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Table of Contents

• 3. Main window view
• 4. About this Program
• 6. Program Requirements
• 6. Legal Mumbo Jumbo
• 7. Installation of the Player Software
• First Use of Player
• Normal Use of Player
• Queuing Dances
• Un-queuing Dances
• Limiting Search to Certain Repertoires
• Searching by Country or Choreographer
• Defining Country Hierarchies
• Searching by Last Play / Taught Date
• Searching by Choreographed Date
• Queuing a Dance for Teaching
• Searching by Complexity / Energy
• Searching by Type / Style
• Searching by Name or Substring
• Exiting the Player

• 27. Choosing Country or Choreographer Display
• 28. Determining Program Finish Time
• 28. Setting Between Dance Pause Time
• 29. Saving Dances to Your Favorites List
• 29. Selecting Dances From Your Favorites
  List
• 30. Viewing Other Programmers Favorites Lists
• 31. Editing Your Favorites List
• 32. Teasing Dances
• 33. Teaching and Announcement Stops
• 34. Using a Dance Floor Display CRT or Projector
• 35. Configuring Your Player
• 39. Editing a Dances Database Parameters
• 41. Renaming or Moving a Music File
• Adding Individual Dances to the Player
• 43. Adding a Group of Dances to the Player
• 44. Using the Playlist Editor and Auto-play
  Feature
• 47. Using the Database Health Check Utility
• Playing Tracks From CDs
• Generating Frequency Counts

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Un - Queuing Dances
A dance may be deleted from the Program (1) or
Holder (2) window by dragging it back to the
Selector (3) window. The entire Program (1) or
Holder (2) window may be cleared by right
clicking on the word Program or the word Holder.
Confirmation will be requested.
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Dances may also be deleted from the Program (1)
window by right clicking on the dance (name will
turn to bold typeface) and pressing the
computers Delete key. A block of dances may be
deleted from the Program (1) window by right
clicking on the first dance to be deleted and
Shift right clicking on the last dance to be
deleted. Again, hit the computers delete key to
delete the block. The same is true for the
Holder (2) window.
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Alphabetically Searching for Dances by Name or
Sub-String
Typing the first few letters of a dance name will
scroll the top of the selector window to the
first dance which begins with the same letters.
Only dances which match any previously selected
repertoires or search criteria are displayed.
Typing an followed by three or more letters
will empty the Selector window of all dances
except for dances containing the search string
anywhere in the name. Backspacing or clicking
the Clear All Selections button will reset the
Selector. Again, only dances which match any
previously selected repertoires and search
criteria are displayed.
Dances containing a certain string in its comment
can be found by typing a ? followed by three or
more letters. Any dance matching the currently
selected repertoires and search criteria which
also contain the search string in their comments
are displayed in the Selector window.
When the check box is checked, the alphabetical
search will behave like a combination of the ?
And searches described above, without having to
type the characters before the search string.
Note Searches are not case sensitive.
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Duplicate warning
You can be advised of which dances have already
been played in the current session. Dances
already played appear crosses out in the
Selector window. Whether or not the dance is
crossed out, it can still be queued to either the
Program or the Selector. You can turn this
duplicate warning on using the Options menu on
the main screen. The default for this can be
set by choosing Setup Screen under the Options
menu on the main screen and checking the check
box.
This feature is useful if you are running a dance
marathon with many people programming dances.
The duplicate warning can prevent subsequent
programmers from repeating a dance played earlier
in the program.
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Documenting Live Music in Saved Playlists
Replacing the Currently Playing Dance in the
Player
Live music can be documented in the stored
playlist in two ways. You may type directly in
the Played Earlier (16) window or you may drag a
dance directly from the Selector window to the
Played Earlier window. It will not be played by
the computer, but it will be recorded as having
been played. You may also delete text from the
Played Earlier window to prevent dances from
being written to the stored playlist.
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Dance can also be dragged from the Selector (3)
window directly to the Now Playing (17) window to
replace the currently playing dance with a
different version or different dance.
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Editing You Favorites List
You may right click on the penguin logo to remove
dances from your (the current programmer)
favorites file. The screen pictured on the left
will appear.
Simply click on a dance name in the editor window
and click the Remove Selected button. Exit No
Save will exit the editor screen without making
any of your current edits. Save will update your
favorites file.
Changing Programmers
You may change programmers in mid-program using
the Change Programmer item on the Options menu.
The programmer selector window will appear. The
original programmers name will appear in the
saved playlist along with any additional
programmers selected in this manor. The time of
each programmer change is also recorded.
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Note If you do not have dual monitors, you can
still turn on this feature. Simply place this
screen directly over the main screen. It will
come to the front after 50 seconds of inactivity
on the main screen. Moving the mouse will bring
the main screen back to the front.
Use a projector, or face your computer towards
the dance floor.
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Setup Screen
Initial settings and options can be changed by
selecting the Setup Screen choice under the
Options menu on the main screen. The screen
below will appear..
Check this box (2) if you would like the program
to record any dance played twice in a 24
hour period as having been taught on that
day. Save these settings (4) and exit this
screen, or just exit without saving (3). Check
here (5) if you want the current repertoire
settings to be remembered next time the player
is used. If you have a CD drive, set the letter
here (6). Tracks from a CD can be added to the
Program.
Specify up to 16 programmers (1). Each
programmer will get his or her own button on the
startup screen.
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Setup Screen
The two databases each have names of your
choosing. The names you assign here (1) will
appear on the database buttons on the splash
screen
You may choose from several drag icons (21).
You may set whether the country or the
choreographer is shown under the dance name on
the main screen and the second monitor screen (11)
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The default pause time between dances may be set
here (10). The value can also be changed on a per
use basis on the main screen.
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Teaser play and hold-off times are set here (8).
The default can be set for the duplicate warning
(9).
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Setup Screen
The Recently Taught button above the Holder on
the main screen will add any dance taught within
the last N weeks to the Holder. N can be set
between 1 and 99 in this box (12).
If you choose to register the program, you will
be sent a registration code. Enter it in these
boxes (13). When a correct code is entered,
the background of the boxes turns green.
Registration gives you full functionality of
all repertoires, types and styles as well as
unobstructed use of the tabular view. The player
is otherwise fully functional.
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The type (14), style (15), and repertoire
selector (16) captions can be set here. The
colors can be set for the dance types by sliding
the RGB color sliders (17) above after clicking
in one of the boxes. The dance names that match
your captions will be displayed in the color
shown when viewed on the main screen. Simply
type the desired captions in the boxes.
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Setup Screen
Set the initial path for where the mp3 files will
be stored here (18). The mp3s do not need
to be in this directory, but the database manager
window will always default to this directory.
You can always add music from different
directories on the add dance screens.
Setting it here just saves you some clicks later.
Set the directory where you would like to save
the playlists (19) from each.
session. While the two databases can store the
files in different directories, within one
database, the different repertoires all store the
playlists into the same directory. The name of
the playlists in this directory is sorted by week
day, however.
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Set the max and min values for the year sliders
here (20).
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Editing, Saving, and Playing Auto-Playlists
The Program queue on the main screen is designed
for interactive dance programming. This means
that the programmer may respond to requests and
build the dance program during the session to
suit the constantly changing skill level of
dancers on the floor. Dances are not usually
being queued too much faster than they are being
played (which removes the dance from the Program
queue). There may be times however, when a
session leader will want to pre program the whole
sessions dances before the session and save this
list for later use. With a visible length of
only 29 dances and no scroll bar, the program
queue is not very conducive to creating programs
in advance.
The Auto-play Playlist Editor is designed to set
up longer playlists.
Ctrl L
Select Auto-play Playlist Editor from the
Utilities menu to launch the editor window seen
above.
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Playing CDs
You can add a track from a CD to your program.
Click the Play CD button and click the track you
would like to add to your program.
The CD must be placed in the cd drive before
adding the CD track to your program and the CD
must remain in the drive until after the track
has played. The Prev button ignores previously
played CD tracks. Only tracks from one CD at a
time can be placed in the program queue.
Track 1.cda Track 2.cda Track 3.cda Track
4.cda Track 5.cda Track 6.cda Track 7.cda Track
8.cda
The track name will be recorded in your program,
but you can make edits in the Played Earlier
window on the main screen before exiting the
player and saving the playlist. This program can
not rip CDs
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Frequency Counts
Have you ever wondered which dance you play the
most? Which dances have been losing popularity?
The frequency counter utility can help you
answer these questions. Its output is a list of
all dances that have been played between the
specified dates, ordered by how frequently the
dance has been played.
To see frequency counts of dances played between
any two dates, invoke the frequency counter by
clicking on the menu item.
Fill out the from and to date fields and click
the Go button. The frequency count appears in
the output window. Clicking the Save button
will write an output file to the MIT Player
directory.
Optionally, you can limit the frequency count to
certain days of the week. Select one or more of
the check boxes.
Double clicking on any file in the file window
will display the program from that day in the
output window. Certain characters such as - _ ,
are used as delimiters by the frequency counter.
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Magic Programmer
Dont feel like thinking about which dances to
play today? Let the magic programmer do it for
you. The magic programmer will automatically
pick dances and drop them in the program queue.
Dances will be chosen at random, but the average
complexity will increase as the session
progresses.
To use this feature, select Magic Programmer from
the Utilities menu.
If you have not recently run the frequency count
function described on the previous page and saved
the results to a file, do so now by clicking on
the large button at the top of the Magic
Programmer screen. This button is another means
of launching the frequency counter window. The
magic programmer picks dances from the frequency
count file. If the frequency count file does
not contain several months worth of dances, there
may not be enough dances for the magic programmer
to choose from.
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Magic Programmer
Enter the session end time in the dropdown boxes.
The magic programmer will keep choosing dances
until the session end time displayed in the main
window exceeds the time specified here .
Set the slider to force the magic programmer to
choose only commonly played dances, or to allow
the magic programmer to select from less commonly
played dances along with the more commonly played
ones. The slider setting makes sure that dances
have been played at least the specified number of
times over the frequency count period. This
number is shown under the slider. Note It is
possible that if the slider is set too far toward
the More Common side, not enough dances will
be available for the magic programmer to choose.
If this is the case, you will be asked to select
a setting which allows more obscure dances to be
chosen.
The types of dances chosen is random, but it is
possible to cause the magic programmer to choose
more dances of a certain type and less dances of
other types. Choose the relative probabilities
that each type of dance will be selected by
adjusting the sliders higher or lower. The
lowest probability setting is 0 when the slider
is all the way to the left. All of the types
probabilities are relative to each other.
Note If these sliders are not manually
adjusted, they will be automatically set to the
ratios present in the frequency count file.
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Magic Programmer
Click the Run button in the Magic Programmer
window. The player will automatically be started.
The magic programmer will keep about ten dances
in the program queue at any one time.
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Tab Stops
It is sometimes useful to be able to start a
dance at a predetermined place in the music
during teaching. The tab feature is used to set
these points and to start the music at them.
Click the F9 key while a dance is playing to set
a tab point at that exact place in the music.
The tab point will show up under the progress bar
as a small orange square.
During future plays of this dance, the tab points
will automatically show up in the same places.
You can click on a tab point to start the music
at these places.
The tabs are named tab stop N by default (where
N is a number between 1 and 8). This name pops
up when the mouse is placed over a particular
tab. If you would like a custom name instead,
simply type that text in the search window before
pressing the F9 key. (The dance selector window
will scroll to some dance that starts with these
characters, but who cares?)
When the F9 key is pressed, the tab will have
this name. Caution Each press of F9 will insert
a new tab!
Chorus
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Tab Stops
There is a tab editor which can be launched
by pressing shift and F9 or by selecting
Tab Editor from the Utilities
menu. Alternately, you can edit the tab file for
a particular dance to change the labels. The
files are stored in the tabs directory
under the directory where the player
resides. The tabs directory the tabs files are
created automatically. Adama.txt
2.796757," Tab Stop 0 " 26.46125," Tab Stop 1
" 72.05952," Tab Stop 2 " 116.6737," chorus
" 90.20909," Tab Stop 4 "
The tab files are named with the same name that
the dance uses in the database. The files are
text files. To remove individual tabs for a
dance, right click on the tab while holding down
the shift key. To remove all tabs for a dance,
just delete the file. There are a maximum of 8
tabs per dance.
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Histograms
Tabular View
Histograms allow you to check the balance of your
program. These histograms are not configurable
except in that you may determine whether to
display histograms of only what is queued up in
your Program window, only dances which have
already been played, or both at once. Simply
check either or both of the check boxes above the
histograms.
Clicking on the Tabular View button (31) removes
the Selector, search buttons and histograms from
the main screen, replacing it with a tabular view
of all the dances in the database. Once having
selected the Tabular view, the button caption
changes to Normal View (32) . Clicking on this
button again restores the Selector, search
functions, and histograms. You may switch back
and forth between the two views during a session.
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Registering the Player
Launch the about screen by selecting About from
the Help menu.
If you choose to register the program, send me
the number that appears in this box on your
computer. I will send you a registration code
to enter on the setup screen form.
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Database Structure
"Aba.mp3","C\Israeli Dances",1,-1200,95.58204,"Is
rael",1,1,1,1976-11-06,"",1111,0,"1/1/1900",3,0,
"","Aba" "Abba Shimon.mp3","C\Israeli
Dances",1,-608,212.6367,"Israel",3,1,1,2004-03-24
,"Israel Yakovee",1990,0,"1/1/1900",0,0,"","Abba
Shimon" The database file is just a text file.
The only thing that makes editing the database
outside the program tricky is the fact that VB
sometimes sticks in characters around certain
fields and some fields also require double
quotes (") around the data. Here is a list
of the fields in the database name As
String 'This is the file name (no path) (with
file extension) path As String 'This is the
path to the file speed As double 'This
probably should be a double. 1 means normal
speed. 'Less than 1 means play
slower. Greater than 1 faster. volume As
Integer 'Playback volume . More negative is
quieter. I think the program defaults to
-1200 duration As double 'This should probably be
a double. It is the duration of the dance file
'in seconds. It does not
need to be accurate. The program will update
'it as dances are played.
The only thing that will suffer if the number
'is wrong is the program end
time. There is a utility that will update
'all dances duration field under
the utilities menu. country As String 'Country
where dance is from. Could be an
string. complexity As Byte 'How difficult is
the dance to do. 1 easy 3 difficult type
As byte 'Type of dance. Integers from
1 to 8. Corresponds to types in order
'that they are specified on the main
screen. energy As byte '1 to 5, but be
careful with this one. Since I added
medium-fast and
'medium-slow afterwards, the numbers do not go in
order. This was to
'maintain backwards compatibility for previous
users. 1 slow 2 medium
'3 fast, 4 medium slow, 5 medium
fast. last_date As date ' Last date a dance
was played. This gets characters around
it. choreographer As String ' Choreographers
name. Text string. Does not matter if it is
' first name first or
last name first, but you should be consistent.
' If you use the
second screen picture option, you need to name
' the gif or jpg files
exactly as they appear in this field.
year_choreograhped As integer ' this should
probably be an integer. It is the year the
dance was choreographed. style As byte
' 1 to 8 for the dances styles. Follows
the order that the styles appear on the main
program screen. taught_date As date '
Last date a dance was taught. This gets "
characters around it. repertoire As Byte
' Which repertoire does a dance show up in.
Integer in the '
range of 0 to 255. If number is shown in binary
form, a ' 1 in
position 1 through 8 means that a dance is in
that repertoire . '
MSB is the first repertoire . LSB is the last
repertoire . ' Goes
in order that the repertoires are shown on the
main program screen. preferred As byte
' 1 or 0 I should probably make this a Boolean.
1 means the dance
' is a preferred version and will show up in bold
text in the selector window. comment As String
' Text string (don't use double quotes
INSIDE this string.) The whole string is
inside double quotes. file_name As String
' Name of file as it appears in the selector
window. This is usually the same
' as the file name, but does not
have to be.