Otocky/Music Maker Mode

While playing through Music Maker mode, it is possible to enter the music composition screen (shown right) by pressing until the "Edit" button the bottom left corner of the screen is highlighted, and then pressing. The music composition screen will then load.

Like an early precursor to the Mario Paint music composer, this mode allows you to program up to four measures of music, divided into 8 eighth notes per measure. You have quite a number of options when designing your composition. Along the left side of the screen, the music is broken up into four "voices" and one percussion sound (on the bottom). For each voice and percussion, you can set the volume (the orange bar, which defaults to the maximum of 15), and which sound font you would like to use. Use and  to cycle through the options.

The sound font is represented by the green symbol in the third column. Different sound fonts have different wave forms, and dictate the type of sound they will generate as each note is played. There are a total of 16 sound fonts which can be selected. Try them all to get a feel for how each one sounds, and which ones you would like to incorporate into your song.

To actually create your sound, you must highlight the dots contained in the measures for each voice. You can choose between 5 different octaves of notes. Press to switch between the English alphabet and the Japanese alphabet to represent each note. Once again, press and  to cycle through the available notes.

Once you have a tune that you would like to sample, you can highlight the "PLAY" option at the top of the screen to listen to your composition. You can also change the tempo of the music, clear out your composition, or save it to disk so that you can recall it later on. To return to the game and play the selected stage with your personal composition, highlight Otocky and press.