create a blank disk image of the exact size by executing this command:

  dd if=/dev/zero of=mcs.img bs=1024 count=360

  This command tells Linux to create an empty file of 360KB in size. Then create a DOS filesystem on the image by executing:

  mkfs.msdos mcs.img

  After this, mount the image somewhere, say /mnt/floppy, with:

  mount -t msdos -o loop mcs.img /mnt/floppy

  The "-t msdos" ensures Linux accesses the disk in "true" DOS format, excluding any long filenames and other modern stuff. MCS might get confused by this stuff. Copy the files to the disk image, then unmount it.
• Mount the MCS image inside of DOSBox. The command for this is:

  imgmount a (path-to-image) -t floppy

• Run MCS! Switch to the A: drive by typing

  A:

  Then simply type

  MCSDISK

  and watch Music Construction Set come alive on your moderm PC!

So how do you use it?

I'm trying to acquire a copy of the manual. Once I find that I'll be posting it here. It's a bit too in-depth for me to describe myself, but just tinker around. You'll find some stuff out yourself. Here's a hint: point to the Disk icon then hit Enter to enter command mode. Here's where you can save, load, and so on. Type help at the prompt for command help. To get out of the command mode hit enter on a blank line.

Let's hear some samples!

Many samples and audio files are located on the songs page!

This page's content is copyright (C) 2007-2009 by Flint Million.
MCS demo songs, and the MCS program, are copyright Electronic Arts.