A guide into what I'm doing on UltraBox on any given day.
So, I've pretty much defaulted to the variant of BeepBox known as Ultrabox for it's flexible options. But if you've ever wondered what my projects look like before they become MP3's (For Tumblr) then here's a neat guide! First off, As with BeepBox, the actual data is stored in the URL itself. Sharing this URL is difficult due to how long they can get, so TinyURL is generally considered ideal for sharing: Here's something I've been working on!
UltraBox is a mod of BeepBox that aims to combine every other beepmod into one.
Looks like another rehash of a Yuzo Koshiro piece from Etrian Odyssey III, who would have expected?! But what are we actually looking at here?
This area above is the first thing you should get to know. Play Song, Volume Bar File, Edit, and Preferences being the most immediate things to learn. Song Settings are also here, which is conveniently where you can adjust the tempo of a song. There's a lot to this section in terms of setting up all your resources and tools for the actual creating of music. Heck, you can even import a Midi File directly into the system if you want to skip all the sweaty work involved! More importantly, a lot of the settings and preferences here will affect what your workspace looks like. Speaking of which...
Here is your actual workspace. Think of this as an individual page. You can click to add notes and then drag with the mouse to do stuff like change how short or long they are, how loud or soft they play, and even stretch or taper them to do simple modifications to individual notes. Where are the rest of your pages, though?
Here's the array of all of the different channels and variations of them! This is also where you can mute, add, delete or change the names of your channels in addition to set up where you want the song to loop to and from. If anything seems to be missing from the workspace or library or you feel like you need more types of channels or options, going back to the File/Preferences section will often open up even more resources for you as it also contains features that let you modify instrument data and channel details. This can allow you to have multiple instruments per channel to save space. It's also where we get to do stuff like add in samples as viable instruments!
Listing the shortcuts is another reason to check out these dropdowns! Adding samples is pretty easy but not necessarily intuitive. After all, how can I add external files to a URL?
There's a link to more info on the actual Add Samples page but I'll provide an explanation myself here:
Host your files with decency.
FileGarden is basically a cloud service for soundfiles that then converts them into URL's. It might have been called SoundGarden in an alternate universe but anyway!
You can just copy this link, take it over the the UltraBox Add Sample feature and paste that link in and now it will be accessible for your song and anyone you share the URL with (As it is now part of the URL) provided that nothing goes down. Which is admittedly why I'm keen on having backups of all my samples and songs as actual media files on my computer. Just in case. Anyway, hopefully this is a little window into some of my favorite free online resources and a way to let you play around with the site and experiment on your own. Not to mention an excuse for me to share more music with people and maybe get them to make music of their own!