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Player 0.1

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@chjmartin2 chjmartin2 released this 06 Jul 19:17
v0.1.0
118de6b

First shareable release: a player, viewer, and complete reverse-engineered
format spec for Will Harvey's Music Construction Set (IBM-PC, 1984).

Highlights

  • Tracker-style viewer: 32nd-note grid, 4 voices ranked high-to-low,
    PITCH:DUR notation with dotted/tied/irregular markers, 8va + clef events
  • Playback with a real transport: pause/resume, click-to-seek, live volume,
    scrolling playhead
  • "PC Speaker" voice: faithful model of the original 4-voice 1-bit output
  • Oscilloscope window: four voice scopes + a master mix
  • WAV and tracker-text export
  • docs/mcs-format.md:
    the complete byte-level format, recovered by disassembling the original
    playback engine and validated on 86 songs (all round-trip byte-identically;
    the decode is engine-exact)

Download (no Python needed)

Grab MCS-Player.exe below — a standalone Windows build. Double-click it,
then Open… a song. Windows SmartScreen will warn about an unrecognized app
(the exe isn't code-signed): click More info → Run anyway.

MAPLERAG.MCS below is a ready-to-play demo: Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf
Rag (1899, public domain), A strain with repeat, arranged for MCS's four
voices — with the echo phrase returning an octave up under an 8va as the
finale. Try the "PC Speaker" voice and open the Scope while it plays.

Quick start from source (Windows)

git clone https://github.com/chjmartin2/MCS-Convert.git
cd MCS-Convert
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -e .
python -m mcs_convert play path\to\SONG.MCS

Song files are not included (copyright) — the 1984 disk is preserved on
archive.org; extract its *.MCS/*.MCD files into samples/.

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