::|CONTENTS
- Noteable Characteristics
- Setting up PMD
- Learning PMD MML
Professional Music Driver (PMD) is an IBM DOS program developed by M.Kajihara which utilizes
MML (Music Macro Language) to create music files for most japanese computers of the 80's and early 90's.
Noteable Characteristics
PMD can be used to make music for the PC-98, PC-88, X68000, and FM Towns. It's the most used tool to make music for the PC-x801 series, notable examples are Touhou Project and Grounseed.
It has a series of additions in comparison to other tools used to make music in those platforms that would make coding much easier, such as predefined SSG drums, envelopes and the possibility of using macros.
Setting up PMD
Things you're gonna need:
1 -
MC.exe and
MCH.exe
2 - DOSBOX for running MC.exe
3 - A music player of your choice
First, get all the dependencies. Setup DOSBOX, extract the MC and MCH compiler kits to some directory. You can't run these in windows, so you'll need to mount whatever folder you extracted MC.EXE and MCH.EXE to, to DOSBOX (preferably, you'll have an autoexec setup to do this every time you open it.)
Setup an MML folder in the directory with MC. To compile your MML file, all you'll need to do is type in MC /v MML/[yourfilehere].
This will give you a .M or a .M2, depending on what you wrote for the preprocessor in the actual MML file. You can play these back with FMPMD2000 or any playback program of your choice.
Notes:
• When a folder is mounted to a drive in DOSBOX, you can provide live edits and simply recompile without having to restart your virtual machine.
• You can write a batch file to automatically seek out the correct directory of your mml, and compile whatever you need to compile!
• My directory looks like: C:/PMD/ (all the stuff is contained here) so that when the folder is mounted, there is access to all my MML.
• FMPMD2000 requires no special setup! Simply extract all the components to the same folder and you can play the .M files that MC.EXE compiles.
• The /v option is what writes the voices to the output. If you don't specify this on MC or on your script, your file will not make sound!
Learning PMD MML
While we're working on our own tutorial for n00bz, check
Noyemi K.'s PMD Guide which has some basic information (REALLY basic), and once you feel like you've learned enough from that, read the
Translation of PMDMML.MAN (currently incomplete) for more info
Professional Music Driver Effects Commands
