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1. MidiSeg 23 MidiVoice e MidiClear NoteSpan J Octave J Range J RSkip J Rtime 23 Rvolume J Scale J SeqRnd globally and for each track SegRnd Weight globally and for each track J Strum J SwingMode Status and Skew Time Signature 23 Tone for drum tracks J Unify J Voice J VoicingCenter J VoicingMode eJ VoicingMove 41 6 2 Using A Groove Grooves JJ VoicingRange JJ Volume for tracks and master J VolumeRatio 6 2 Using A Groove You can restore a previously defined groove at anytime in your song with Groove Name At this point all of the previously saved information is restored A few cautions JJ Pattern definitions are not saved in grooves Redefining a pattern results in a new pattern definition Sequences use the pattern definition in effect when the sequence is declared JJ The SeqSize setting is restored with a groove The sequence point is also reset to bar 1 If you have multi bar sequences restoring a groove may upset your idea of the sequence pattern To make life infinitely more interesting you can specify more than one previously defined groove In this case the next groove is selected after each bar For example Groove Tango LightTango LightTangoSus LightTango would create the followin
2. P amp or b This modifier will raise or lower the note by a semitone In the boogie woogie library file a 6 is used to generate a dominant 7th Bass Define Broken8 1 8 1 90 2 85380 Y 38390 4 8 1 80 Sheet Music Equivalent Example 4 1 Bass Definition Example 4 1 defines 4 bass notes probably staccato eight notes at beats 1 2 3 and 4 in a 4 time bar The first note is the root of the chord the second is the fifth the third note is the third the last note is the root up an octave The volumes of the notes are set to a MIDI velocity of 90 for beats 1 and 3 and 80 for beats 2 and 4 MA refers to note tables to determine the scale to use in a bass pattern Each recognized chord type has an associated scale For example the chord Cm consists of the notes c eb and g the scale for this chord is c d eb f g a b Due to the ease in which specific notes of a scale can be specified BASS tracks and patterns are useful for much more than bass lines These tracks are useful for sustained string voices interesting arpeggio and scale lines and counter melodies 4 1 2 Chord A Chord pattern is defined with Be careful using this feature certain scales chords may return non musical results 25 4 1 Defining a Pattern Patterns Position Duration Volumel Volume2 Each group consists of an beat offset for the start point the note dur
3. To restore to its default off setting use a 0 as the argument For a similar command with different results see the COMPRESS command page 71 12 7 NoteSpan Many instruments have a limited range For example the bass section of an accordion is limited to a single octave To emulate these sounds it is a simple matter of limiting MAs output to match the instrument For example in the frenchwaltz file you will find the directive Chord NoteSpan 48 59 which forces all CHORD tones to the single octave represented by the MIDI values 48 though 59 This command is applied over other voicing commands like OCTAVE and RANGE and even TRANSPOSE Notes will still be calculated with respect to these settings but then they ll be forced into the limited NOTESPAN 3Some accordions have freebass switches which overcomes this but that is the exception 3 12 8 Range Chord Voicing NOTESPAN expects two arguments The first is the range start the second the range end first and last notes to use The values are MIDI tones and must be in the range O to 127 The first value must be less than the second and the range must represent at least one full octave 12 notes It can be applied to all tracks except DRUM 12 8 Range For ARPEGGIO and SCALE tracks you can specify the number of octaves used The effects of the RANGE command is slightly different between the two SCALE Scale tracks by default create three octav
4. JJ A n is converted into a LF character hex value Ox0A A WM should appear at the end of each verse or paragraph When a multi verse section is created using a REPEAT or GOTO different lyrics can be specified for different passes In this case you simply specify two more sets of lyrics A Am First verse Second Verse However for this work properly you must set the internal counter LYRICVERSE for any verse other than 1 This counter is set with the command Lyric Verse Value INC DEC This means that you can directly set the value the default value is 1 with a command like Lyric Verse 2 And you can increment or decrement the value with the INC and DEC options This is handy at to use in repeat sections Lyric Verse Inc You cannot set the value to a value less than 1 There are a couple of special cases JJ If there is only one set of lyrics in a line it will be treated as text for verse 1 regardless of the value of LYRICVERSE JJ If the value of LYRICVERSE is greater than the number of verses found after splitting the line then no lyrics are produced In most cases this is probably not what you want At times you may wish to override MA s method of determining the beat offsets for a lyric or a single syllable in a lyric You can specify the beat in the bar by enclosing the value in lt gt brackets For example suppose that your song starts with a pickup bar and you d like the lyrics for the first bar to
5. Sequences Patterns by themselves don t do much good They have to be combined into sequences to be of any use to you or to MA 5 1 Defining Sequences A SEQUENCE command sets the pattern s used in creating each track in your song Track Sequence Patternl Pattern2 Track can be any valid track name Chord Walk Walk Sus Arpeggio 88 etc All pattern names used when setting a sequence need to be defined when this command is issued or you can use what appears to be a pattern definition right in the sequence command by enclosing the pattern definition in a set of curly brackets SeqClear SeqSize 2 Begin Drum Sequence Snare4 Tone Snaredruml End Begin Drum 1 Sequence Bassl Bass2 Tone KickDrum2 End Chord Sequence Broken8 Bass Sequence Broken8 Arpeggio Sequence 1 1 100 8 1 1 80 x 4 Example 5 1 Simple Sequence 34 5 1 Defining Sequences Sequences Example5 1 creates a 2 bar pattern The Drum Chord and Bass patterns repeat on every bar the Drum 1 sequence repeats after 2 bars Note how the Arpeggio pattern is defined at run time If there are fewer patterns than SEQSIZE the sequence will be filled out to correct size If the number of patterns used is greater than SEQSIZE see chapter 21 a warning message will be printed and the pattern list will be truncated When defining longer sequences you can use the repeat symbol a single to save typing For example
6. but you only want the root and fifth to sound for the chords and you want the arpeggios and bass notes to only use the root You could create new patterns but it s just as easy to create a new chord type DefChord 15 0 4 0 0 O O O O 0 15c G 16 C15 G15 In this case a normal Major chords will be used in line 15 In line 16 the new 15 will be used Note the trick in the scale by setting all the offsets to 0 only the root note is available to the WALK and BASS tracks Sometimes you ll see a new chord type that MA doesn t know You could write the author and ask him to add this new type but if it is something quite odd or rare it might be easier to define it in your song Let s pretend that you ve encountered a Cmaj12 A reasonable guess is that this is a major 7 with an added 12th just the 5th up an octave You could change the maj12 part of the chord to a M7 or maj7 and it should sound fine But DefChord maj12 0 4 7 11 19 0 2 4 5 7 9 11 is much more fun Note a few details JJ The name maj12 can be used with any chord You can have Cmaj12 or Gbmaj12 J maj12 a case sensitive name The name Maj12 is quite different and unknown JJ A better name might be maj add12 JJ The note and scale offsets are MIDI values They are easy to figure if you think of the chord as a C Just count off notes from C on a keyboard C
7. channel is first checked to ensure that it has been assigned If not currently assigned the assignment is first done What this means is that you are subverting MA s normal dynamic channel allocation scheme This may cause is a depletion of available channels Please note that that the use of the CHSHARE command is probably never really needed so it might have more problems than outlined here If you want to see how much a bother channel sharing becomes have a look at the standard library file frenchwaltz mma All this so the accordion bass can use one channel instead of 6 If I were to write it again Pd just let it suck up the MIDI channels For another simpler way of reassigning MIDI tracks and letting MA do most of the work for you refer to the DELETE command see page 136 19 4 ForceOut Under normal conditions MA only generates the MIDI tracks it thinks are valid or relevant So if you create a track but insert no note data into that track it will not be generated An easy way to verify this is by creating file and running MA with the c command line option Lets start off by creating a file you might think will set the keyboard channel on your synth to a TenorSax voice Begin Solo Keyboard Channel 1 116 19 4 ForceOut Low Level MIDI Commands Voice TenorSax MIDIVolume 100 End If you compile this you should get mma test c File test parsed but no MIDI file produced Tracks allocated SOLO KEYBOARD Channel ass
8. in the rate You can vary the tempo over more than one bar For example Tempo 20 5 5 tells MA to increase the tempo by 20 beats per minute and to step the increase over the next five and a half bars Assuming a start tempo of 100 and 4 beats bar the meta track will have a tempo settings of 101 102 103 120 This will occur over 22 beats 5 5 bars 4 beats of music Using the multiplier is handy if you are switching to double time Tempo x2 and to return 50 14 2 Time Tempo and Timing Temp 5 Note that the or sign must not be separated from the tempo value by any spaces The value for TEMPO can be any value but will be converted to integer for the final setting 14 2 Time MA doesn t really understand time signatures It just cares about the number of beats in a bar So if you have a piece in 4 time you would use Time 4 For j use Time 3 For you d probably want either 2 or 6 Changing the time also cancels all existing sequences So after a time directive you ll need to set up your sequences or load a new groove 14 3 TimeSig Even though MA doesn t really use Time Signatures some MIDI programs do recognize and use them So here s a command which will let you insert a Time Signature in your MIDI output TimeSig NN DD The NN parameter is the time signature numerator the number of beats per bar In you would set this to 3 The DD parameter
9. ming7 Minor triad plus 9th no 7th Minor triad with augmented Sth Minor Triad plus Major 7th You will also see this printed as m maj7 m 7 min maj7 and minf7 which MA accepts as well as the MA invalid forms AT and ming7 Augmented minor 7 plus sharp 9th 167 A 1 Chord Names Symbols and Constants m 7 9 Augmented minor 7 plus flat 9th m 7 9 11 Augmented minor 7th with flat 9th and sharp 11th mii 9th with minor 3rd plus 11th m11p5 Minor 7th with flat 5th plus 11th m13 Minor 7th including 5th plus 13th 9th and 11th not voiced m Minor 6th flat 3rd plus a 6th m6 add9 Minor 6th with added 9th This is sometimes notated as a slash chord in the form m69 Minor 6th with added 9th This is sometimes notated as a slash chord in the form m6 9 m7 Minor 7th flat 3rd plus dominant 7th m7 9 Minor 7th with added sharp 9th m 7 19 Minor 7th with added sharp 9th m7 add11 Minor 7th plus 11th m7 add13 Minor 7th plus 13th m7 b9 Minor 7th with added flat 9th m7 omit5 Minor 7th with unvoiced 5th m7 5 Minor 7th flat 5 aka 1 2 diminished m7p5 Minor 7th flat 5 aka 1 2 diminished m7p5 9 Minor 7th with flat 5th and flat 9th m7p9 Minor 7th with added flat 9th m7 9 11 Minor 7th plus flat 9th and sharp 11th m7omit5 Minor 7th with unvoiced Sth m9 Minor triad plus 7th and 9th m9 11 Minor 7th plus 9th and sharp 11th m9 5 Minor triad flat 5 p
10. ss evd ras eee ee a ee ed ee ee 20 Fine Tuning Translations 93 93 93 94 95 96 97 99 102 102 103 103 104 104 105 105 105 105 107 107 110 112 114 114 115 115 116 118 119 119 120 120 122 122 123 124 125 125 126 127 128 Table Of Contents MA 20 1 VOLCETE sece vis es a e dd A LA da 129 202 LITT ase Sk Os a te A Sts Gate ees AN ee os 6 io Gag fe ee 130 20 3 Voice VOLTE eck heh dei dae eR iG Gl Ee Re Se HAH oe ee Aa 130 QA re O ete og aha a ag coe tg eee D See Sas EN eae IR fee a fo et 131 21 Other Commands and Directives 132 ZU AMAS crea er Bees BOs Bde be A Rd 132 21 2 Articulate ss e 624 4 25 465 bb eee ow ea e a a a dd 133 ON SOON a at ander ii ace ae ae ar aoe ee a Ga a a Wh R 133 2A Comment es desu 48 ds a8 IS a a a a tte 134 215 Debus di e Gi ir SHES OHS OSS G4 GREG OS Hd 135 PAG Deles a ee ea A See Sar WD ee ee Se te 136 21 7 Direction A e i e a a a a G a a a a E ae i 136 21 8 Mallets was iros mo aee EA ARE AAA AA AAA A AA 137 2S AA SR A toe as seats ws ae 137 21 8 2 Decay sas bea seas eee teak bo heeb SG Gea AAA 137 ZO Octave iaa Bk a a A Se An es ad 138 DUMONT RS A A A A A a a ee 138 2A WON 3 amp 5 at os we 5 ee ee ee ales ee e waste o A 138 PA WO Pane E NN 139 21 13 PrintActive 2 ee 139 DLA ROGSGGG cen oe oe 6 ae SRE SRR eS eS AA ae 139 INS RSMO De error Foe HES FOS IAS OE FSG SS BG SHS 140 A IA 140 PALM Seale A Grog Bena gt be Sree ht hee are gS A AS area
11. 4ca 2da 4fc F laf Example 10 1 Solo Notation Example 10 1 shows a few bars of Bill Bailey with the MA equivalent 10 1 1 Long Notes Notes tied across bar lines can be easily handled in MA scores Consider the following F It can be handled in three different ways in your score Jj F 4c d e 4 2 F 2r 2c In this case you MA will generate a warning message since the last note of the first bar ends past the end of that bar The rest in the second bar is used to position the half note correctly 60 10 1 Note Data Format Solo and Melody Tracks Jj F 4c d e 4 2 F 2r 2c This time a character has been added to the end of the first line In this case it just signals that you know that the note is too long so no warning is printed Jj F 4c d e 4 2f F 2c The cleanest method is shown here The forces the insertion of the extra 2 beats from the previous bar into the start of the bar If you have a very long note as in this example C OOA O TE TE TE E PARE lO pp y TAN Ao II E IE IES a IE NVTE J e uu U lO iZ J you can have both leading and ending tildes in the same chord however to force MA to ignore the chord you need to include an empty chord marker C 4c d e 4 2 EJ lt gt c 2e MIA has some built in error detection which will signal problems if you use a tilde at the end of a line which doesn t have a note held
12. Cm chord on beat 1 Dm on 2 etc If you have fewer chord names than beats the bar will be filled automatically with the last chord name on the line In other words Cm and 50 8 4 Rests Musical Data Format Cm Cm Cm Cm are equivalent assuming 4 beats per bar There must be one or more spaces between each chord One further shorthand is the This simply means to repeat the last chord So Cm Dm 1s the same as Cm Cm Dm Dm It is perfectly okay to start a line with a In this case the last chord from the previous line is used If the first line of music data begins with a you ll get an error MA tries to be smart but it doesn t read minds M A recognizes a wide variety of chords in standard notation In addition you can specify slash chords and shift the octave up or down Refer to the complete table in the appendix for details page 165 8 4 Rests 6699 To disable a voice for a beat you can use a z for a chord name If used by itself a z will disable all but the drum tracks for the given beat However you can disable Chord Arpeggio Scale Walk Aria or Bass tracks as well by appending a track specifier to the z Track specifiers are the single letters C A S W B R or D and Track specifiers are only valid if you also specify a chord The track specifiers are D All dru
13. There are two categories of system variables The first are the simple values for global settings _AutoLibPath Current AUTOLIBPATH setting _BarNum Current bar number of song Debug Current debug settings Groove Name of the currently selected groove May be empty if no groove has been selected KeySig Key signature as defined in song file If no key signature is set the somewhat cryptic 04 will be returned _LineNum Line number in current file IncPath Current INCPATH setting The values are dynamically created and reflect the current settings and may not be exactly the same as the value you originally set due to internal roundings etc 107 18 2 Predefined Variables Variables Conditionals and Jumps LastDebug Debug settings prior to last DEBUG command This setting can be used to restore settings IE Debug Warnings off stuff generating annoying warnings Debug _LastDebug _LastGroove Name of the groove selected before the currently selected groove LastVolume Previously set global volume setting _LibPath Current LIBPATH setting Lyric Current LYRIC settings _MIDISplit List of SPLITCHANNELS _OutPath Current OUTPATH setting SeqRnd Global SEQRND setting on off or track list _SeqRndWeight Global SEQRNDWEIGHT settings SeqSize Current SEQSIZE setting _SwingMode Current SWINGMODE setting On or Off and the Skew value StackValue The last value stored on the STACKVALUE stack
14. plus 13th 9th and 11th not voiced Major 7th plus sharp 11th and 13th 9th not voiced Major tiad with added 6th Major 7th Major 7th plus sharp 11th 9th omitted Major 7th with sharp 5th M7 add13 7th including Sth plus 13th and flat 9th 11th not voiced Major 7th with sharp Sth Major 7th with a flat 5th Major 7th with a flat 5th Major 7th plus 9th Major 9th plus sharp 11th Major chord plus 9th no 7th Augmented triad An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th and sharp 9th An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th and flat 9th 7th plus 9th with sharp 5th same as aug9 An augmented chord raised 5th with a major 7th and 9th A dim7 not a triad Diminished triad non standard notation Diminished seventh dim7 addMDiminished tirad with added Major 7th m mi5 m 7 m add9 m b5 m maj7 m sus9 m 5 m 7 m 719 Minor triad Minor triad with augmented Sth Minor Triad plus Major 7th You will also see this printed as m maj7 m 7 min maj7 and minf7 which MA accepts as well as the MA invalid forms AT and ming7 Minor triad plus 9th no 7th Minor triad with flat 5th aka dim Minor Triad plus Major 7th You will also see this printed as m maj7 m 7 min maj7 and min 7 which MA accepts as well as the MA invalid forms AT and
15. 3 1 200 Cc Gm7 Alternate C Fermata 1 1 200 Gm7 Example 14 4 Fermata Here example 14 5 shows the first four bars of a popular torch song The problem with the piece is that the first beat of bar four needs to be paused and the accompaniment style has to switch in the middle of the bar The example shows how to split the fourth bar with the first beat on one line and the balance on a second The z s are used to fill in the 4 beats skipped by the BEATADJUST The following conditions will generate warning messages J A beat offset greater than one bar JJ A duration greater than one bar JJ An adjustment value less than 100 This command works by adjusting the global tempo in the MIDI meta track at the point of the fermata In most cases you can put more than one FERMATA command in the same bar but they should be in beat order no checks are done If the FERMATA command has a negative position argument special code is invoked to remove any note on events in the duration specified after the start of the beat This means that extra rhythm notes will not be sounded probably what you expect a held note to sound like Technically speaking MA determines an interval starting 5 of a beat after the start of the fermata to a point 5 of a beat before the end Any MIDI Note On events in this range in all tracks are deleted 4 14 6 Cut Tempo and Timing C C dim G7 C C dim G7 z Fermata 4 1 200 Cut
16. 4 3 Arpeggio Definition Example 4 3 plays quarter note on beats 1 2 3 and 4 of a bar in 4 time 4 1 4 Walk A Walking Bass pattern 1s defined with Position Duration Volume Walking bass tracks play up and down the first part of a scale paying attention to the color of the chord Walking bass lines are very common in jazz and swing music They appear quite often as an emphasis bar in marches Each group consists of an beat offset the note duration and the note volume MA selects the actual note pitches to play based on the current chord you cannot change this Example 4 4 plays a bass note on beats 1 2 and 3 of a bar in j time 4 1 5 Scale A scale pattern is defined with 39 66 The color of a chord are items like minor major etc The current walking bass algorithm generates acceptable uninspired lines If you want something better there is nothing stopping you from using a RIFF to over ride the computer generated pattern for important bars on 4 1 Defining a Pattern Patterns Walk Define Walk4 1 4 100 2 4 90 3 4 90 Example 4 4 Walking Bass Definition Position Duration Volume Each group consists of an beat offset for the start point the note duration and volume Scale Define S1 1 1 90 Scale Define S4 S1 x 4 Scale Define S8 S1 x 8 Example 4 5 Scale Definition Example 4 5 defines three scale patterns S1 is just a single whole note not that useful on
17. Bass Channel 8 Caution If the selected channel is already in use an error will be generated Due to the way MA allocates tracks if you really need to manually assign track it is recommended that you do this ina MMARC file You can disable a channel at any time by using a channel number of 0 Arpeggio 1 Channel 0 will disable the Arpeggio 1 channel freeing it for use by other tracks A warning message is generated Disabling a track without a valid channel is fine When you set a channel to O the track is also disabled You can restart the track with the ON command see page 138 You don t need to have a valid MIDI channel assigned to a track to do things like MIDIPAN MIDIGLIs MIDIVOLUME or even the assignment of any music to a track MIDI data is created in tracks and then sent out to the MIDI buffers Channel assignment is checked and allocated at this point and an error will be generated if no channels are available It s quite acceptable to do channel reassignments in the middle of a song Just assign channel O to the unneeded track first MIDI channel settings are not saved in GROOVES 114 19 2 ChannelPref Low Level MIDI Commands MA inserts a MIDI track name meta event when the channel buffers are first assigned at a MIDI offset of 0 If the MIDI channel is reassigned a new track name is inserted at the current song offset A more general method is to use CHANNELPREF detailed below You can access the cur
18. C2 C3 C4 Cl Bass B1 B2 B3 B4 BI Next assume we have set sequence randomization with 37 5 3 Segknd SegRnd On Now the sequence may look like Sequences Bar Track 1 2 3 4 5 Drum Snare D3 Dl Dl D2 D4 Drum Low D33 D11 Dll D22 D44 Chord C3 C1 C1 C2 C4 Bass B3 Bl Bl B2 B4 Note that the randomization keeps the different sequences together Drum sequences D3 and D33 are always played with Chord sequence C3 etc Next we will set randomization for a Drum and Chord track only Drum Low SegRnd On Chord SegRnd On Bar Track 1 2 3 4 5 Drum Snare Dl D2 D3 D4 Dl Drum Low D22 D11 D44 D44 D33 Chord C3 C4 C2 Cl Cl Bass Bl B2 B3 B4 Bl In this case there is no relationship between any of the randomized tracks Finally it is possible to set a global randomization for a selected set of tracks In this case we will set the Drum tracks only SeqRnd Drum Snare Drum Low Bar Track 1 2 3 4 5 Drum Snare D3 Dl D4 D4 D2 Drum Low D33 D11 D44 D44 D22 Chord C1 C2 C3 C4 Cl Bass Bl B2 B3 B4 Bl Note that the drum sequences always line up with each other and the Chord and Bass sequences follow in the normal order The SEQCLEAR command will disable all sequence randomization The SEQ command will disable slobal for all tracks randomization 38 5 4 SeqRnd Weight Sequences 5 4 SeqRndWeight When SEQRND is enabled each sequence for the track or globally has an eq
19. If it is the appropriate function is called and file parsing continues If it is not a simple command MA tests to see if it is a track specific command But to do that it first has to test the first word to see if it is a valid track name like Bass or Chord Major And if it is a valid track name and that track 3 Actually MA checks to see the next GROOVE in the list is the same as the current one and if it is then no change is done 43 6 3 Deleting Grooves Grooves doesn t exist the track is created this is done before the rest of the command is processed So if you have a command like Bass Foo Groove Something and you really meant to type Bass Foe Groove Something you ll have a number of things happening 1 The track Bass Foo will be created This is not an issue to be concerned over since no data will be created for this new track unless you set a SEQUENCE for it 2 As part of the creation all the existing GROOVEs will have the Bass Foo track with its default empty settings added to them 3 And the current setting you think you re modifying with the Bass Foe settings will be created with the Bass Foo settings which are nothing 4 Eventually you ll wonder why MA isn t working So be very careful using this command option Check your spelling And use the PRINTACTIVE com mand to verify your GROOVE creations A basic test is done by MA when you use a GROOVE in this manner and if the sequence for the n
20. If you re really interested in the result run MA with the p option with the above definition An existing pattern can be modified by shifting it a beat or portion of a beat This is done in a MA definition with the SHIFT directive Example 4 9 shows a triplet pattern created to play on beat 1 and then a second pattern played on beat 3 Note that the shift factor can be a negative or positive value It can be fractional Just be sure that the factor doesn t force the note placement to be less than 1 or greater than the TIME setting And just like the multiplier discussed earlier you can shift patterns as they are defined And shifts and multipliers can be combined So to define a series of quarter notes on the offbeat you could use 0Tn this case the word cool substitutes for the more correct useful 31 4 3 Multiplying and Shifting Patterns Patterns Begin Drum Define SB8 1 2 16 0 90 3 66 4 32 80 SB8 SB8 x 4 End Sheet Music Equivalent Normal Notation PA Sheet Music Equivalent Actual Rhythm ge DDD Example 4 8 Swing Beat Drum Definition Drum Define D1234 1 0 90 x 4 Shift 5 which would create the same pattern as the longer Drum Define D1234 1 5 1 90 2 5 1 90 3 5 1 90 4 5 1 90 32 4 3 Multiplying and Shifting Patterns Patterns Chord Define C1 3 1 3 90 1 33 3 90 1 66 3 90 3 Chord Define C3 3 C1 3 Shift 2 3 Example 4 9 Shift Pattern Definition J3 Chapter 5
21. Mnemonic Volume Ratios The ratios used to adjust the volume can be changed from the table at the start of this chapter For example to change the percentage used for the MF setting AdjustVolume MF 95 f 120 Note that you can have multiple setting on the same line The values used have the same format as those used for the VOLUME command below For now a few examples AdjustVolume Mf mp 200 will set the adjustment factor for mf to that of mp plus 200 And AdjustVolume mf 20 will increase the current mf setting by 20 You might want to do these adjustment in your MMArc file s 16 2 2 Master Volume Ratio MA uses both the master and track volumes to determine the final velocity of a note By default the track volume setting accounts for 60 of the adjustment and the master volume for the remaining 40 The simple minded logic behind this is that if the user goes to the effort of setting a volume for a track then that is probably more important than a volume set for the entire piece You can change the ratio used at anytime with the ADJUSTVOLUME RATIO lt VALUE gt directive lt Value gt is the percentage to use for the Track volume A few examples AdjustVolume Ratio 60 This duplicates the default setting AdjustVolume Ratio 40 Volume adjustments use 40 of the track volume and 60 of the master volume AdjustVolume Ratio 100 Volume adjustments use only the track volume and ignore the master volume completely J3 1
22. So be cautious The data generated is not sent into the MIDI stream until musical data is created for the relevant MIDI channel 19 9 MIDIInc MA has the ability to include a user supplied MIDI file at any point of its generated files These included files can be used to play a melodic solo over a MAA pattern or to fill a section of a song with something like a drum solo When the MIDIINC command is encountered the current line is parsed for options the file is inserted into the stored MIDI stream and processing continues The include has no effect on any song pointers etc 2The name Glis is used because MIDIPortamento gets to be a bit long to type and MIDIPort might be interpreted as something to do with ports 120 19 9 MIDIInc Low Level MIDI Commands MIDIINC has a number of options all set in the form OPTION VALUE Following are the recognized options FILENAME The filename of the file to be included This must be a complete filename The file name will be expanded by the Python os path expanduser function for tilde expansion No pre fixes or extensions are added by MA Examples FILENAME home bob midi myfile mid or FILENAME sounds myfile mid VOLUME An adjustment for the volume of all the note on events in the included MIDI file The ad justment is specified as a percentage with values under 100 decreasing the volume and over 100 increasing it If the resultant volume velocity is less tha
23. The available modes with the equivalent command line switches are Mode Command Line Equivalent Debug d debugging messages Filenames o display file names Patterns p pattern creation Sequence s sequence creation Runtime r running progress Warnings w warning messages Expand e display expanded lines The modes and command are case insensitive although the command line switches are not The current state of the debug flags is saved in the variable _Debug and the state prior to a change is saved in _LastDebug 135 21 6 Delete Other Commands and Directives 21 6 Delete If you are using a track in only one part of your song especially if it is at the start it may be wise to free that track s resources when you are done with it The DELETE command does just that Solo Delete If a MIDI channel has been assigned to that track it is marked as available and the track is deleted Any data already saved in the MIDI track will be written when MA is finished processing the song file 21 7 Direction In tracks using chords or scales you can change the direction in which they are applied Scale Direction UP The effects differ in different track types For SCALE and ARPEGGIO tracks UP Plays in upward direction only DOWN Plays in downward direction only BOTH Plays upward and downward default RANDOM Plays notes from the chord or scale randomly When this command is encountered in a SCALE track the start poin
24. abc and MA seeing three arguments generates an error If you want the comparison done on a variable which might be more than one word use the syntax This delays the expansion of the variable until the IF directive is entered So If foo abc would generate a comparison between A B and ABC Delayed expansion can be applied to either variable It only works in an IF directive Strings and numeric values can be confusing in comparisons For example if you have the strings 22 and 3 and compare them as strings 3 is greater than 22 however if you compare them as values then 3 is less than 22 The rule in MA is quite simple If either string in a comparison is a numeric value both strings are converted to values Otherwise they are compared as strings This lets you do consistent comparisons in situations like Set Count 1 If LE Count 4 IfEnd An attempt is made to convert each string to a float If conversion of both strings is successful the comparison is made between two floats otherwise two strings are used 111 18 4 Goto Variables Conditionals and Jumps Note that the above example could have used Count but you should probably always use the in tests Much like other programming languages an optional ELSE condition may be used If Def Coda Groove Rhumbal Else Groove Rhumba Endif The ELSE statement s are processed only if the test for the IF test
25. and ahh of the first beat is 1 75 etc Using a beat offset greater than the number of beats in a bar or less than 0 is not permitted Please note that offsets in the range 0 to 999 will actually be played in the previous bar this can be useful in Jazz charts and it will generate a warning See TIME page 81 The offset can be further modified by appending a note length see the duration chart below If you want to specify an offset in the middle of the first beat you can use 1 5 or 1 8 The latter means the first beat plus the value of an eight note This notation is quite useful when generating The exception is that RTIME may move the chord back into the bar 22 4 1 Defining a Pattern Patterns swing sequences For example two swing eights chords on beat one would be notated as 1 81 90 1 81 82 90 You can subtract note lengths as well but this is rarely done And to make your style files com pletely unreadable you can even use note length combinations So yes the following pattern is fine Chord Define Cl 2 81 4 82 90 Duration The length of a note is somewhat standard musical notation Since it is impractical to draw in graphical notes or to use fractions like 4 MA uses a shorthand notation detailed in the following table Notation Description 1 Whole note 2 Half 4 Quarter 8 Eighth 81 The first of a pair of swing eights 82 The second of a pai
26. command is only valid in CHORD tracks 12 5 Invert By default mA uses chords in the root position By example the notes of a C major chord are C E and G Chords can be inverted something musicians do all the time Sticking with the C major chord the first inversion shifts the root note up an octave and the chord becomes E G and C The second inversion is G C and E MA extends the concept of inversion a bit by permitting the shift to be to the left or right and the number of shifts is not limited So you could shift a chord up several octaves by using large invert values Inversions apply to each bar of a sequence So the following is a good example SeqSize 4 Chord 1 Sequence STR1 Chord 1 Invert 0101 Here the sequence pattern size is set to 4 bars and the pattern for each bar in the Chord 1 track is set to STR1 Without the next line this would result in a rather boring repeating pattern But the Invert command forces the chord to be in the root position for the first bar the first inversion for the second etc You can use a negative Invert value Chord 1 Invert 1 In this case the C major chord becomes G C and E Note that using fewer Invert arguments than the current sequence size is permitted MA simply expands the number of arguments to the current sequence size You may use a for a repeated value The term shift is used here but that s not quite what MA does The order of the notes in the i
27. contexts Notes COMPRESS takes any value between and 5 as arguments however some values will have no effect as detailed above You can specify a different COMPRESS for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a Chord Compress 1 0 To restore to its default off setting use a 0 as the argument For a similar command with different results see the LIMIT command page 73 12 4 DupRoot To add a bit of fullness to chords it is quite common of keyboard players to duplicate the root tone of a chord into a lower or higher octave This is accomplished in MA with the command 71 12 5 Invert Chord Voicing DupRoot 1 1 1 1 The command determines whether or not the root tone of a chord is duplicated in another octave By default notes are not added A value of 1 will add a note one octave lower than the root note 2 will add the tone 2 octaves lower etc Similarly the value of 1 will add a note one octave higher than the root tone etc Only the values 9 to 9 are permitted The volume used for the generated note is an adjusted average of the notes in the chord This volume is always less than the chord notes which is probably what you want If you want a loud bass note create a second track probably a BASS track with the appropriate pattern Different values can be used in each bar of the sequence The option is reset to O after all SEQUENCE or SEQCLEAR commands The DUPROOT
28. document in PDF and HTML formats aS J The MA tutorial supplied with this document in pdf and html formats 1 Various README files in the distribution The Python source files 1 2 4 Music Notation The various snippets of standard music notation in this manual have been prepared with the MUP program I highly recommend this program and use it for most of my notation tasks MUP is available from Arkkra Enterprises http www Arkkra com 1 3 Installing MA MA is a Python program developed with version 2 4 of Python At the very least you will need this version or later of Python To play the MIDI files you Il need a MIDI player Pmidi tse3play and many others are available for Linux systems For Windows and Mac systems I m sure there are many many choices You ll need a text editor like vi emacs etc to create input files Don t use a word processor MA consists of a variety of bits and pieces J The executable Python script mma must somewhere in your path For users running Windows or Mac please check MA website for details on how to install on these systems JJ A number of Python modules These should all be installed under the directory usr local share mma MMA See the enclosed file INSTALL for some additional commentary Tn the distribution this is mma py It is renamed to save a few keystrokes when entering the command 10 1 4 Running MA Overview and Introduction JJ A number
29. document reflects version 1 2 of MA Musical MIDI Accompaniment and the short form MA in the distinctive script are names for a program written by Bob van der Poel The MIDI Manufacturers Association Inc uses the acronym MMA but there is no association between the two 2MIDI is an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface 1 2 About this Manual Overview and Introduction This program has recently changed its status from beta to a 1 x version I have done everything I can to ensure that the program functions as advertised but I assume no responsibility for anything it does to your computer or data Sorry for this disclaimer but we live in paranoid times This manual most likely has lots of errors Spelling grammar and probably a number of the examples need fixing Please give me a hand and report anything 1t 11 make it much easier for me to generate a really good product for all of us to enjoy 1 2 About this Manual This manual was written by the program author and this is always a very bad idea But having no volunteers the choice is no manual at all or my bad perspectives MIA is a large and complex program It really does need a manual and users really need to refer to the manual to get the most out of the program Even the author frequently refers to the manual Really I have tried to present the various commands in a logical and useful order The table of contents should point you quickly to the relev
30. eighth triplets 9 Swing If you refer to the table of note lengths page 23 you will find the cryptic values of 81 and 82 These notes are adjusted depending of the SWINGSKEW value So Chord Define Swing8 1 81 80 1 81 82 80 2 81 80 2 81 82 80 is a bit better In this case we have set a chord on beat as the first of an eighth note and a chord on the off beat as the second Note how we specify the off beats as 1 81 etc In this example the feel of the swing will vary with the SWINGSKEW setting But aren t computers supposed to make life simple Well here is our recommended method SwingMode On Chord Define Swing8 1 8 80 1 5 8 80 2 8 80 2 5 8 80 Now MA will convert the values for you Magic well almost There are times when you will need to be more explicit especially in SOLO and MELODY tracks JJ If a bar has both swing and straight eighths JJ If the note following an eighth is not an eight 90 Chapter 16 Volume and Dynamics MA is very versatile when it comes to the volumes or dynamics used in your song Each generated note goes though several adjustments 1 The initial velocity is set in the pattern definition see chapter 4 2 the velocity is then adjusted by the master and track volume settings see page 93 for the discussion of ADJUSTVOLUME RATIO 3 if certain notes are to be accented yet another adjustment is made 4 and finally if the random volume is set
31. embellishment which adds depth and character to a piece When MA plays a scale it first determines the current chord There is an associated scale for each chord which attempts to match the flavor of that chord The following table sums up the logic used to create the scales Major A major scale Minor A melodic minor scale Diminished A melodic minor scale with a minor fifth and minor dominant seventh All scales start on the tonic of the current chord If the SCALETYPE is set to CHROMATIC then a chromatic scale is used The default for SCALETYPE is AUTO MA plays successive notes of a scale The timing and length of the notes is determined by the current pattern Depending on the DIRECTION setting the notes are played up down or up and down the scale 3The term is derived from the Italian to play like a harp Tf you think that support for Melodic and Harmonic minor scales is important please contact us 20 3 4 Silencing a Track Tracks and Channels 3 3 5 Bass BASS tracks are designed to play single notes for a chord for standard bass patterns The note to be played as well as its timing is determined by the pattern definition The pattern defines which note from the current chord to play For example a standard bass pattern might alternate the playing of the root and fifth notes of a scale or chord You can also use BASS tracks to play single sustained treble notes 3 3 6 Walk The WALK tracks are designed to im
32. encounter slash chords where the slash part of the chord is not a note in the chord Consider the ambiguous notation Dm C The composer or copyist might mean to add a C bass note to a Dm chord or she might mean Dm7 or even an inverted Dm7 MA will handle these almost perfectly When the slash part of the chord indicates a note which is not a note in the chord MA assumes that the indicated note should be used in the bass line Since each chord generated by MA also has a scale associated with it for use by bass and scale patterns this works For example a C Major chord will have the scale c d e f g a b a C Minor chord has the same scale but with an eb If the slash note is contained in the scale the scale will be rotated so that the note becomes the root note A warning message will be printed if the note is not in both the chord and the scale Another notation you may see is something like Dm 9 Again the meaning is not clear It probably means a Dm9 or Dm9 E but since MA isn t sure this notation will generate an error Please note that for fairly obvious reasons you cannot have both slash notation and an inversion see the next section For more details on slash chords your favorite music theory book or teacher is highly recommended A 1 5 Chord Inversions Instead of using a slash chord you can specify an inversion to use with a chord The nota
33. few combinations are not permitted JJ You cannot specify lyrics in bars that are being repeated with the option JJ You cannot insert lyrics with LYRIC SET and STUFF 57 Chapter 10 Solo and Melody Tracks So far the creation of accompaniment tracks using drum and chord patterns has been discussed However there are times when chording and chord variations such as arpeggios are not sufficient Sometimes you might want a real melody line MA has two internal track types reserved for melodic lines They are the SOLO and MELODY tracks These two track types are identical with two major exceptions JJ SOLO tracks are only initialized once at start up Commands like SEQCLEAR are ignored by SOLO tracks JJ No settings in SOLO tracks are saved or restored with GROOVE commands These differences mean that you can set parameters for a SOLO track in a preamble in your music file and have those settings valid for the entire song For example you may want to set an instrument at the top of a song Solo Voice TenorSax On the other hand MELODY tracks save and restore grooves just like all the other available tracks If you have the following sequence in a song file Melody Voice TenorSax Groove Blues musical data no one will be surprised to find that the MELODY track playing with the default voice Piano As a general rule MELODY tracks have been designed as a voice to accompany a predefined form defined in a GROO
34. here are the steps that MA takes when it encounters a GROOVE command 1 if the named groove has been loaded created already MA just switches to the internal version of that groove 2 1f the groove can t be found in memory a search of the groove database created with the g com mand line option is done If no database is in memory it is loaded from the directory pointed to by the LIBPATH and AUTOLIBPATH variables This database is then searched for the needed GROOVE The database contains the filenames associated with each GROOVE and that file is then read with the USE code The database is a file mmaDB stored in each sub directory of LIBPATH This is a hidden file due to the leading in the filename You cannot change the name of this file If there are sub directories the entries for them will be stored in the database file for the main tree 158 24 15 Paths on Windows Platforms Paths Files and Libraries By using a USE directive or by resetting AUTOLIBDIR you force the loading of your set of grooves 24 15 Paths on Windows Platforms To make MA as platform independent as possible a number of additional paths have been defined When starting up in addition to the standard Linux paths discussed above the following are also checked J Modules can be in c mma MMA J Include files can be in c mma includes JJ Library files can be in c mma 1ib 159 Chapter 25 Creating Effects It s really qu
35. into SEQUENCES This lets you create multi bar rhythms A collection of patterns can be saved and recalled as GROOVEs This makes it easy to pre define complex rhythms in library files and incorporate them into your song with a simple two word command MA is bar or measure based we use the words interchangeably in this document This means that MA processes your song one bar at a time The music specification lines all assume that you are specifying a single bar of music The number of beats per bar can be adjusted however all chord changes must fall on a beat division the playing of the chord or drum note can occur anywhere in the bar To make the input files look more musical MA supports REPEATs and REPEATENDINGs However complexities like D S and Coda are not internally supported but can be created by using the GOTO command 1 7 Case Sensitivity Just about everything in a MA file is case insensitive This means that the command Tempo 120 could be entered in your file as TEMPO 120 or even TeMpo 120 for the exact same results Names for patterns and grooves are also case insensitive The only exceptions are the names for chords notes in SOLOs and filenames In keeping with standard chord notation chord names are in mixed case this is detailed in Chapter 8 Filenames are covered in Chapter 24 10 Chapter 2 Running MA MA is a command line program To run it simply type the program name followed by the required o
36. is any existing pattern name defined for the specified track or a pattern definition following the same syntax as a DEFINE In addition the pattern can be a single z indicating no pattern for the specified track Following is a short example using RIFF to change the Chord Pattern Groove Rhumba 1 Fm7 2 Bb7 3 EbM7 Chord Riff 1 4 100 3 8 90 3 666 8 80 4 333 8 70 4 Eb6 Eb 5 Fm7 In this case there is a Rhumba Groove for the song however in bar 4 the melodic pattern is emphasized by chording a quarter note triplet over beats 3 and 4 In this case the pattern has been defined right in the RIFF command The next example shows that RIFF patterns can be defined just like the patterns used in a sequence 46 Drum Define Emph8 1 0 128 8 Groove Blues 1 C 2 G Drum Clap Riff Emph8 3 G 4 F Drum Clap Riff Emph8 5 Here the EmphS pattern is defined as a series of eighth notes This is applied for the third and fifth bars If you compile and play this example you will hear a sporadic hand clap on bar 3 The Drum Clap track was previously defined in the Blues GROOVE as random claps on beats 2 and 4 our RIFF changes this to a louder volume with multiple hits 6699 The special pattern z can be used to turn off a track for a single bar This is similar to using a z in the SEQUENCE directive A few things to keep in mind when using RIFFs JJ Each RIFF is in effect for only one bar see the discussi
37. is silently discarded by MA It is really just a specialized comment which helps you debug your music Note that only a numeric item is permitted here 49 8 2 Bar Repeat Musical Data Format Get in the habit of using bar numbers You 1l thank yourself when a song seems to be missing a bar or appears to have an extra one Without the leading bar numbers it can be quite frustrating to match your input file to a piece of sheet music You should note that it is perfectly acceptable to have only a bar number on a line This is common when you are using bar repeat for example Cm x 4 Ook WN FE A In the above example bars 2 3 and 4 are comment bars 8 2 Bar Repeat Quite often music has several sequential identical bars Instead of typing these bars over and over again MA has an optional multiplier which can be placed at the end of a line of music data The multiplier or factor can is specified as NN This will cause the current bar to repeated the specified number of times For example Cm Dm x 4 produces 4 bars of output with each the first 2 beats of each bar a Cm chord and the last 2 a Dm The 7 is explained below 8 3 Chords The most important part of a musical data line is of course the chords You can specify a different chord for each beat in your music For example Cm Dm Em Fm specifies four different chords in a bar It should be obvious by now that in a piece in 4 you ll end up with a
38. its own but it is used as a base for S4 and S8 S4 is 4 quarter notes and S8 is 8 eight notes All the volumes are set to a MIDI velocity of 90 Scale patterns are quite useful in endings More options for scales detailed in the SCALEDIRECTION page 136 and SCALETYPE page 141 sections 4 1 6 Aria An aria pattern is defined with Position Duration Volume much like a scale pattern Please refer to the the ARIA section page 65 for more details 4 1 7 Drum Drum tracks are a bit different from the other tracks discussed so far Instead of having each track saved as a separate MIDI track all the drum tracks are combined onto MIDI track 10 A Drum pattern is defined with 28 4 1 Defining a Pattern Patterns Drum Define S2 1 0 100 2080 3 0100 4 0 80 Example 4 6 Drum Definition Position Duration Volume Example 4 6 plays a drum sound on beats 1 2 3 and 4 of a bar in 4 time The MIDI velocity volume of the drum is 100 on beats 1 and 3 80 on beats 2 and 4 This example uses the special duration of 0 which indicates 1 MIDI tick 4 1 8 Drum Tone Essential to drum definitions is the TONE directive When a drum pattern is defined it uses the default note or tone which is a snare drum sound But this can and should be changed using the TONE directive This is normally issued at the same time as a sequence is set up see chapter 5 TONE is a list of drum so
39. more adjustment For the most part MA uses conventional musical score notation for volumes Internally the dynamic name is converted to a percentage value The note volume is adjusted by the percentage The following table shows the available volume settings and the adjustment values Symbolic Name Ratio Percentage Adjustment off 0 Pppp 5 ppp 10 pp 25 p 40 mp 70 m 100 mf 110 f 130 ff 160 fff 180 ffff 200 The setting OFF is useful for generating fades at the end of a piece For example We ll try to be consistent and refer to a MIDI volume as a velocity and internal MA adjustments to velocity as volumes Solo and Melody track notes use an initial velocity of 90 91 16 1 Accent Volume and Dynamics Volume ff Decresc Off 5 G Gm x 5 will cause the last 5 bars of your music to fade from a ff to silence The initial velocity of a note is set in the pattern definition see chapter 4 The following commands set the master volume track volume and random volume adjustments In addition to the note velocities generated by MA your MIDI device can also change the mix between channels See the discussion for MIDIVOLUME page 127 16 1 Accent Real musicians in an almost automatic manner emphasize notes on certain beats In popular Western music written in 4 time this is usually beats one and three This emphasis sets the pulse or beat in a piece In MA you can set the velocities in a
40. music to be repeated is indicated with a REPEAT and REPEATEND or ENDREPEAT In addition you can have REPEATENDINGS 11 2 113 114 Am C D7 D7 Dm G7 A aml Repeat 1 Am 2 C RepeatEnding 2 3 D7 RepeatEnding 4 D7 Dm RepeatEnd 5 G7 6 A Example 17 1 Repeats In example 17 1 MA produces music with bars 1 2 3 The reason for both ENDREPEAT and REPEATEND is to match IFEND and ENDIF 99 Repeats 2 yey 2 gt gt gt y 6 SR aa Mm B amp B VW y This works just like standard sheet music Note that both REPEATENDING and REPEATEND can take an optional argument indicating the number of times to use the ending or to repeat the block The effect of an optional count for REPEATENDING is illustrated in the example above The following simple example Repeat 1 Am 2 Cm RepeatEnd 3 Will expand to gt gt 2 2 SR a NNN gt Note that the optional argument 3 produces a total of three copies The default argument for REPEAT is 2 Using 1 cancels the REPEAT and 0 deletes the entire section Using 1 and 0 are useful in setting up Coda sections where you want a different count the second time the section is played Note that the count argument can be a macro Have a look at the sample file repeat s mma for lots of examples Combining optional counts with both REPEATENDING and REPEATEND is permitted Another example
41. must name the file to be used as stdlib rhumba not rhumba As mentioned above the current state of the compiler is saved during a USE MA accomplishes this by issuing a slightly modified DEFGROOVE and GROOVE command before and after the reading of the file Please note that INCLUDE doesn t do this But don t let this feature fool you since the effects of defining grooves are cumulative you really should have SEQCLEAR statements at the top of all your library files If you don t you 1l end up with unwanted tracks in the grooves you are defining In most cases you will not need to use the USE directive in your music files If you have properly installed MA and keep the database up to date by using the command mma g grooves from library files will be automatically found and loaded Internally the USE directive is used so existing states are saved If you are developing new or alternate library files you will find the USE directive handy 24 11 MmaStart If you wish to process a certain file or files before your main input file set the MMASTART filename in an RCFile For example you might have a number of files in a directory which you wish to use certain PAN settings In that directory you just need to have a file mmarc which contains the following command MmaStart setpan The actual file setpan has the following directives Bass Pan 0 Bassl Pan 0 Bass2 Pan 0 Walk Pan 0 Walk1 Pan 0 Walk2 Pan 0 So before each file i
42. name to a MIDI track 125 TRACK MIDIVoice lt Beat Controller Data gt Set one time MIDI controller command for track 126 TRAcK MIDIVolume lt 1 128 gt Set MIDI volume for track 127 TRACK Mallet lt Rate nn Decay nns gt Set mallet repeat for track 137 MmaEnd lt file gt Set filename to process after main file completed 156 MmasStart lt file gt Set file to include before processing main file 155 Mset lt name gt lt lines gt Set lt variable gt to series of lines 104 MsetEnd End of a Mset section 104 NewSet lt name gt lt stuff gt Set the variable lt name gt to lt stuff gt 103 TRACK NoteSpan lt start gt lt end gt set MIDI range of notes for track 73 TRACK Octave lt 0 10 gt Set the octave for track 138 TRACK Off Disable note generation for specified track 138 TRACK On Enable note generation for specified track 138 Print lt stuff gt Print lt stuff gt to output during compile Useful for debugging 139 PrintActive Print list of active tracks to output 139 PrintChord lt name s gt Print the chord and scale for specific chord types 76 TRACK RSkip lt Value gt Skip silence random percentage of notes 140 TRACK RTime lt Value 140 TRACK RVolume lt adj gt Set volume randomization for track 96 TRACK Range lt value gt Set number of octaves used in Scale and Arpeggio tracks 74 Repeat Start a repeated section 99 RepeatEnd count End a repeated section 99 RepeatEndi
43. number of bars which can be generated The default setting is 500 bars a long song This setting is needed since you can create infinite loops by improper use of the GOTO command If your song really is longer than 500 bars use this option to increase the permitted size 66 99 Generate type O or 1 MIDI files The parameter x must be set to the single digit 0 or 1 For more details see the MIDISMF section on page 119 Play and delete MIDI file Useful in testing the generated file will be played with the defined MIDI file player see section on page 152 The file is created in the current directory and has the name MMAtmpXXX mid with XXX set to the current PID Generate a synchronization tick at the start of every MIDI track Note that the option character is a zero not a O For more details see SYNCHRONIZE page 142 Force all tracks to end at the same offset Note that the option character is a one not an L For more details see SYNCHRONIZE page 142 Maintaining Mi7 s database 3500 bars with 4 beats per bar at 200 BPM is about 10 minutes Running MA 15 2 2 Lines and Spaces Running MA g Update the library database for the files in the LIBPATH You should run this com mand after installing new library files or adding a new groove to an existing library file If the database stored in the files in each library under the name mmaDB is not updated MA will not be
44. s a subject for which lots of lessons with your favorite music teacher is recommended You ll need a bit of basic music theory if you want to understand how and why MA creates its tracks The different options in this chapter effect not only the way chords are constructed but also the way bass lines and other tracks are formed There are generally two ways in MA to take care of voicings 1 use MAs extensive VOICING options most likely with the Optimal voicing algorithm 2 do everything by yourself with the commands INVERT and COMPRESS The commands LIMIT and DUPROOT may be used independently for both variants 12 1 Voicing The VOICING command is used to set the voicing mode and several other options relating to the selected mode The command needs to have a CHORD track specified and a series of Option Value pairs For example 67 12 1 Voicing Chord Voicing Chord Piano Voicing Mode Optimal Rmove 10 Range 9 In the following sections all the options available will be covered 12 1 1 Voicing Mode The easiest way to deal with chord voicings is via the VOICING MODE XX option When choosing the inversion of a chord to play an accompanist will take into consideration the style of the piece and the chord sequences In a general sense this is referred to as voicing A large number of the library files have been written to take advantage of the following voicing commands However not all styles of music take well to th
45. set selected MIDIVOLUMEs Chord MIDIVolume 55 will set the Chord track channel For most users the use of this command is not recommended since it will upset the balance of the library grooves If you need a track softer or louder you should use the volume setting for the track The data generated is not sent into the MIDI stream until musical data is created for the relevant MIDI channel Caution If you use the command with ALLTRACKS you should note that only existing MA tracks will be effected 5 discovered this on my keyboard after many frustrating hours attempting to balance the volumes in the library Other programs would change the keyboard settings and not being aware of the changes I d end up scratching my head 127 Chapter 20 Fine Tuning Translations A program such as MA which is intended to be run of various computers and synthesizers both hardware keyboards and software versions suffers from a minor deficiency of the MIDI standards mainly that the standard says nothing about what a certain instrument should sound like or the relative volumes between instruments The GM extension helps a bit but only a bit by saying that certain instruments should be assigned certain program change values This means that all GM synths will play a Piano if instrument 000 is selected But if one plays a GM file on a Casio keyboard then on PC soft synth and then on a Yahama keyboard you will get three quite different sou
46. the control is though the SWINGMODE command and options In default mode MA assumes that you don t want your song to swing To enable automatic conversions simply set SWINGMODE to on SwingMode On This directive accepts the value On and Off or 1 and 0 With SWINGMODE enabled MA takes some extra steps when creating patterns and processing of SOLO and MELODY parts J Any eighth note in a pattern on the beat 1 2 etc is converted to a 81 note 58 Swing J Any eighth note is a pattern off the beat 1 5 2 5 etc is converted to 82 note and the offset is adjusted to the prior beat plus the value of an 81 note JJ Drum notes with a value of a single MIDI tick are handled in the same way but only the offset adjustment is needed JJ In SOLO and MELODY tracks any successive pairs of eighth notes or rests are adjusted Important when defining patterns and sequences remember that the adjustment is made when the pattern is compiled With a DEFINE command the arguments are compiled and swing will be applied But a SEQUENCE command with an already defined pattern will use the existing pattern values the swing adjustment may or may not have been done at define time Finally if you have a dynamic define in the sequence the adjustment will take place if needed SWINGMODE has an additional option SKEW This factor is used to create the 81 and 82 note len
47. to hold a note for a longer period than the notation would otherwise indicate In standard music notation it is represented by a gt above a note To indicate all this MA uses a command like Fermata 1 1 200 Note that there are three parts to the command 1 The beat offset from the current point in the score to apply the pause The offset can be positive or negative and is calculated from the current bar Positive numbers will apply to the next bar negative to the previous For offsets into the next bar you use offsets starting at 0 for offsets into the previous bar an offset of 1 represents the last beat in that bar For example if you were in 4 time and wanted the quarter note at the end of the next bar to be paused you would use an offset of 3 The same effect can be achieved by putting the FERMATA command after the bar and using an offset of 1 2 The duration of the pause in beats For example if you have a quarter note to pause your duration would be 1 a half note or 2 quarter notes would be 2 83 14 5 Fermata Tempo and Timing 3 The adjustment This represented as a percentage of the current value For example to force a note to be held for twice the normal time you would use 200 two hundred percent You can use a value smaller than 100 to force a shorter note but this is seldom done Example 14 4 shows how you can place a FERMATA before or after the effected bar MA Equivalent Fermata
48. whereas the command 3It is probably easier to use the command Chord Piano Sequence 1f that is what you want to do In this case only sequence pattern is cleared 36 5 3 SegKnd Sequences Chord Foo SeqClear resets the CHORD FOO track If you need to clear only the CHORD track use the option 5 3 SeqRnd Normally the patterns used for each bar are selected in order For example if you had a sequence Drum 2 Sequence P1 P2 P3 z bar 1 would use P1 bar 2 P2 etc However it is quite possible and fun and useful to insert a randomness to the order of sequences MA can achieve this in three different ways 1 Separately for each track Drum Snare SeqRnd On 2 Globally for all tracks SeqRnd On 3 For a selected set of tracks keeping the tracks synchronized SeqRnd Drum Snare Chord 2 Chord 3 To disable random sequencing SeqRnd Off Drum SeqRnd Off To illustrate the different effects you can generate assume that you have a total of four tracks defined Drum Snare Drum Low Chord and Bass your sequence size is 4 bars and you have created some type of sequence for each track with a commands similar to Drum Snare Sequence D1 D2 D3 D4 Drum Low Sequence D11 D22 D33 D44 Chord Sequence C1 C2 C3 C4 Bass Sequence B1 B2 B3 B4 With no sequence randomization at all the tracks will be be processed as Bar Track 1 2 3 4 5 Drum Snare D1 D2 D3 D4 DI Drum Low D11 D22 D33 D44 DIl Chord C1
49. which can be incorporated into your songs with a single command 6 1 Creating A Groove A groove can be created at anytime in an input file with the command DefGroove SlowRhumba Optionally you can include a documentation string to the end of this command DefGroove SlowRumba A descriptive comment A groove name can include any character including digits and punctuation However it cannot include a space character used as a delimiter or a nor can consist solely of digits In normal operation the documentation strings are ignored However when MA is run with the Dx command line option these strings are printed to the terminal screen in TEX format The standard library document is generated from this data The comments must be suitable for IATEX this means that special symbols like fP Sz etc must be quoted with a preceding V At this point the following information is saved JJ Current Sequence size The current sequence for each track J Time setting quarter notes per bar 23 Accent JJ Articulation settings for each track The is reserved for future enhancements 212345 and 2 are invalid 11fo011 and a2 2 are permitted 40 6 1 Creating A Groove Grooves J Compress eJ Direction J DupRoot e Harmony J HarmonyOnly J Harmony Volume J Invert 3 Limit J Mallet rate and decay
50. will not play properly on a synth conforming to the GM MIDI specification Following is an abbreviated and untested example for using an obsolete and unnamed synth VoiceTr Pianol 3 Piano2 4 Piano3 5 eee N Strings 55 129 20 2 DrumTr Fine Tuning Translations Notes the translation is only done one time and no verification is done when the table is created For translating drum tone values see the DRUMTR command page 130 20 2 DrumTr It is possible to create a translation table which will substitute one Drum Tone for another This can be useful in a variety of situations but consider JJ Your synth lacks certain drum tones in this case you may want to set certain DRUMTR commands in a MMARC file JJ You are using an existing GROOVE in a song but don t like one or more of the Drum Tones selected Rather than editing the library file you can set a translation right in the song Note do this before any GROOVE commands To set a translation or set of translations just use a list of drumtone values or symbolic names with each pair separated by white space For example ToneTR SnareDrum2 SnareDruml HandClap 44 will use a SnareDrum1 instead of a SnareDrum2 and the value 44 actually a PedalHiHat instead of a HandClap You can turn off all drum tone translations with an empty line ToneTR The syntax and usage of DRUMTR is quite similar to the VOICETR command see page 129 2
51. you should be very careful in programming MIDI sequences into your song and or library files Doing damage to a synthesizer is probably a remote possibility but leaving it in a unexpected mode is likely For this reason the MIDICLEAR command has been added as a companion to the MIDIVOICE and MIDISEQ commands Each time a MIDI track not necessary the same as a MA track is ended or a new GROOVE is started a check is done to see if any MIDI data has been inserted in the track with a MIDIVOICE or MIDISEQ command If it has a further check is done to see if there is an undo sequence defined viaa MIDICLEAR command That data is then sent or if data has not be defined for the track a warning message is displayed The MIDICLEAR command uses the same syntax as MIDIVOICE and MIDISEQ however you can not specify different sequence for different bars in the sequence Bass Funky MIDIClear 1 Modulation 0 1 ReleaseTime 0 As in MIDIVOICE and MIDISEQ you can include sequences defined ina MIDIDEF The lt beat gt offsets are required but ignored 19 7 MIDIFile This option controls some fine points of the generated MIDI file The command is issued with a se ries of parameters in the form MODE VALUE You can have multiple settings in a single MIDIFILE command MIA can generate two types of SMF Standard MIDI Files 0 This file contains only one track into which the data for all the different channel tracks has been merged A numbe
52. 0 3 VoiceVolTr If you find that a particular voice i e Piano2 is too loud or soft you can create an entry in the Voice Volume Translation Table The concept is quite simple MAA checks the table whenever a track specific VOLUME command is processed The table is created in a similar manner to the VOICETR command VoiceVolTr Piano2 120 105 75 Each voice pair must contain a valid MIDI voice or numeric value an and a volume adjustment factor The factor is a percentage value which is applied to the normal volume In the above example two adjustments are created 1 Piano2 will be played at 120 of the normal value 2 Banjo voice 105 will be played at 75 of the normal value The adjustments are made when a track VOLUME command is encountered For example if the above translation has be set and MA encounters the following commands 130 20 4 DrumVolTr Fine Tuning Translations Begin Chord Voice Piano2 Volume mp Sequence 1 4 90 End the following adjustments are made 1 A look up is done in the global volume table The volume mf is determined to be 85 for the set MIDI velocity 2 the adjustment of 120 is applied to the 85 changing that to 9102 3 Assuming that no other volume adjustments are being made probably there will be a global volume and perhaps a RVOLUME the MIDI velocity in the sequence will be changed from 90 to 91 Without the translation the 90 would have been changed to 76 T
53. 04 crearse 157 24 15 Paths on Windows Platforms oaoa 159 25 Creating Effects 160 25 1 Oyerlapping INOS sa does AAN atacada 160 25 2 J ngle Birds ate sira AA AAA ARA as 161 26 Frequency Asked Questions 162 26 1 Chord Octaves 40 0 usar aca ee ee ee o eS ee a 162 26 2 AMABA Song POTS ds 4 4 6 ica ane ba aw bE aR Oe Sw He OS 162 26 3 Wheres the GUI coxis RR aw ee Re ee a ee 163 26 4 Where s the manual index 164 A Symbols and Constants 165 Al Chord N Mes ges sereu o ee eh eh ee we BEd BE Hd BAR OAS CA a 165 A 1 1 Octave Adjustment esos 52c 545 5 4 648 6455 A oe ae 169 A 1 2 Altered Chords so 5 443 444 a 444944 69 864 849 4664 44 169 AS Diminished Chords ctra dada se eee 169 A 1 4 Slash Chords 2 24 624424 2448 44 244 45 4 6 8 e4 A 6 bn GEES 170 AGS Chord Inversions o ess a a Ge SO He Se SOP eo OSES 170 AZ MIDE NOES sia 6 Ae HAE eee eee ES BAER SG e 171 A Ll Voices Alphabetically o s 4 4 0 a ic 171 A 2 2 Voices By MIDI Valte s c a se e AA ah anci p aiaa Oe e OS aE a 172 A 3 Drum Notes 174 A 3 1 Drum Notes Alphabetically lt lt ooa aaa a 174 A 3 2 Drum Notes by MIDI Value cocida a 174 A 4 MIDI Controllers o oo aa ee 176 AAA Controllers Alphabetically 02 ooa a 176 A42 Controllers by Valle gt 00D la ata we Beane a Home Hane eed 177 B Bibliography and Thanks 179 C Command Summary 180 Chapter 1 Overview and Introduction Musical MIDI Accompaniment Mia generates stand
54. 3 BeatAdjust 3 5 Groove EasySwing z G7 C7 Example 14 5 Fermata with Cut 14 6 Cut This command was born of the need to simulate a cut or more correctly a caesura This is indicated in music by two parallel lines put at the top of a staff indicating the end of a musical thought The symbol is also referred to as railroad tracks The idea is to stop the music on all tracks pause briefly and resume MA provides the CUT command to help deal with this situation But before the command is described in detail a diversion just how is a note or chord sustained in a MIDI file Assume that a MA input file and the associated library files dictates that some notes are to be played from beat 2 to beat 4 in an arbitrary bar What MA does is aS J determine the position in the piece as a midi offset to the current bar aS J calculate the start and end times for the notes aS J adjust the times if necessary based on adjustable features such as STRUM ARTICULATE RTIME etc a lt J insert the required MIDI note on and note off commands at the appropriate point in the track You may think that a given note starts on beat 2 and ends using ARTICULATE 100 right on beat 3 but you would most likely be wrong So if you want the note or chord to be cut what point do you use to 3The answer to the music theory question of whether the pause takes time from the current bea
55. 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 4a General3LSB General4LSB Ctr152 Ctr153 Ctr154 Ctr155 Ctr156 Ctr157 Ctrl58 Ctr159 Ctrl60 Ctrl61 Ctrl62 Ctrl63 Sustain Portamento Sostenuto SoftPedal Legato Hold2 Variation Resonance ReleaseTime AttackTime Brightness 47 5b 43 42 40 36 46 4e 4d 4c 07 27 iff A A MIDI Controllers 4b 4c 4d 4e 4f 50 3l 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 Sa 5b AG DecayTime VibratoRate VibratoDepth VibratoDelay Ctrl79 General5 General6 General7 General8 PortamentoCtrl Ctrl85 Ctr186 Ctr187 Ctr188 Ctr189 Ctr190 Reverb Tremolo 5d Se 5f 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 6a 6b 6c 6d 6e Chorus Detune Phaser Datalnc DataDec NonRegLSB NonRegMSB RegParLSB RegParMSB Ctr1102 Ctr1103 Ctr1104 Ctr1105 Ctrl106 Ctr1107 Ctrl1108 Ctr1109 Ctrl1110 6f 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 TI 78 79 Ta 7b Te 7d Te 7f Symbols and Constants Ctrl111 Ctrl112 Ctr1113 Ctrl114 Ctr1115 Ctrl116 Ctr1117 Ctr1118 Ctrl119 AllSoundsOff ResetAll LocalCtrl AllNotesOff OmniOff OmniOn PolyOff PolyOn 178 Appendix B Bibliography and Thanks I ve had help from a lot of different people and sources in developing this program If I have missed listing you in the CONTRIB file shipped with the MA distribution please let me know and Pl add it right away Z really want to do this I ve also had the use of a number of reference materials Craig Anderson MI
56. 484668 56 6 FS de ER e Ow C 21 3 3 8 Automatic Melodies lt ses secs se 0 00000 d koad a ee 21 3 4 Silencing a Track o s c sasn canara domena dinaraanan 21 Table Of Contents 4 Patterns del Denia AMET da AAA A A a ta 4l IN HS WS Gilg COR ad A a AR A Oe a A aa a AL APORTO sede wih e e rs E age Walk ere OSE SSS eae eS eee eG SS CES eS ORS GE ee EOS BMS Scale serii a Gd de dd ae Oa ida id Ge Oh ee OH EES HOE SS ALO AER ES aS ES 417 DM ysis eee ho SSH ERHE SHEERS SEE ES DES SEEDERS Als Drum Tone ses See aa wala Hale Hn ae Cae Gas Sewer Se 4 2 Including Existing Patterns in New Definitions 0 4 43 Multiplying and Shifting Patterns 2 4 2 42044 eed e ei eed ead Reaw eas 5 Sequences 3l Demis Sequences dado ach kh ow a ee s SG SEED 5 2 OCC led oa ees eo oO eG Fo a eee Re ee CRE aS AAA Dees SERIO a xh Ore ieee Ged ae ek a ae E 5 4 SegqRodWeight 2425225 24 66 46 63 46 e 84 aw eee 5 5 SOQSI76 645 5450445844544 8444 64 aa 6 Grooves 61 Creating E sar dese op ane mania a gk ee at Ge hd ec dh Sew Rae oe 62 USE A Grooye sisi ir amp 6 4 o Se HOH RH HEH HES RH G amp S 02 1 Qyerlay GrOOVES se sio e 5 E65 FF EH ESE SEES RA 6 3 o E GA Library ISSUES 4 eo 6 Ha SSeS ADA CEE GSS AREA 7 Riffs 8 Musical Data Format Sl Bar Numbers soc rearea peere Eee a ERE RS Bae Bed Be BS aku G2 Mar Repeal lt reci Hace Hk oe RH ae Re ae A ae Ge ee S3 Chords s iga psd NA SA RESIS lt a a EA a AA a Bee Boe 8 3 Case
57. 6 3 Volume Volume and Dynamics AdjustVolume Ratio 0 Volume adjustments use only the master volume and ignore the track volumes completely Any value in the range 0 to 100 can be used as an argument for this command This setting is saved in GROOVES Feel free to experiment with different ratios 16 3 Volume The volume for a track and the master volume is set with the VOLUME command Volumes can be specified much like standard sheet music with the conventional dynamic names These volumes can be applied to a track or to the entire song For example Arpeggio Piano Volume p sets the volume for the Arpeggio Piano track to something approximating piano Volume f sets the master volume to forte In most cases the volume for a specific track will be set within the GROOVE definition the master volume is used in the music file to adjust the overall feel of the piece When using VOLUME for a specific track you can use a different value for each bar in a sequence Drum Volume mp ff ppp A 7 can be used to repeat values In addition to the musical symbols like ff and mp you can also use numeric values to indicate a percent age In this case you can use intermediate values to those specified in the table above For example to set the volume between mf and f you could do something like Volume 87 But we don t recommend that you use this A better option is to increment or decrement an existing volume by a percentage
58. A numeric value prefaced oe 99 by a or is interpreted as a change So Drum Snare Volume 20 would decrement the existing volume of the DRUM SNARE track by 20 And finally for fine tuning you can adjust a musical symbol volume by a percentage The volume mf 10 will generate a volume 10 less than the value of mf f 20 will generate a volume 20 greater than f 94 16 4 Cresc and Decresc Volume and Dynamics 16 4 Cresc and Decresc If you wish to adjust the volume over one or more bars use the CRESC or DECRESC commands These commands work in both the master context and individual tracks For all practical purposes the two commands are equivalent except for a possible warning message If the new volume in less than the current volume in a CRESC a warning will be displayed the converse applies to a DECRESC In addition a warning will be displayed if the effect of either command results in no volume change The command requires two or three arguments The first argument is an optional initial volume followed by the new destination volume and the number of bars the adjustment will take For example Cresc fff 5 will gradually vary the master volume from its current setting to a triple forte over the next 5 bars Note that the very next bar will be played at the current volume and the fifth bar at ff with the other three bars at increasing volumes Similarly Drum Snare De
59. A useful setup is to have your source files in one directory and MIDI files saved into a different directory Having the file mmarc in the directory with the source files permits setting OUTPATH to the MIDI path 24 14 Library Files Included in this distribution are a number of predefined patterns sequences and grooves They are in different files in the lib directory The library files should be self documenting A list of standard file and the grooves they define is included in the separate document supplied in this distribution as mma lib ps 24 14 1 Maintaining and Using Libraries The basic MA distribution comes with a set of pattern files which are installed in the mma lib stdlib directory Each one of these files has a number of GROOVEs defined in them For example the file mma lib stdlib rhumba mma contains the grooves Rhumba RhumbaEnd and many more If you are writing GROOVEs with the intention of adding them to the standard library you should ensure that none of the names you choose duplicate existing names already used If you are creating a set of alternate grooves to duplicate the existing library you might do the following 157 24 14 Library Files Paths Files and Libraries 1 Create a directory with your name or other short id in the mma 1ib hierarchy For example if your name is Bob van der Poel you might create the directory mma 1lib bvdp 2 Place all your files or modified files in that direc
60. AA Sena 8 ewe Si A Row a be ck he ree BA ee a 9 Lyrics 9 1 DyniGOpucns s 2544364 oe ee diri a ees 9 11 Eyent Type sae perte bole Sale Hl See RESP ee Gus SAGs SE 9 1 2 Word Splitting 2 448284 46828444 46406 45 44245 4644 64 9 2 Chord Name Insertion 6 24 63 doe a So ea i ee ee i EE ee Ea 9 2 1 Chord Transposition 3 2 amp 4 amp 4H amp He RRA RA HS 9 3 Setting Lyrics 2 25 ost obo rasa a OLS 93 ARMADOS sr Ho ola maa ae Sloe le Be ee Gea hoe 5 ee oe 10 Solo and Melody Tracks 22 22 24 25 26 27 27 28 28 29 30 30 34 34 36 37 39 39 40 40 42 43 44 45 46 49 49 50 50 5i 52 53 53 53 54 54 54 55 57 58 Table Of Contents 11 12 13 14 15 16 10 1 Note Data Format see sva ri RR a Pandr adaa 10 11 Eog Notes oir A AA ta dea 10 1 2 U Sine DeSales e s 26 6 wee hee ee ee mee A Aa 2 oe we ex 10 13 Otber Commands scra 2 4 44 4 4 644 603 49 4 86 S09 5 Soe re 10 2 KeySig 10 3 AutoSololracks cocos 642568665568 o a 45 255 226 Ghee Gee 10 4 Drum Solo Tracks 000 ranra ranra ee Automatic Melodies Aria Tracks Chord Voicing 12 1 Voicing 12 1 Voicing Mode 9 ro 4 2 4 an paie Se pa e Oe ARAS 12 12 Voicing Range ssaa sicca csi eri daa 24445 0225 4 dsan adai 2A V icing Center Gai s iii a a ia er 2 Voicing Move s c 0er A A k AR RRA 121 3 Volce DIF oso rra R CE a G a 12 1 6 Volene RMOVE amp s 2 24 ce s ra ta e bees BS ee 12 2 Chord AGUSE eee e
61. C C dim 2 G7 3 C C dim Fermata 1 3 120 Cut 1 9 Cut 2 9 Cut 3 9 4Gc7 c7 5 F6 6 14 6 Cut Tempo and Timing A few tutorial notes on the above J The command Fermata 1 3 120 applies a slow down in tempo to the second beat for the following bar an offset of 1 for 3 beats These 3 beats will be played 20 slower than the set tempo J The three CUT commands insert MIDI all notes off in all the active tracks just before beats 2 3 and 4 Finally the proper syntax for the command Voice Cut Offset Tf the voice is omitted MIDI all notes off will be inserted into each active track If the offset is omitted the current bar position will be used This the same as using an offset value of 0 87 Chapter 15 Swing In jazz and swing music there is a convention to apply special timing to eighth notes Normally the first of a pair of eights is lengthened and the second is shortened In the sheet music this can is sometimes notated as sequences of a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth But if you were to foolish enough to play the song with this timing you d get a funny look from a jazz musician who will tell you to swing the notes The easiest way to think about swing eighths is to mentally convert them to a triplet consisting of a quarter note and and eighth In the above music the first and second bar are both played as in the third MA can handle this musical style in a number of ways
62. COMMENT discussion on page 134 for details 1 6 Theory Of Operation To understand how MA works it s easiest to look at the initial development concept Initially a program was wanted which would take a file which looked something like Tempo 120 Em C7 and end up with a MIDI file which played the specified chords over a drum track Of course after starting this simple project a lot of complexities developed First the chord bar specifications Just having a single chord per bar doesn t work many songs have more than one chord per bar Second what is the rhythm of the chords What about bass line Oh and where is the drummer Well things got more complex after that At a bare minimum the program or interface should have the ability to JJ Specify multiple chords per bar J Define different patterns for chords bass lines and drum tracks JJ Have easy to create and debug input files JJ Provide a reusable library that a user could simply plug in or modify gt The first choice for a comment character was a single but that sign is used for sharps in chord notation 12 1 7 Case Sensitivity Overview and Introduction From these simple needs MA was created The basic building blocks of MA are PATTERNS A pattern is a specification which tells A what notes of a chord to play the start point in a bar for the chord notes and the duration and the volume of the notes MA patterns are combined
63. DI for Musicians Amsco Publishing New York NY William Duckworth Music Fundamentals Wadsworth Publishing Belomnt CA Michael Esterowitz How To Play From A Fakebook Ekay Music Inc Katonah NY Pete Goodliffe MIDI documentation for the TSE3 library http tse3 sourceforge net Norman Lloyd The Golden Encyclopedia Of Music Golden Press New York NY The MIDI Manufacturers Association Various papers tables and other information http www midi org Victor L pez Latin Rhythms Mystery Unraveled Alfred Publishing Company These are handout notes from the 2005 Midwest Clinic 59th Annual Conference Chicago Illinois December 16 2005 A PDF of this document is available on various Internet sites Carl Brandt and Clinton Roemer Standardized Chord Symbol Notation Roerick Music Co Sher man Oaks CA And finally to all those music teachers my parents and I paid for and the many people who have helped by listening and providing helpful suggestions and encouragement in my musical pursuits for the last 40 plus years that ve been banging squeezing and blowing You know who you are thanks 179 Appendix C Command Summary TRACK Accent lt beat adj gt Adjust volume for specified beat s in each bar of a track 92 AdjustVolume lt name value gt Set the volume ratios for named volume s 93 AllTracks lt cmds gt Applies cmds s to all active tracks 132 TRACK Articulate lt value gt Duration holding time of no
64. DWN ND e A a a a a fl pd pl pl NYDN NBPWNFrR TWO WON DAN BwWNK CO 28 MutedGuitar 29 OverDriveGuitar 30 DistortonGuitar 31 GuitarHarmonics 32 AcousticBass 33 FingeredBass 34 PickedBass 35 FretlessBass 36 SlapBassl 37 SlapBass2 38 SynthBassl 39 SynthBass2 40 Violin 41 Viola 42 Cello 43 ContraBass 44 TremoloStrings 45 PizzicatoString 46 OrchestralHarp 47 Timpani 48 Strings 49 SlowStrings 50 SynthStrings1 51 SynthStrings2 52 ChoirAahs 53 VoiceOohs 54 SynthVox 55 OrchestraHit 54 116 124 66 47 112 44 57 56 58 Symbols and Constants TubularBells 14 Vibraphone 11 Viola 41 Violin 40 VoiceOohs 33 WarmPad 89 Whistle 78 WoodBlock 115 Xylophone 13 56 Trumpet 57 Trombone 58 Tuba 59 MutedTrumpet 60 FrenchHorn 61 BrassSection 62 SynthBrassl 63 SynthBrass2 64 SopranoSax 65 AltoSax 66 TenorSax 67 BaritoneSax 68 Oboe 69 EnglishHorn 70 Bassoon 71 Clarinet 72 Piccolo 73 Flute 74 Recorder 75 PanFlute 76 BottleBlow 77 Shakuhachi 78 Whistle 79 Ocarina 80 SquareWave 81 SawWave 82 SynCalliope 83 ChifferLead 172 A 2 MIDI Voices 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 Charang Solo Voice 5thSaw Wave Bass amp Lead Fantasia WarmPad PolySynth Space Voice BowedGlass MetalPad HaloPad SweepPad IceRain SoundTrack Crystal 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 Atmosphere Brightness Goblins EchoDrops StarThem
65. Musical MIDI Accompaniment Reference Manual Bob van der Poel Wynndel BC Canada bob mellowood ca June 6 2007 Table Of Contents 1 Overview and Introduction 8 1 1 License Version and Legalities e iris 44 eR RAS EER Ee EES 8 122 Aboutthis Manual z sario a s e Dad e se es hr es st e 9 1 2 1 Typographic Conventions 2 2 2 5 465 2 e3e a6 eee eee ee SE SES 9 12 2 AFX and HTML AAA RARA 10 1 2 3 Other Documentation oa a e a 10 1 2 4 Music Notation oa a 10 as stalls MAng osea sorosiane A a ee E A sa aa aid ca a llos 10 Lib INURE sse a sse ARANA IIA AAA 11 ES COMICS dorea ir o a ee ee ep Ta 12 IG Theory Ol peraton 2 lt s 2 di y e S284 e 84 EERE AAA 12 17 Case Sensitivity e s see sesse acc ora 13 2 Running MA 14 2 1 Command Line Options 4 24 se t sce enaa dcg ke ee ee A AAA 14 2 2 LS AM Spaces asem da A a AA RA A a a A 16 2 3 Programming Comments nia and 17 3 Tracks and Channels 18 Bl MA Tracks eia e a a a a Oa a i a e A a a e a a a a a ae e a e ae 18 3 2 Track Channels 18 33 Track D scHp ons aras aca g bese Aea ir RA e 19 33A Drm 2 redea 2 we oe a ee we ee a ww 19 3 32 o o lt a ane Boas amp ASD Se Be Se Se Se a ee ee 20 333 o ete oe eae Pe eee Pe Ce RR eS ee ee ee n 20 33A CALC iaa doe ty duoc are NG A Vs ee ap oe ats ee ee et ee a 20 B32 BASS S es Becca oo eal See A eee eee ee ee ae 21 30 0 Wal amp oe 2 oe amp oe eins 21 33 7 Solo and Melody 51252 68 42
66. OOT means nothing else than doing nothing leaving all chords in root position None This is the same as the ROOT option Invert Rather than basing the inversion selection on an analysis of past chords this method quite stupidly tries to keep chords around the base point of C by inverting G and A chords upward and D E and F downward The chords are also compressed Certainly not an ideal algorithm but it can be used to add variety in a piece Great thanks are due to Alain Brenzikofer who not only pressured me into including the VOICING options but wrote a great deal of the actual code 68 12 1 Voicing Chord Voicing Compressed Does the same as the stand alone COMPRESS command Like ROOT itis only added to be used in some parts of a song where VOICING MODE OPTIMAL is used 12 1 2 Voicing Range To get wider or closer voicings you may define a range for the voicings This can be adjusted with the RANGE option Chord Guitar Voicing Mode Optimal Range 12 In most cases the default value of 12 should work just fine But you may want to fine tune it s all up to you This command only effects chords created with MODE OPTIMAL 12 1 3 Voicing Center Just minimizing the Euclidean distance between chords doesn t do the trick as there could be runaway progressions that let the voicings drift up or down infinitely When a chord is voiced or moved to a new position a center point
67. OutPath Note that this option is ignored if you use the f command line option page 16 or if an absolute name for the input file one starting with a or a is used 24 8 Include Other files with sequence pattern or music data can be included at any point in your input file There is no limit to the level of includes Include Filename A search for the file is done in the INCPATH directory see below and the current directory The mma filename extension is optional if a filename exists both with and without the mma extension the file with the extension will be used The use of this command should be quite rare in user files however it is used extensively in library files to include standard patterns 153 24 9 IncPath Paths Files and Libraries 24 9 IncPath The search for include files can be set with the INCPATH variable To set INCPATH SetIncPath PATH You can have only one path in the SETINCPATH directive When MA initializes it sets the include path to first found directory in JJ usr local share mma includes JJ usr share mma includes JJ includes The last location lets you run MA from the distribution directory If this value is not appropriate for your system you are free to change it in a RC File The current setting can be accessed via the macro IncPath 24 10 Use Similar to INCLUDE but a bit more useful The USE command is used to include library files and their pre
68. Repeat 1 Am 2 C RepeatEnding 2 3 D7 RepeatEnd 2 Produces gt 2 y y gt Ro aa N NN WN gt MIA processes repeats by reading the input file and creating duplicates of the repeated material This means that a directive in the repeated material would be processed multiple times Unless you know what you are doing directives should not be inserted in repeat sections Be especially careful if you define a pattern inside a repeat Using TEMPO with a or will be problematic as well Repeats can be nested to any level Some count values for REPEATEND or ENDREPEAT and REPEATENDING will generate a warning mes sage Using the optional text NoWarn as the first argument will suppress the message 100 Repeats Repeat RepeatEnd Nowarn 1 There must be one REPEATEND or ENDREPEAT for every REPEAT Any number of REPEATENDINGs can be included before the REPEATEND 101 Chapter 18 Variables Conditionals and Jumps To make the processing of your music easier MA supports a very primitive set for variable manipulations along with some conditional testing and the oft frowned upon GOTO command 18 1 Variables MA lets you set a variable much like in other programming languages and to do some basic manipulations on them Variables are most likely to be used for two reasons JJ For use in setting up conditional segments of your file JJ As a shortcut to entering complex chord sequences To begin the fol
69. Rnd Off Rskip 0 End This command is handy when you are changing an existing GROOVE Note that only currently defined tracks are effected by this command A further option is to limit ALLTRACKS to specific tracks type For example you might want to set all the DRUM track volumes to FF AllTracks Drum Volume ff Or to set the articulation on BASS and WALK tracks 132 21 2 Articulate Other Commands and Directives AllTracks Bass Walk Articulate 55 It is assumed that all the arguments following the initial command which are valid track types Bass Chord Arpeggio Scale Drum Walk Melody or Solo are track type limiters 21 2 Articulate When MA processes a music file all the note lengths specified in a pattern are converted to MIDI lengths For example in Bass Define BB 1 4 1 100 2 4 5 90 3 4 1 80 4 4 5 90 bass notes on beats 1 2 3 and 4 are define All are quarter notes MA being quite literal about things will make each note exactly 192 MIDI ticks long which means that the note on beat 2 will start at the same time as the note on beat 1 ends MA has an articulate setting for each voice This value is applied to shorten or lengthen the note length By default the setting is 90 Each generated note duration is taken to be a percentage of this setting So a quarter note with a MIDI tick duration of 192 will become 172 ticks long If articulate is applied to a short note you are guaranteed that the note will
70. Sd bee 8 SS 141 FMM OO AAA DARIA AAN ANA A e E Re ES 141 ZUTISTUM ade as as Bea ee ee ee eee ea A 142 21 20 Synchronizes s occ Pe ee Dee Se Pee ESePae Eee Gees AAA 142 21 21 Transpo s s sos res A SESE EEE EEE BS Se SRE a DE eS EES 143 AULA cd nae aaa E R RO ae Gea Sa Ge Ge Sw a oe ee e AOS 143 TITANES pur AA A IA Ss a ANA NAAA i ecg es A ee ee 144 22 Begin End Blocks 146 224 DEI aa aa AAA A A 146 AS woe oe ge ae 2 ee ee ee ee ee ee ee ee 147 23 Documentation Strings 148 Ns VDOC So aes eee ere at Reade aie ott esse were ae pee ae ea a eee dee O ee a tee cad 148 232 4 aies gk os 4S ook Be Oe eS OH a 148 23 9 DOCVal 6 0 6 whe 5 aes he ew eee ee ee ee Pe as oo ee eS 149 24 Paths Files and Libraries 150 24 1 File EXTENSIONS es see Se aa Coe ee AA LAA 150 242 Tilde Expansion lt ecesvosserers oeste a a a Oe x 151 243 Eob IES 151 Table Of Contents MA DAD Nia se as As RA AAA ARAS AAA AA 152 24S AICTE AML oe ay ins GP ek ah ow A LE Ce a a a ra 152 24 6 IMUDIPIGVer o 6d eed a ed IAEA AR ERS AER 152 24AT DMA ok aia od amp AA A A e a A 153 24 8 IMCIAS 4 20 rc aa ra De as 153 DAD ICRA ea A a o a o RA G 154 DANO MISS 5 5 Sao dae Seda a Gee dades o de te on 4G A aa Aa 154 ZA I Mmasa oe aaa reacia ads 155 24 12 MIMAEDO se s seare a E a e di dew Ga w S 156 DA NO URC Biles o a e AN RR E E E e I 156 2414 Library PUES s sco costi m oste Gwe HOSS EE dee CLG OAS OES oO Ge ew 4 Sx 157 24 14 1 Maintaining and Using Libraries 4
71. TRACK Delete Delete specified track for future use 136 TRACK Direction Up Down BOTH RANDOM Set direction of runs in Scale Arpeggio and Walk tracks 136 180 Command Summary Doc lt stuff gt A special comment used by documentation extractors 148 DocVar lt description gt A specialized comment used to document user variables in a library file 149 DrumTR lt old gt lt new gt translates MIDI drum tone lt old gt to lt new gt 130 TRACK DrumType Force a solo track to be a drum track 63 DrumVolTr lt tone gt lt adj gt adjusts volume for specified drum tone 131 TRACK DupRoot lt octave gt Duplicate the root note in a chord to lower higher octave 71 End Delimits the end of a block 146 EndIf End processing of IF 110 EndMset End ofa Mset section 104 EndRepeat count End a repeated section 99 Eof Immediately stop end input file 151 Fermata lt beat gt lt count gt lt adjustment gt Expand lt beat gt for lt count gt by lt adjustment percentage 83 TRACK ForceOut Force voicing and raw data output for track 116 Goto lt name gt jump processing to lt name gt 113 Groove lt name gt Enable a previously defined groove 42 GrooveClear Delete all current Grooves from memory 44 TRACK Harmony Option Set harmony for Bass Walk Arpeggio Scale Solo and Melody tracks 77 TRACK HarmonyOnly lt Option gt Force track to sound only harmony notes from current pattern 78 TRACK H
72. VE 1t is a good idea to define MELODY parameters as part of a GROOVE SOLO tracks are thought to be specific to a certain song file with their parameters defined in the song file Apart from the exceptions noted above SOLO and MELODY tracks are identical Unlike the other available tracks you do not define a sequence or pattern for a SOLO or MELODY track Instead you specify a series of notes as a RIFF pattern For example consider the first two bars of Bill Bailey the details of melody notation will be covered later in this chapter Solo Riff 4c 2d 4f F Solo Riff 4 a 8g 4a 4ct 58 10 1 Note Data Format Solo and Melody Tracks F In this example the melody has been added to the song file Specifying a RIFF for each bar of your song can get tedious so there is a shortcut any data surrounded by curly brackets is interpreted as a RIFF for a SOLO or MELODY track This means that the above example could be rewritten as F 4c 2d 4f F 4 a 8gt 4a 4c By default the note data is inserted into the SOLO track If more than one set of note data is present it will be inserted into the next track set by the AUTOSOLOTRACKS command page 62 10 1 Note Data Format The notes in a SOLO or MELODY track are specified as a series of chords Each chord can be a single note or several notes all with the same duration Each chord in the bar is delimited with a single 1 semicolon Each chord can h
73. _Tempo Current TEMPO Note that if you have used the optional bar count in setting the tempo this will be the target tempo _Time The current TIME beats per bar setting ToneTr List of all TONETR settings _Transpose Current TRANSPOSE setting _VExpand VExpand value On Off Not very useful since you can t enable VEXPAND back with a macro _VoiceTr List of all VOICETR settings _Volume Current global volume setting _VolumeRatio Global volume ratio track vrs master from ADJUSTVOLUME Ratio setting The second type of system variable is for settings in a certain track Each of these variables is in the form TRACKNAME_VALUE For example the current voice setting for the Bass Sus track can be accessed with the variable _Bass Sus_Voice If the associated command permits a value for each sequence in your pattern the macro will more than one value For example assuming a SEQSIZE of 4 108 18 2 Predefined Variables Variables Conditionals and Jumps Bass Octave 3 4 2 4 Print Bass Octave 3424 The following are the available TrackName macros TRACKNAME Accent _TRACKNAME Articulate TRACKNAME Channel Assigned MIDI channel 1 16 0 if not assigned _TRACKNAME_Compress _TRACKNAME Direction _TRACKNAME_DupRoot only permitted in Chord Tracks TRACKNAME Harmony TRACKNAME Harmony Volume _TRACKNAME Invert TRACKNAME Limit TRACKNAME Mallet Rate and delay values only valid in Solo and Melody trac
74. a oaa a a E AR AAA A A A A AAA 12 3 CGOMPrESS si ss p ou 32 Em anim ae AA A A A a als Ta Aa 2 8 12 4 DupRoot 12 5 Invert 12 6 Limit 12 7 NoteSpai oe se hae be ook FOS POS POE POR S OES EE GSES REE EE ES 12 8 Range 129 DeC Chod oo eae oo eee eo ee ee ee ee Bee o ee 1210 PrintChord so dci oe bo baw boda db baw bbe dh be foe oS oe ts ag 12 11 Notes Harmony 13 1 Harmony 13 2 Harmony Only soso cor ri aaa A 13 3 Harmony VOS oeer aea dae e Gok E A AA amp SH amp A Tempo and Timing 14 1 Tempo 14 2 Time 14 3 TimeSig 44 B atAdj st TT TR 14 5 Fermata 146 Cut Swing Volume and Dynamics 16 1 Accent 59 60 61 61 62 62 63 65 67 67 68 69 69 69 70 70 70 71 71 72 73 73 74 74 76 76 77 TI 78 79 80 80 81 81 82 83 85 88 91 92 Table Of Contents 16 2 AQUSTVO IDE me wc 2 gee E AER AREA AA AAA AA 16 2 1 Mnemonic Volume Ratios 0 000 0 ee 16 2 2 Master Volume Ratio 2 2 2 a TO VOLUME eae cas es an ase nce cee as ee ers Pes Start See a ee ee Se te pe 16 4 Cresc and Decresc 2 a a a 16 53 RVOE ses seage iae rr a a aa we ow a a 16 6 Saving and Restoring Volumes 0 00 eee eee ee ee 17 Repeats 18 Variables Conditionals and Jumps FS VidableS en dd a AA AO A 18 1 1 Set oaaae a 162122 NEWSEl me poe bec mad A ee Be ee ala a a a ow ew Oslo MSGl 2 oes oe eos oy bes AAA OS Ge Sues ee 16 1 4 RASO 3 23 5 ck
75. able to auto load an unknown groove Please refer to the detailed discussion on page 157 for details The current installation of MA does not set directory permissions It simply copies whatever is in the distribution If you have trouble using this option you will proba bly have to reset the permissions on the lib directory MA will update the groove database with all files in the current LIBPATH All files must have a mma extension Any directory containing a file named MMAIGNORE will be ignored Note that MMAIGNORE consists of all uppercase letters and is usually an empty file G Same as the g option above but the uppercase version forces the creation of a new database file an update from scratch just in case something really goes wrong File commands i Specify the RC file to use See page 156 fFILE Set output to FILE Normally the output is sent to a file with the name of the input file with the extension mid appended to it This option lets you set the output MIDI file to any file name The following commands are used to create the documentation As a user you should probably never have a need for any of them Dk Print list of MA keywords For editor extension writers Dxl Expand and print Doc commands used to generate the standard library reference for Latex processing No MIDI output is generated when this command is given Doc strings in RC files are not processed Files included in other files
76. amed track is not defined you will get a warning 6 3 Deleting Grooves There are times when you might want MA to forget about all the GROOVEs in its memory Just do a GrooveClear at any point in your input file and that is exactly what happens But why you may ask would one want to do this One case would be to force the re reading of a library file For example a library file might have a user setting like If Ndef ChordVoice Set ChordVoice Pianol Endif In this case you could set the variable ChordVoice before loading any of the GROOVEs in the file All works Now assume that you have a repeated section and want to change the voice Simply changing the variable does not work The library file isn t re read since the existing GROOVE data is already in memory Using GROOVECLEAR erases the existing data and forces a re reading of the library file Please note that low level setting like MIDI track assignments are not changed by this command 44 6 4 Library Issues Grooves 6 4 Library Issues If you are using a groove from a library file you just need to do something like Groove Rhumba2 at the appropriate position in your input file One minor problem which may arise is that more than one library file has defined the same groove name This might happen if you have a third party library file For the proposes of this example lets assume that the standard library file rhumba mma and a second file xyz
77. an earlier example lets assume that you want to use a customized pattern for bars 4 and 5 in a mythical song Groove Rhumba 1 Fm7 2 Bb7 3 EbM7 Chord Riff 1 4 100 3 8 90 3 666 8 80 4 333 8 70 Chord Riff 1 2 100 3 8 90 4 Eb6 Eb 5 Fm7 In this example the first Chord Riff will be used in bar 4 the second in bar 5 For an example of this see the sample file egs riffs mma I often use this feature when creating a SOLO line Actually a queue or FIFO First In First Out buffer 48 Chapter 8 Musical Data Format Compared to patterns sequences grooves and the various directives used in MA the actual bar by bar chord notations are surprisingly simple Any line in your input file which is not a directive or comment is assumed to be a bar of chord data A line for chord data consists of the following parts 7 Optional line number N Chord or Rest data J Optional lyric data J Optional solo or melody data J Optional multiplier Formally this becomes num Chord Chord lyric solo Factor As you can see all that is really needed is a single chord So the line Cm is completely valid As is 10 Cm Dm Em Fm 4 The optional solo or melody data is enclosed in s The complete format and use is detailed in the Solo and Melody Tracks page 58 Lyrics are enclosed in brackets See the Lyrics chapter page 53 8 1 Bar Numbers The optional leading bar number
78. ands can also be set dynamically in a song See the debug section on page 135 for details 14 2 1 Command Line Options Tr C Display sequence info during run This shows the expanded lists used in sequences Useful if you have used sequences shorter or longer than the current sequence length Display running progress The bar numbers are displayed as they are created com plete with the original input line Don t be confused by multiple listing of lines For example the line 33 Cm 2 would be displayed as 88 33 Cm x 2 89 33 Cm 2 This makes perfect sense 1f you remember that the same line was used to create both bars 88 and 89 Show parsed expanded lines Since MA does some internal fiddling with input lines you may find this option useful in finding mismatched BEGIN blocks etc Display the tracks allocated and the MIDI channel assignments after processing the input file No output is generated Commands which modify MA s behaviour n mBARS Mx P Set a macro If a value is needed join the value to the name with a For example mma myfile S tempo 120 will process the file myfile mma with the variable Tempo set with the value 120 You need not specify a value mma myfile S test just sets the variable test with no value Disable generation of MIDI output This is useful for doing a test run or to check for syntax errors in your script Set the maximum
79. ant sections 1 2 1 Typographic Conventions JJ The name of the program is always set in the special logo type MA JJ A commands and directives are set in small caps DIRECTIVE JJ Important stuff is emphasized important J Websites look like this http www mellowood ca mma index html JJ Filenames are set in bold typewriter font filename mma JJ Lines extracted from a MA input file are set on individual lines A command from a file JJ Commands you should type from a shell prompt or other operating system interface have a leading to indicate a shell prompt and are shown on separate lines enter this gt 3The problem all humor aside is that the viewpoints of a program s author and user are quite different The two see problems and solutions differently and for a user manual the programmer s view is not the best 1 3 Installing MA Overview and Introduction 1 2 2 MI X and HTML The manual has been prepared with the IATEX typesetting system Currently there are two versions avail able the primary version is a PDF file intended for printing or on screen display generated with dvipdf the secondary version is in HTML transformed with IATEX2HTML for electronic viewing If other formats are needed please offer to volunteer 1 2 3 Other Documentation In addition to this document the following other items are recommended reading 1 The standard library documentation supplied with this
80. aphical programming interfaces but perhaps not in this case But I may well be wrong If you think it d be better with a GUI well this is open source and you are more than welcome to write one If you do Pd suggest that you make your program a front end which lets a user compile standard MA files If you find that more error reporting etc is required to interact properly with your code let me know and Pll probably be quite willing to make those kind of changes 26 4 Where s the manual index Yes this manual needs an index I just don t have the time to go though and do all the necessary work Is there a volunteer 164 Appendix A Symbols and Constants This appendix is a reference to the chords that MA recognizes and name value tables for drum and instru ment names The tables have been auto generated by MA using the D options A 1 Chord Names M A recognizes standard chord names as listed below The names are case sensitive and must be entered in uppercase letters as shown A Ct Eb At Cb F Ab D Ft B Di Fb Bi Db G Bb E Gt C Ef Gb Please note that in your input files you must use a lowercase b or an amp to represent a b and a for a H All 7th chords are dominant 7th unless specifically noted as major A dominant 7th has a flattened 7th note in a C7 chord this is a bb a C Major 7th chord has a bh For a more detailed listing of the chords notes and scales you shoul
81. ard MIDI files which can be used as a backup track for a soloist It was written especially for me I am an aspiring saxophonist and wanted a program to play the piano and drums so I could practice my jazz solos With MA I can create a track based on the chords in a song transpose it to the correct key for my instrument and play my very bad improvisations until they get a bit better I also lead a small combo group which is always missing at least one player With MA generated tracks the group can practice and perform even if a rhythm player is missing This all works much better than I expected when I started to write the program so much better that I have used MA generated tracks for live performances with great success Around the world musicians are using MA for practice performance and in their studios Much more than ever imagined when this project was started 1 1 License Version and Legalities The program MA was written by and is copyright Robert van der Poel 2002 2007 This program the accompanying documentation and library files can be freely distributed according to the terms of the GNU General Public License see the distributed file COPYING If you enjoy the program make enhancements find bugs etc send a note to me at bobtmellowood ca or a postcard or even money to PO Box 57 Wynndel BC Canada VOB 2N0 The current version of this package is maintained at http www mellowood ca mma This
82. are processed Dxh Same as Dxl but generates HTML output Used by the mklibdoc py tool 2 2 Lines and Spaces When MA reads a file it processes the lines in various places The first reading strips out blank lines and comments of the type On the initial pass though the file any continuation lines are joined A continuation line is any line ending with a single simply the next line is concatenated to the current line to create a longer line Unless otherwise noted in this manual the various parts of a line are delimited from each other by runs of white space White space can be tab characters or spaces Other characters may work but that is not recommended and is really determined by Python s definitions 16 2 3 Programming Comments Running MA 2 3 Programming Comments MA is designed to read and write files it is not a filter As noted earlier in this manual MIA has been written entirely in Python There were some initial concerns about the speed of a scripting language when the project was started but Python s speed appears to be entirely acceptable On an AMD Athlon 1900 system running Mandrake Linux 10 1 most of songs compile to MIDI in well under one second If you need faster results you re welcome to recode this program into C or C but it would be cheaper to buy a faster system or spend a bit of time tweaking some of the more time intensive Python loops I ve done a bit of testing wi
83. armony Volume lt Percentage gt Set the volume used by harmony notes 79 If lt test gt lt cmds gt Test condition and process lt cmds gt 110 IfEnd End processing of IF 110 Inc lt name gt value Increment the value of variable lt name gt by 1 or lt value gt 105 Include lt file gt Include a file 153 TRACK Invert lt value gt set the inversion factor for chords in track 72 KeySig lt sig gt Set the key signature 62 Label lt name gt Set lt name gt as a label for GOTO 112 TRACK Limit lt value gt Limit number of notes used in a chord to lt value gt 73 Lyric lt options gt Set various lyrics options 53 MIDI lt values gt Send raw MIDI commands to MIDI meta track 118 Track MIDIClear lt Beat Controller Data gt Set command or series of MIDI commands to send when track is completed 119 MIDIFile lt option gt Set various MIDI file generation options 119 TRACK MIDIGlis lt 1 127 gt Set MIDI portamento glissando value for track 120 TRACK MIDIInc lt File gt lt Options gt Include an existing MIDI file into a track 120 181 Command Summary MIDIMark offset Label Inserts Label into the MIDI track 122 TRACK MIDIPan lt 0 127 gt Set MIDI pan balance for track 122 TRACK MIDISeq lt Beat Controller Data gt options gt Set MIDI controller data for a track 123 MIDISplit lt channel list gt Force split output for track 125 TRACK MIDITName lt string gt Assigns an alternate
84. ation and the volumes for each note in the chord If you have fewer volumes than notes in a chord the last volume will apply to the remaining notes Chord Define Straight4 3 1 4 100 90 100 90 3 80 3 80 amp amp AWN NWW kB Sheet Music Equivalent Example 4 2 Chord Definition Example 4 2 defines a pattern in a quarter quarter quarter triplet rhythm The quarter notes sound on beats 1 2 and 3 the triplet is played on beat 4 The example assumes that you have C major for beats 1 and 2 and G major for 3 and 4 Using a volume of 0 will disable a note So you want only the root and third of a chord to sound you could use something like Chord Define Dups 1 8 90 0 90 0 3 8 90 0 90 0 4 1 3 Arpeggio An Arpeggio pattern is defined with Position Duration Volume The arpeggio tracks play notes from a chord one at a time This is quite different from chords where the notes are played all at once refer to the STRUM directive page 142 Each group consists of an beat offset the note duration and the note volume You have no choice as to which notes of a chord are played however they are played in alternating ascending descending order 8See the DIRECTION command page 136 26 4 1 Defining a Pattern Patterns Volumes are selected for the specific beat not for the actual note Arpeggio Define 4s 1 4 100 2 4 90 3 4 100 Y 4 4 100 Sheet Music Equivalent Example
85. ave several parts All missing parts will default to the value in the previous chord The various parts of a chord must be specified in the order given in the following table Duration The duration of the note This is specified in the same manner as chord patterns see page 23 for details on how to specify a note duration 66 99 66 9 Pitch The note in standard musical notation The lowercase letters a to g are recognized as well as r to specify a rest please note the exception for Drum Solo Tracks page 63 Accidental A pitch modifier consisting of a single sharp amp flat or n natural Please note that an accidental will override the current KEYSIG for the current bar just like in real musical notation Unlike standard musical notation the accidental will apply to similarly named notes in different octaves Please note that when you specify a chord in MA you can use either a b or a to represent a flat sign however when specifying notes for a SOLO you can only use the amp character Octave Without an octave modifier the current octave specified by the OCTAVE directive is used for the pitch es Any number of or signs can be appended to a note Each drops the note by an octave and each will increase 1t The base octave begins with c below the treble clef staff Volume A volume can be specified The volume is a string like ff surr
86. beat 1 Instead of names MIDI values have been used 38 and SnareDrum1 IE are identical Note how is used to separate the initial length from the first tone Solo MyDrums Riff 4 SnareDrum1 53 81 r 4 SideKick creates a chord of 3 tones on beat 1 a rest on beat 2 and a SideKick on beat 3 63 10 4 Drum Solo Tracks Solo and Melody Tracks Using MIDI values instead of names lets you use the full range of note values from 0 to 127 Not all will produce valid tones on all synths To make the use of solo drum tracks a bit easier you can use the the TONE command to set the default drum tone to use by default this is a SnareDrum If you do not specify a tone to use in a solo the default will be used You can access the default tone by using the special Tone In the following example Begin Solo Block DrumType Tone LowWoodBlock End Solo Block Riff 4r SnareDrum Solo Block Riff 4 The first solo created will have a rest on beat 1 a SnareDrum on beat 2 and LowWoodBlock on beats 3 and 4 The second will have LowWoodBlock on each beat 64 Chapter 11 Automatic Melodies Aria Tracks ARIA tracks are designed to let MA automatically generate something resembling melody Honest this will never put real composers on the unemployment line well no more than they are mostly there already You might want to use an ARIA to embellish a section of a song like an introduction o
87. cresc mp 2 will decrease the drum snare volume to mezzo piano over the next 2 bars Finally consider Cresc pp mf 4 which will set the current volume to pp and then increase it to mf over the next 4 bars Again note that the very next bar will be played at pp and the fourth at mf You can use numeric values not recommended in these directives Cresc 20 100 4 As well as increment decrement Volume ff Decresc 10 40 4 The above example will first set the volume to 10 less than the current ff setting Then it will decrease the volume over the next 4 bars to a volume 40 less than the new setting for the first bar A SEQCLEAR command will reset all track volumes to the default M When applying CRESC or DECRESC at the track level the volumes for each bar in the sequence will end up being the same For example assuming a two bar sequence length you might have 95 16 5 RVolume Volume and Dynamics Chord Volume MP F which alternates the volume between successive bars in the CHORD track Now if you were to Chord Cresc M EF 4 The following actions take effect 1 A warning message will be displayed 2 The volume for the chord track will be set to m 3 The volume for the chord track will increment to ff over the next four bars 4 The volume for the sequence will end up being ff for all the bars in the remaining sequence You may need to reissue the initial chord volume command You may find that certain volum
88. ction Random Voice BirdTweet Octave 5 6 4 5 RVolume 30 Rtime 2 3 4 5 Volume pp pp Ppp Ppp End DefGroove BirdRhumba The above is an extract from the MA score The entire song is included in the songs directory of this distribution A neat trick is to create the bird sound track and then add it to the existing Rhumba groove Then define a new groove Now one can select either the library rhumba or the enhanced BirdRhumba with a simple GROOVE directive 161 Chapter 26 Frequency Asked Questions This chapter will serve as a container for questions asked by some enthusiastic MA users It may make some sense in the future to distribute this information as a separate file 26 1 Chord Octaves Pve keyed in a song but some of the chords sound way too high or low When a real player plays chords he or she adjusts the position of the chords so that they don t bounce around between octaves One way MA tries to do the same is with the Voicing Mode Optimal setting However sometimes the chord range of a piece is too large for this to work properly In this case you ll have to use the octave adjustments in chords For more details see page 70 26 2 AABA Song Forms How can one define parts as part A part B and arrange them at the end of the file An option to repeat a solo section a number of times would be nice as well Using MA variables and some simple looping one might try some
89. d download the document www mellowood ca mma chords pdf gz The following types of chords are recognized these are case sensitive and must be in the mixed upper and lowercase shown 15 Augmented triad 05 Major triad with flat Sth Augmented triad 7 An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th 165 A 1 Chord Names Symbols and Constants 70911 9 9M7 M7 11 1109 13 13111 1319 1395 13 9 13sus 13susb9 5 6 6 add9 69 11 15 1519 4599 19 19411 19 13 7 omit3 7 7 5 7 9 7 5 7 9 7alt 705 70519 705b9 709 70911 Tomit3 7sus 7sus2 7susd 7susb9 9 9411 945 7 7 7 T 7 T 7 7 Augmented 7th with flat 9th and sharp 11th 7th plus 9th with sharp 5th same as aug9 An augmented chord raised 5th with a major 7th and 9th Major 7th with sharp 5th 9th chord plus 11th 3rd not voiced 7th chord plus flat 9th and 11th 7th including 5th plus 13th the 9th and 11th are not voiced 7th plus sharp 11th and 13th 9th not voiced 7th including 5th plus 13th and sharp 9th 11th not voiced 7th with flat Sth plus 13th the 9th and 11th are not voiced 7th including 5th plus 13th and flat 9th 11th not voiced 7sus plus 9th and 13th 7sus plus flat 9th and 13th Altered Fifth or Power Chord root and 5th only Major tiad with added 6th 6th with added 9th This is sometimes notated as a slash chord in the form 6 9 6th with added 9th This is som
90. defined grooves Compared to INCLUDE USE has important features JJ The search for the file is done in the paths specified by the LibPath variable JJ The current state of the program is saved before the library file is read and restored when the opera tion is complete Let s examine each feature in a bit more detail When a USE directive is issued eg use stdlib swing MA first attempts to locate the file stdlib swing in the directory specified by LIBPATH or the current directory As mentioned above MA automatically added the mma extension to the file and checks for the non extension filename if that can t be found If things aren t working out quite right check to see if the filename is correct Problems you can encounter include JJ Search order you might be expecting the file in the current directory to be used but the same filename exists in the LIBPATH in which case that file is used JJ Not using extensions Remember that files with the extension added are first checked 154 24 11 MmaStart Paths Files and Libraries JJ Case The filename is case sensitive The files Swing and swing are not the same Since most things in MA are case insensitive this can be an easy mistake to make JJ The file is in a sub directory of the LIBPATH In a standard distribution the actual library files are in usr local share mma lib stdlib but the libpath is set to usr local share mma 1lib In this case you
91. e By default the program is set to aplaymidi You can change this to anything you want 152 24 7 OutPath Paths Files and Libraries SetMIDIplayer usr local kmid You will probably want to use this command in an RC file 24 7 OutPath MIDI file generation is to an automatically generated filename see page 14 If the OUTPATH variable is set that value will be prepended to the output filename To set the value SetOutPath PATH Just make sure that PATH is a simple path name with no spaces in it The variable is case sensitive assuming that your operating system supports case sensitive filenames This is a common directive in a RC file see page 156 By default it has no value You can disable the OUTPATH variable quite simply just issue the command without an argument If the name set by this command begins with a or it is prepended to the complete filename specified on the command line For example if you have the input filename test mma and the output path is mids the output file will be home bob mids test mid If the name doesn t start with the special characters noted in the preceding paragraph the contents of the path will be inserted before the filename portion of the input filename Again an example the input filename is mma rock crying and the output path is midi the output file will be mma rock midi crying mid The current setting can be accessed via the macro _
92. e Sitar Banjo Shamisen Koto Kalimba BagPipe Fiddle Shanai TinkleBell AgogoBells Symbols and Constants 114 SteelDrums 115 WoodBlock 116 TaikoDrum 117 MelodicTom1 118 SynthDrum 119 ReverseCymbal 120 GuitarFretNoise 121 BreathNoise 122 SeaShore 123 BirdTweet 124 TelephoneRing 125 HelicopterBlade 126 Applause Noise 127 GunShot 173 A 3 Drum Notes Symbols and Constants A 3 Drum Notes When defining a drum tone you can specify the patch to use with a symbolic constant Any combination of upper and lower case is permitted In addition to the drum tone name and the MIDI value the equivalent name in PerseriP is included The names may help you find the tones on your keyboard A 3 1 Drum Notes Alphabetically Cabasa 694 LongLowWhistle qee OpenSudro 862 Castanets 84 LowAgogo 68 OpenTriangle 814 ChineseCymbal 52 LowBongo 61 PedalHiHat 444 Claves 75 LowConga 64 RideBell 53 ClosedHiHat 496 LowTimbale 66 RideCymball 512 CowBell 56 LowToml 436 RideCymbal2 598 CrashCymball 49 LowTom2 41F ScratchPull 30 CrashCymbal2 574 LowWoodBlock TT ScratchPush 29 HandClap 39 Maracas 702 Shaker 822 HighA gogo 67 MetronomeBell 345 ShortGuiro 732 HighBongo 60 MetronomeClick 334 ShortHiWhistle 71 HighQ aT MidTom1 478 SideKick 37D HighTimbale 657 MidTom2 454 Slap 28E HighTom1 50 MuteCuica ge SnareDrum1 382 HighTom2 48 MuteHighConga 62 SnareDrum2 40 HighWoodBlock 76E MuteSudro 852 Splas
93. e RTIME directive attempts to solve this The command can be applied to all tracks Drum 4 Rtime 4 The value passed to the RTime directive are the number of MIDI ticks with which to vary the start time of the notes For example if you specify 5 the start times will vary from 5 to 5 ticks on each note for the specified track There are 192 MIDI ticks in each quarter note Any value from 0 to 100 can be used however values in the range 0 to 10 are most commonly used Exercise caution in using large values You can specify a different RTIME for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a a ie 140 21 17 ScaleType Other Commands and Directives Chord RTime 4 10 4 RTIME is guaranteed never to start a note before the start of a bar 21 17 ScaleType This option is only used by SCALE tracks It can be set for other tracks but the setting is not used By default the SCALETYPE is set to AUTO The settings permissible are CHROMATIC Forces use of a chromatic scale AUTO Uses scale based on the current chord default When this command is encountered in a SCALE track the start point of the scale is reset 21 18 Seq If your sequence or groove has more than one pattern i e you have set SeqSize to a value other than 1 you can use this directive to force a particular pattern point to be used The directive Seq resets the sequence counter to 1 This means that the next bar will use the first patt
94. e adjustments don t create the volumes you are expecting In most cases this will be due to the fact that MA uses a master and track volume to determine the final result So if you want a fade at the end of a piece you might do Decresc m pppp 4 and find that the volume on the last bar is still too loud There are two simple solutions JJ Add a command to decrease the track volumes For example Alltracks Decresc m pppp 4 in addition to to the master setting JJ Change the ratio between track and master settings AdjustVolume Ratio 0 or some other small value These methods will produce similar but different results The adjustments made for CRESC and DECRESC are applied over each bar effected This means that the first note or notes in a bar will be louder or softer than the last You can use this effect for interesting changes by using a single bar for the range Assuming a current volume of mp Cresc fff 1 will set the final notes in the following bar to be fff etc 16 5 RVolume Not even the best musician can play each note at the same volume Nor would he or she want to the result would be quite unmusical so MA tries to be a bit human by randomly adjusting note volume with the RVOLUME command 96 16 6 Saving and Restoring Volumes Volume and Dynamics The command can be applied to any specific track Examples Chord RVolume 10 Drum Snare RVolume 5 The RVOLUME argument is a percentage value by which a volume is adj
95. e bass track can be used to generate a single sustained treble note or by enabling HARMONY multiple notes The following sections describe the tracks and give a few suggestions on their uses 3 3 1 Drum Drums are the first thing one usually thinks about when we hear the word accompaniment All MA drum tracks share MIDI channel 10 which is a GM MIDI convention Drum tracks play single notes determined 19 3 3 Track Descriptions Tracks and Channels by the TONE setting for a particular sequence 3 3 2 Chord If you are familiar with the sound of guitar strumming then you re familiar with the sound of a chord MA chord tracks play a number of notes all at the same time The volume of the notes and the number of notes and the rhythm is determined by pattern definitions The instrument used for the chord is determined by the VOICE setting for a sequence 3 3 3 Arpeggio In musical terms an arpeggio is the notes of a chord played one at a time MA arpeggio tracks take the current chord and in accordance to the current pattern play single notes from the chord The choice of which note to play is mostly decided by MA You can help it along with the DIRECTION modifier ARPEGGIO tracks are used quite often to highlight rhythms Using the RSKIP directive produces broken arpeggios Using different note length values in patterns helps to make interesting accompaniments 3 3 4 Scale The playing of scales is a common musical
96. e concept And don t forget about the other commands since they are useful in manipulating bass lines as well as other chord tracks e g sustained strings MA has a variety of sophisticated intelligent algorithms to deal with voicing As a general rule you should not use the INVERT and COMPRESS commands in conjunction with the VOICING command If you do you may create beautiful sounds But the results are more likely to be less than pleasing Use of voicing and other combinations will display various warning messages The main command to enable voicings is Chord Voicing Mode Type As mentioned above this command can only be applied to CHORD tracks Also note that this effects all bars in the sequence you cannot have different voicings for different bars in the sequence attempting to do this would make no sense The following MODE types are available Optimal A basic algorithm which automatically chooses the best sounding voicing depending on the voicing played before Always try this option before anything else It might work just fine without further work The idea behind this algorithm is to keep voicings in a sequence close together A pianist leaves his or her fingers where they are if they still fit the next chord Then the notes closest to the fingers are selected for the next chord This way characteristic notes are emphasized Root This Option may for example be used to turn off VOICING within a song VOICING MODE R
97. e data into a DEFCHORD command 12 11 Notes MA makes other adjustments on the fly to your chords This is done to make the resulting sounds more musical to keep life interesting the definition of more musical is quite elusive The following notes will try to list some of the more common adjustments made behind your back JJ Just before the notes MIDI events for a chord are generated the first and last notes in the chord are compared If they are a separated by a half step or 1 MIDI value or an octave plus half step the volume of the first note is halved This happens in chords such as a Major 7th or Flat 9th If the adjustment is not done the dissonance between the two tones overwhelms the ear 76 Chapter 15 Harmony M A can generate harmony notes for you just like hitting two or more keys on the piano And you don t have to take lessons Automatic harmonies are available for the following track types Bass Walk Arpeggio Scale Solo and Melody Just in case you are thinking that Mi4 is a wonderful musical creator when it comes to harmonies don t be fooled MAs ideas of harmony are quite facile It determines harmony notes by finding a note lower or higher than the current note being sounded within the current chord And its notion of open is certainly not that of traditional music theory But the sound isn t too bad 13 1 Harmony To enable harmony notes use a command like Solo Harmon
98. e offset but the order is may be important By default MA assumes that the MIDIVoice data is to be used only for the first bar in the sequence But it s possible to have a different sequence for each bar in the sequence just like you can have a different VOICE for each bar In this case group the different data groups with brackets Bass 1 MIDIVoice 1 ReleaseTime 50 1 ReleaseTime 20 This list is stored with other GROOVE data so is ideal for inclusion in a style file 126 19 16 MIDIVolume Low Level MIDI Commands If you want to disable this command after it has been issued you can use the form Track MIDIVoice disable Some technical notes J MA tracks the events sent for each bar and will not duplicate sequences JJ Be cautious in using this command to switch voice banks If you don t switch the voice bank back to a sane value you ll be playing the wrong instruments JJ Do use the MIDICLEAR command see section 19 6 to undo anything you ve done via a MIDIVOICE command 19 16 MIDIVolume MIDI devices equipped with mixer settings can make use of the Channel or Master volume settings MA doesn t set any channel volumes without your knowledge If you want to use a set of reasonable defaults look at the file includes init mma which sets all channels other than 1 to 100 Channel 1 is assumed to be a solo keyboard track and is set to the maximum volume of 127 You can
99. e on beat 1 assuming 4 time Then a new pattern S13 is created This is the old S1 multiplied by 2 This new pattern will play a tone on beats 1 and 3 30 4 3 Multiplying and Shifting Patterns Patterns Drum Define S1 1 1 100 Drum Define S13 S1 x 2 Drum Define S1234 S1 x 4 Drum Define S8 S1234 gt 2 Drum Define S16 S8 x 2 Drum Define S32 S16 2 Drum Define S64 S1 x 64 Example 4 7 Multiply Define Next S1234 is created This plays 4 notes one the each beat Note the definition for S64 S32 could have been multiplied by 2 but for illustrative purposes S1 has been multiplied by 64 same result either way When MA multiplies an existing pattern it will usually do what you expect The start positions for all notes are adjusted to the new positions the length of all the notes are adjusted quarter notes become eighth notes etc No changes are made to note offsets or volumes Example 4 8 shows how to get a swing pattern which might be useful on a snare drum To see the effects of multiplying patterns create a simple test file and process it though MA with the p option Even cooler is combining a multiplier and existing pattern and a new pattern all in one statement The following is quite legal and useful Drum Define D1234 10 90 x 4 which creates drum hits on beats 1 2 3 and 4 More contrived but examples are needed is Drum Define Dfunny D1234 x 2 1 5 0 70 x 2
100. e scales The RANGE value will modify this to the number of octaves specified For example Scale Range 1 will force the scales to one octave A value of 4 would create 4 octave scales etc You can use fractional values when specifying RANGE For example Scale Range 3 will create a scale of 2 notes And Scale Range 1 5 will create a scale of 10 notes Now this gets a bit more confusing for you if you have set SCALETYPE CHROMATIC In this case a RANGE 1 would generate 12 notes and RANGE 1 5 18 Partial scales are useful in generating special effects ARPEGGIO Normally arpeggios use a single octave The RANGE command specifies the number of octaves to use A fractional value can be used the exact result depends on the number of notes in the current chord In all cases the values of 0 and 1 have the same effect For both SCALE and ARPEGGIO there will always be a minimum of two notes in the sequence 12 9 DefChord M A comes with a large number of chord types already defined In most cases the supplied set see page 165 is sufficient for all the modern or pop charts normally encountered However there are those times when you want to do something else or something different 4Simple math here take the number of notes in a scale 7 and multiply by 3 Take the integer result as the number of notes 3Not quite true they use whatever notes are in the chord which might exceed an octave span Agai
101. e value 1 which tells MA to add 1 after each note is generated However you can set the value to an integer 4 to 4 or the special value r With r a random value 1 0 or 1 will be used Important in an ARIA track the sequence size point is ignored for DIRECTION A bit more detail on defining an ARIA First here is a simplified sample track definition Begin Aria Voice JazzGuitar Volume f 65 Automatic Melodies Aria Tracks Sequence 1 5 8 90 2 8 90 2 5 8 90 3 8 90 3 5 8 90 4 8 90 4 5 8 90 Direction r 0 0 1 1 0 0ir Next assume that we have a few bars of music with only a CMajor chord the default RANGE of 1 and the default SCALETYPE of Scale The following table shows the notes which would be generated for each time event Event Offset Pointer Note 1 0 c 2 0 c 3 1 e 4 3 0 5 4 0 E 6 2 2 g E random c eorg 8 random 68 org 9 etc In the above table the notation indicates that the offset is out of range and converted to the second value If you were to change the SCALETYPE or RANGE you would get a completely different series Please note the following J ARIAs are not saved or modified by GROOVE commands Well almost the sequence size will be adjusted to match the new size from the groove This might be unexpected Load a groove Let s say it has a SEQSIZE of 4 Create an ARIA Use 4 patterns to match the groove size if you don t MIA will e
102. earch for library files can be set with the LibPath variable To set LIBPATH SetLibPath PATH You can have only one path in the SETLIBPATH directive When MA starts up it sets the library path to the first valid directory in the list JJ usr local share mma lib JJ usr share mma lib JJ lib The last choice lets you run MA directly from the distribution directory You are free to change this to any other location in a RCFile page 156 LIBPATH is used by the routine which auto loads grooves from the library and the USE directive The g command line option is used to maintain the library database page 16 The current setting can be accessed via the macro _LibPath 24 5 AutoLibPath The sub directory containing the current library files to automatically load is determined by the current setting of AUTOLIBPATH Please see the library file discussion on page 157 for details You can change the automatic include directory by resetting this variable It must be a sub directory of LIBPATH for it to work The command to reset the variable is SetAutoLibPath mydir The current setting can be accessed via the macro _AutoLibPath By default the setting is stdlib Any existing GROOVE definitions are deleted from memory when this command is issued this it to avoid name conflicts between libraries 24 6 MIDIPlayer When using the P command line option MA uses the MIDI file player defined with SETMIDIPLAYER to play the generated fil
103. eats and 3 in each bar of the sequence 19 12 1 2 As a set of names predefined in an MIDIDEF command MIDIdef Rell 1 ReleaseTime 50 3 ReleaseTime 0 MIDIdef Rel2 2 ReleaseTime 50 4 ReleaseTime 0 MIDISeq Rell Rel2 Here the commands defined in Rell are applied to the first bar in the sequence Rel2 to the second And if there are more bars in the sequence than definitions in the line the series will be repeated for each bar 3 A set of series enclosed in braces Each braced series is applied to a different bar in the sequence The example above could have been does as MIDISeq 1 ReleaseTime 50 3 ReleaseTime 0 2 ReleaseTime 50 4 ReleaseTime 0 4 Finally you can combine the above into different combinations For example MIDIDef Rell 1 ReleaseTime 50 MIDIDef Rel2 2 ReleaseTime 50 MIDISeq Rell 3 ReleaseTime 0 Rel2 4 ReleaseTime 0 124 19 13 MIDISplit Low Level MIDI Commands You can have specify different messages for different beats or different messages controllers for the same beat by listing them on the same MIDISEQ line separated by s If you need to repeat a sequence for a measure in a sequence you can use the special notation to force the use of the previous line The special symbol z or can be used to disable a bar or number of bars For example Bass Dumb MIDISeq 1 ReleaseTime 20 z FOOBAR would set the ReleaseTime sequence for the
104. eautiful music for MY SONG No control characters are supported This can be useful in debugging input files 21 13 PrintActive The PRINTACTIVE directive will the currently active GROOVE and the active tracks This can be quite useful when writing groove files and you want to modify and existing groove Any parameters given are printed as single comment at the end of the header line This is strictly a debugging tool No PRINTACTIVE statements should appear in finalized grooves or song files 21 14 RndSeed All of the random functions RTIME RSKIP etc in MA depend on the Python random module Each time MA generates a track the values generated by the random functions will be different In most cases this is a good thing however you may want MA to use the same sequence of random values each time it generates a track Simple just use RndSeed 123 56 at the top of your song file You can use any value you want it really doesn t make any difference but different values will generate different sequences You can also use this with no value in which case Python uses its own value see the Python manual for details Essentially using no value undoes the effect which permits the mixing of random and not so random sections in the same song One interesting use of RNDSEED could be to ensure that a repeated section is identical simply start the section with something like Repeat RndSeed 8 chords It is highly recomm
105. eee a a a BE eee eae eke eee ee eh ee bs 18 1 5 UnSet VariableName nonoa a a 18 16 SS HOW VATS ra as ds 28 de Nance Gh ee Vee Ga oh er th ees eh a ete se a t817 Ineand Dec pedra dedi eed Gade Gage SM ewe eee eK He 18 18 VExpand Ono Of 645 65 44 245 22 SoS Bee BSS Hee eee eng 18 1 9 StackValue 2 2 2 00 00 a 18 2 Predefined Variables 0 0 a 18 3 Conditionals os 2m oe See oe ee Sa oe Gee ne ee eee ee 104 GOI biG beso ak eee be bee bbe ke bak be eee ee eos a A ES 19 Low Level MIDI Commands 19 1 Channel ies nee a ee ee ee a eA ee ae eo le ea we as ow 19 2 ChannelPrefs 5 ches less Ses Sas esas 19 3 COSTS cia a a o A A a a we ee De bs we wee bee be 19 4 ForceOut 2 2 senesan asea aaa aeaaaee a t95 IVI secs es nr da io ee en ee Ns Ne ey rye aS es ere whe eto ee 19 67 MIDICIS4E cerd od is Bros ee ke ee a Oe ee ee oH Bn 195 lt MIDIE E 20 Bucs oe ds ri tga de a tee at ees ae ae Bn ee A nets es 19 8 MIDIGIis 000000000 2 19 9 MIDIG lt lt e260 bee Fae Be koe aa AE Be we oe Gee es ISO MID IMiark es pon 2 een co bo oe St ese Gi a est aie RRA 19 11 MIDIPAan sos 42 Sac eo ee oe ew ba Bee ba ES OS eb ES ea ee EOS 1912 MIDISEQ ra a cis he te wR ee ee a Se Se ae eh te 19 12 MIDIDEE sra 03 2 8310 4 08 24k noe pee eee a ES eG as AS MIDESPI 2 5 das oh a aia dio e id SR SS OES S 19 14 MIDEEMame od in ae Bee da an ee ae As gt tg See AG G ae aoe es a 19 15 MIDIVoice 2 2 a 19 16 MIDIVoltime
106. eful for creating conditional tests for proper handling of codas or groove changes in repeats 18 1 8 VExpand On or Off Normally variable expansion is enabled These two options will turn expansion on or off Why would you want to do this Well here s a simple example 105 18 1 Variables Variables Conditionals and Jumps Set LeftC Am Em Set RightC G VExpand Off Set Full LeftC RightC VExpand On In this case the actual contents of the variable Full is LeftC RightC If the OFF ON option lines had not been used the contents would be Am Em G You can easily verify this with the SHOWVARS option When MA processes a file it expands variables in a recursive manner This means that in the above example the line 1 Full will be changed to 1 Am Em G However if later in the file you change the definition of one of the variables for example Set LeftC Am the same line will now be 1 Am G Most of MiA s internal commands can be redefined with variables However you really shouldn t use this feature It s been left for two reasons it might be useful and it s hard to disable However not all commands can be redefined The following is short list of things which will work but again not all suggestions should be used Set Rate Tempo 120 Rate Set R Repeat SR But the following will not work Set B Begin Set E End B Arpeggio Define SE This fails since the Begi
107. ended that you do not use this command in library files Yes this is a contradiction of terms 139 21 15 RSKip Other Commands and Directives 21 15 RSkip To aid in creating syncopated sounding patterns you can use the RSKIP directive to randomly silence or skip notes The command takes a value in the range O to 99 The 0 argument disables skipping For example Begin Drum Define D1 1 0 90 Define D8 D1 x 8 Sequence D8 Tone OpenHiHat RSkip 40 End In this case a drum pattern has been defined to hit short OpenHiHat notes 8 per bar The RSKIP argument of 40 causes the note to be NOT sounded randomly only 40 of the time Using a value of 10 will cause notes to be skipped 10 of the time they are played 90 of the time 90 means to skip the notes 90 of the time etc You can specify a different RSKIP for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a epa Scale RSkip 40 90 40 If you use the RSKIP in a chord track the entire chord will not be silenced The option will be applied to the individual notes of each chord This may or may not be what you are after You cannot use this option to generate entire chords randomly For this effect you need to create several chord patterns and select them with SEQRND 21 16 RTime One of the biggest problem with computer generated drum and rhythm tracks is that unlike real musicians the beats are precise and on the beat Th
108. eneral 1 GenerallLSB General2 General2LSB General3 General3LSB General4 General4LSB Af 53 56 57 58 59 09 Sa 06 61 60 26 4b Se Oc 2c Od 2d Ob 04 24 30 11 31 12 32 13 33 176 A 4 2 Controllers by Value 00 Bank 01 Modulation 02 Breath 03 Ctrl3 04 Foot 05 Portamento 06 Data 07 Volume 08 Balance 09 Ctrl9 Oa Pan Ob Expression Oc Effectl Od Effect2 Oe Ctrl14 Of Ctrl15 10 General 11 General2 12 General3 13 General4 14 Ctrl20 15 Ctrl21 16 Ctrl22 17 Ctrl23 18 Ctrl24 A 4 MIDI Controllers General5 50 General6 51 General7 52 General8 53 Hold2 45 Legato 44 LocalCtrl Ta Modulation 01 ModulationLSB 21 NonRegLSB 62 NonRegMSB 63 OmniOff 16 OmniOn 7d Pan Oa PanLSB 2a Phaser 5f PolyOff Te PolyOn 7 Portamento 05 Portamento 41 PortamentoCtrl 54 PortamentoLSB 25 RegParLSB 64 RegParMSB 65 ReleaseTime 48 ResetAll 79 19 Ctrl25 la Ctrl26 1b Ctrl27 Ic Ctrl28 1d Ctrl29 le Ctrl30 lf Ctrl31 20 BankLSB 21 ModulationLSB 22 BreathLSB 23 Ctrl35 24 FootLSB 25 PortamentoLSB 26 DataLSB 27 VolumeLSB 28 BalanceLSB 29 Ctrl41 2a PanLSB 2b ExpressionLSB 2c Effectl1LSB 2d Effect2LSB 2e Ctrl46 2f Ctrl47 30 GenerallLSB 31 General2LSB Symbols and Constants Resonance Reverb SoftPedal Sostenuto Sustain Tremolo Variation VibratoDelay VibratoDepth VibratoRate Volume VolumeLSB 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 3a 3b 3c 3d 3e 3f 40 41 42
109. er 9 Lyrics MIDI files can include song lyrics And some MIDI players or sequencers can display them as a file is played Some but not all I m not aware of any keyboards which display lyrics and most Linux based players do not display them Exceptions to the rule are the programs Kmid which displays and highlights lyrics almost in a Karaoke manner xplaymidi and timidity which display the lyrics in a secondary panel With this qualifier out of the way there really is no reason for lyrics NOT to be useful in a program like MA Singers do not want a melody playing while they are vocalizing really they are no different in this than any other instrumentalist And some platforms other than Linux support lyric display in a more useful format The Standard MIDI File document describes a Lyric Meta event FF 05 len text Lyric A lyric to be sung Generally each syllable will be a separate lyric event which begins at the event s time Unfortunately not all players and creators follow the specification the most notable exception are kar files These files eschew the Lyric event and place their lyrics as a Text Event There are programs strewn on the net which convert between the two formats but I really don t know if conversion is needed If you want to read the word from the source refer to the official MIDI lyrics documentation at http www midi org about midi smf rp017 shtml 9 1 Lyric Options MA has a numb
110. er of options in setting lyrics They are all called via the LYRIC command Most options are set as option setting pairs with the option name and the setting joined with an 9 1 1 Event Type MA supports both format for lyrics discussed above The EVENT option is used to select the desired Pointers and reviews to other players would be would appreciated 21 am quoting from MIDI Documentation distributed with the TSE Library Pete Goodliffe Oct 21 1999 Page 41 5 9 2 Chord Name Insertion Lyrics mode Lyric EVENT LYRIC selects the default LYRIC EVENT mode Lyric EVENT TEXT selects the TEXT EVENT mode Use of this option also prints a warning message 9 1 2 Word Splitting Another option controlled by the LYRIC command is to determine the method used to split words As mentioned earlier and in various MIDI documents the lyrics should be split into syllables MA does this by taking each word anything with white space surrounding it and setting a MIDI event for that However depending on your player you might want only one event per bar You might even want to put the lyrics for several bars into one event In this case simply set the bar at a time flag Lyric SPLIT BAR You can return to normal syllable word mode at anytime with Lyric SPLIT NORMAL 9 2 Chord Name Insertion It is possible to have MA duplicate the current chord names and insert them as a lyrics The option Lyric CHORDS On wil
111. ern in the current sequence You can force a specific pattern point by using an optional value after the directive For example Seq 8 forces the use of pattern point 8 for the next bar This can be quite useful if you have a multi bar sequence and perhaps the eight bar is variation which you want used every eight bars but also for a transition bar or the final bar Just put a SEQ 8 at those points You might also want to put a SEQ at the start of sections to force the restart of the count If you have enable sequence randomization with the SEQRND ON command the randomization will be disabled by a SEQ command However settings of track SEQRND will not be effected One difference between SEQRND OFF and SEQ is that the current sequence point is set with the latter with SEQRND OFF it is left at a random point Note Using a value greater than the current SEQSIZE is not permitted This is a very useful command For example look at the four bar introduction of the song Exactly Like You 2A warning message will also be displayed 141 21 19 Strum Other Commands and Directives Groove BossanovaEnd seg 3 1 E seg 2 2 Am7 seg 1 3 Dm7 seg 3 4 G7 G7 5 In this example the four bar ending groove has been used to create an interesting introduction 21 19 Strum By default MA plays all the notes in a chord at the same time To make the chord more like something a guitar or banjo might play use the STRUM di
112. et VAR to one of the values 1 2 3 4 or 5 You could use this to randomly select a GROOVE Groove var Groovel Groove2 Groove3 Alternately RndSet Grv Groovel Groove2 Groove3 will set GRV to one of Groovel Groove or Groove3 Then you can do the same as in the earlier example with 104 18 1 Variables Variables Conditionals and Jumps Groove Grv You can also have fun using random values for timing transposition etc 18 1 5 UnSet VariableName Removes the variable This can be useful if you have conditional tests which simply rely on a certain variable being defined 18 1 6 ShowVars Mainly used for debugging this command displays the names of the defined variables and their contents The display will preface each variable name with a Note that internal MA variables are not displayed with this command You can call SHOWVARS with an argument list In this case the values of the variables names in the list will be printed Variables which do not exist will not cause an error Eg ShowVars xXx Count foo XXX not defined SCOUNT 11 SFOO This is Foo 18 1 7 Inc and Dec These commands increment or decrement a variable If no argument is given a value of 1 is used other wise the value specified is used The value can be an integer or a floating point number A short example Set PassCount 1 Set Foobar 4 Showvars Inc FooBar 4 Inc PassCount ShowVars This command is quite us
113. etimes notated as a slash chord in the form 6 9 7th 7th plus sharp 11th 9th omitted An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th 7th with sharp 5th and sharp 9th An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th and flat 9th 7th with sharp 9th 7th plus sharp 9th and sharp 11th 7th with sharp 9th and flat 13th 7th with unvoiced 3rd An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th An augmented chord raised 5th with a dominant 7th 7th with sharp 9th 7th flat 5 7th with flat 9th 7th with flat Sth and flat 9th 7th flat 5 7th with flat Sth and sharp 9th 7th with flat Sth and flat 9th 7th with flat 9th 7th plus flat 9th and sharp 11th 7th with unvoiced 3rd 7th with suspended 4th dominant 7th with 3rd raised half tone A sus2 with dominant 7th added 7th with suspended 4th dominant 7th with 3rd raised half tone 7th with suspended 4th and flat 9th 7th plus 9th 7th plus 9th and sharp 11th 7th plus 9th with sharp 5th same as aug9 166 A 1 Chord Names Symbols and Constants 9 5 9 5 995 9sus M M13 M1311 M6 M7 M7 11 M7i5 M7 5 M7 5 M75 M9 M9111 add9 aug aug7 aug719 aug7b9 aug9 aug9M7 dim dim3 dim7 7th plus 9th with sharp 5th same as aug9 7th plus 9th with flat Sth 7th plus 9th with flat Sth 7sus plus 9th Major triad This is the default and is used in the absense of any other chord type specification Major 7th including 5th
114. ey must all be in the range of 0x00 to Oxff In most cases it is easiest to use hexadecimal numbers by using the Ox prefix But you can use plain decimal integers if you prefer In the above example OxFO Designates a SYSEX message 0x05 The length of the message Ox7e The actual message Another example places the key signature of F major 1 flat in the meta track MIDI Oxff 0x59 0x02 Oxff 0x00 Some cautions J MiA makes no attempt to verify the validity of the data JJ The Length field must be manually calculated JJ Malformed sequences can create unplayable MIDI files In extreme situations these might even damage your synth You are on your own with this command be careful JJ The MIDI directive always places data in the Meta track at the current time offset into the file This should not be a problem Cautions aside includes init mma has been included in this distribution I use this without apparent problems to use it add the command line This is much easier to do with the KeySig command page 62 118 19 6 MIDIClear Low Level MIDI Commands MMAstart init in your MMARC file The file is pretty well commented and it sets a synth up to something reasonably sane If you need a brief delay after a raw MIDI command it is possible to insert a silent beat with the BEATADJUST command see page 82 See the file includes reset mma for an example 19 6 MIDIClear As noted earlier in this manual
115. fected since it is nota HARMONYONLY track This feature can be very useful in creating harmony lines with the harmonies going to different instruments The supplied file egs harmony mma shows an example 10 4 Drum Solo Tracks A solo or melody track can also be used to create drum solos The first thing to do is to set a track as a drum solo type Solo MyDrums DrumType This will create a new SOLO track with the name Solo MyDrums and set its Drum flag If the track already exists and has data in it the command will fail The MIDI channel 10 is automatically assigned to all tracks created in this manner You cannot change a drum track back to a normal track These is no limit to the number of SOLO or MELODY tracks you can create and it probably makes sense to have several different tracks 1f you are creating anything beyond a simple drum pattern Tracks with the drum setting ignore TRANSPOSE and HARMONY settings The specification for pitches is different in these tracks Instead of standard notation pitches you must specify a series of drum tone names or MIDI values If you want more than one tone to be sounded simultaneously create a list of tones separated by commas Some examples Solo MyDrums Riff 4 SnareDruml r SnareDruml would create a snare hit on beats 1 2 and 4 of a bar Note how the second hit uses the default tone set in the first beat Solo MyDrums Riff 8 38 creates 4 hits starting on
116. file and compile Then document the variables and remove the SHOWVARS 149 Chapter 24 Paths Files and Libraries This chapter covers MA filenames extensions and a variety of commands and or directives which effect the way in which files are read and processed But first a few comments on the location of the mA Python modules The Python language which was used to write MA has a very useful feature it can include other files and refer to functions and data defined in these files A large number of these files or modules are included in every Python distribution The program MA consists of a short main program and several module files Without these additional modules MA will not work The only sticky problem in a program intended for a wider audience is where to place these modules Hopefully it is a good thing that they should be in one of three locations fl usr local share mma MMA fl usr share mma MMA JJ MMA If when initializing itself MA cannot find one of the above directories it will terminate with an error message If you are using MA on a Windows platform please see the comments about the default paths on page 159 24 1 File Extensions For most files the use of a the file name extension mma is optional However it is suggested that most files with the exceptions listed below have the extension present It makes it much easier to identify MA song and library files and to do selecti
117. first bar of the sequence no MIDISeq events for the second and third and the contents of FOOBAR for the fourth e To disable the sending of messages just use a single Bass 2 MidiSeq disable controllers 19 13 MIDISplit For certain post processing effects it is convenient to have each different drum tone in a separate MIDI track This makes it easier to apply an effect to for example the snare drum Just to make this a bit more fun you can split any track created by MA To use this feature MIDISplit lt list of channels gt So to split out just the drum channel you would have the command MIDISplit 10 somewhere in your song file When processing MA creates an internal list of MIDI note on events for each tone or pitch in the track It then creates a separate MIDI track for each list Any other events are written to another track 19 14 MIDITname When creating a MIDI track MA inserts a MIDI Track Name event at the start of the track By default this name is the same as the associated MA track name You can change this by issuing the MIDITNAME command For example to change the CHORD track name you might do something like Chord MidiTname Piano Please note that this only effects the tracks in the generated MIDI file You still refer to the track in your file as CHORD 4In MA this will always be channel 10 125 19 15 MIDIVoice Low Level MIDI Commands 19 15 MIDIVoice Similar to the MIDISEQ comma
118. g does not have the desired effect In the above sequence the VOICETR will have no effect For the desired translations to work the VOICE or whatever command must come after the translation command 20 1 VoiceTr In previous section you saw how to set a voice for a track by using its standard MIDI name The VOICETR command sets up a translation table that can be used in two different situations JJ It permits creation of your own names for voices perhaps for a foreign language JJ It lets you override or change voices used in standard library files VOICETR works by setting up a simple translation table of name and alias pairs Whenever MA encounters a voice name in a track command it first attempts to translate this name though the alias table To set a translation or series of translations VoiceTr Pianol Clavinet Hmmm 18 Note that you additional VOICETR commands will add entries to the existing table To clear the table use the command with no arguments VoiceTr Empty table Assuming the first command the following will occur Chord Main Voice Hmmm The VOICE for the Chord Main track will be set to 18 or Organ3 Chord 2 Voice Pianol The VOICE for the Chord 2 track will be set to Clavinet If your synth does not follow standard GM MIDI voice naming conventions you can create a translation table which can be included in all your MA song files via an RC file But do note that the resulting files
119. g bars 1 Tango 2 LightTango 3 LightTangoSus 4 LightTango 5 Tango Note how the groove pattern wraps around to the first one when the list is exhausted There is no way to select an item from the list except by going though it You might find this handy if you have a piece with an alternating time signature For example you might have a 4 song Rather than creating a 2 bar groove you could do something like Groove Groove34 Groove44 For long lists you can use the to repeat the last groove in the list The example above could be written 42 6 2 Using A Groove Grooves Groove Tango LightTango LightTangoSus When you use the list feature of GROOVEs you should be aware of what happens with the bar sequence number Normally the sequence number is incremented after each bar is processed and when a new groove is selected the sequence number is reset see SEQ page 141 When you use a list which changes the GROOVE after each bar the sequence number is reset after each bar with one exception if the same GROOVE is being used for two or more bars the sequence will not be reset Another way to select GROOVEs is to use a list of grooves with a leading value This lets you select the GROOVE to use based on the value of a variable handy if you want different sounds for repeated sections Again an example Set loop 1 create counter with value of 1 Repeat Groove loop BossaNovaSus BossaNovalSus BossaNovaFi
120. gt Set swing mode timing 88 Synchronize lt START END gt Insert a start end synchronization mark 142 Tempo lt rate gt Set the rate in beats per minute 80 Time lt count gt Set number of beats in a bar 81 TimeSig lt nn dd gt Set the MIDI time signature not used by MMA 81 TRACK Tone lt Note gt Set the drum tone to use in a sequence 29 Transpose lt value gt Transpose all tracks to a different key 143 UnSet lt name gt Remove the variable lt name gt 105 TRACK Unify lt On Off gt Unify overlapping notes 143 Use lt file gt Include import an existing mma file 154 VExpand lt on off gt Set variable expansion 105 TRACK Voice lt instrument gt Set MIDI voice for track 144 VoiceTr lt old new gt translates MIDI instrument lt old gt to lt new gt 129 VoiceVolTr lt voice gt lt adj gt adjusts volume for specified voice 130 TRACK Voicing lt options Set the voicing for a chord track 67 TRACK Volume lt value gt Set the volume for a track or all tracks 94 183
121. gths see page 23 By default the value 66 is used This simply means that the note length 81 is assigned 66 of the value of an eight note and 82 is assigned 34 You can change this setting at any point in your song or style files It will take effect immediately on all future patterns and solo lines The setting SwingMode Skew 60 will set a 60 40 setting If you want to experiment find a GROOVE with note lengths of 81 and 82 swing is as good a choice as any Now put a SWINGMODE SKEW VALUE directive at the top of your song file before selecting any GROOVEs Compile and play the song with different values to hear the effects If you want to play with different effects you could do something like this SwingMode On Skew 40 Set CHORD pattern groove SwingMode Skew 30 Set Drum 1 pattern groove SwingMode Skew whatever Set Drum 2 This will give different rates for different tracks Pl probably not enjoy your results but I play polkas on the accordion for fun The complete SWINGMODE setting is saved in the current GROOVE and can be accessed via the SwingMode built in macro The easy and ugly and unintuitive way to handle swing is to hard code the value right into your patterns For example you could set a swing chord pattern with Chord Define Swing8 1 3 3 80 1 33 3 80 2 3 3 80 2 33 3 80 We really don t recommend this for the simple reason that the swing rate is frozen as quarter
122. hCymbal 550 JingleBell 832 MuteTriangle 804 SquareClick 324b KickDrum1 36 OpenCuica 796 Sticks ale KickDrum2 Sow OpenHiHat 465 Tambourine 5460 LongGuiro 74P OpenHighConga 63 gt VibraSlap 588 A 3 2 Drum Notes by MIDI Value 27 HighQ 37 SideKick 47 MidTom1 28 Slap 38 SnareDrum1 48 HighTom2 29 ScratchPush 39 HandClap 49 CrashCymbal1 30 ScratchPull9 40 SnareDrum2 50 HighTom1 31 Sticks 41 LowTom2f 51 RideCymbal1 32 SquareClick 42 ClosedHiHat 52 ChineseCymbal f 33 MetronomeClick 43 LowTom1 53 RideBel 34 MetronomeBell 44 PedalHiHat 54 Tambourine 35 KickDrum2 45 MidTom24 55 SplashCymbal 36 KickDrum1 46 OpenHiHat 56 CowBell 1 4 A 3 Drum Notes 57 58 59 60 6l 62 63 64 65 66 CrashCymbal24 VibraSlap RideCymbal2 HighBongo LowBongo MuteHighConga OpenHighCongaf LowConga HighTimbale LowTimbale 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 HighAgogo LowAgogo Cabasa4 Maracas ShortHiWhistle LongLowWhistle ShortGuiro LongGuiro Claves HighWoodBlock Bb 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 Symbols and Constants LowWoodBlock MuteCuica OpenCuica MuteTriangle OpenTriangle Shaker JingleBell Castanets MuteSudro OpenSudro Irs A A MIDI Controllers A 4 MIDI Controllers Symbols and Constants When specifying a MIDI Controller in a MIDISEQ or MIDIVOICE co
123. he current chord To disable harmony use a 0 or None Be careful in using harmonies They can make your song sound heavy especially with BASS notes ap plying a different volume may help The command has no effect in DRUM or CHORD tracks 13 2 HarmonyOnly As a added feature to the automatic harmony generation discussed in the previous section it is possible to set a track so that it only plays the harmony notes For example you might want to set up two arpeggio tracks with one playing quarter notes on a piano and a harmony track playing half notes on a violin The following snippet is extracted from the song file Cry Me A River and sets up 2 different choir voices Begin Arpeggio Sequence A4 Voice ChoirAahs Invert 0 1 2 3 SegRnd Octave 5 RSkip 40 Volume p Articulate 99 End Begin Arpeggio 2 Sequence A4 Voice VoiceOohs 78 13 3 HarmonyVolume Harmony Octave 5 RSkip 40 Volume p Articulate 99 HarmonyOnly Open End Just like the HARMONY command above you can have different settings for each bar in your sequence Setting a bar or the entire sequence to or 0 disables both the HARMONY and HARMONYONLY settings The command has no effect in DRUM or CHORD tracks If you want to use this feature with SOLO or MELODY tracks you can duplicate the notes in your RIFF or in line notation or with the AUTOHARMONYTRACKS command see page 62 13 3 HarmonyVolume By default MA wi
124. he notes will change quite quickly The default value is 0 no decay 21 9 Octave When MA initializes and after the SEQCLEAR command all track octaves are set to 4 This will place most chord and bass notes in the region of middle C You can change the octave for any voice with OCTAVE command For example Bass 1 Octave 3 Sets the notes used in the Bass 1 track one octave lower than normal The octave specification can be any value from 0 to 10 Various combinations of INVERT TRANSPOSE and OCTAVE can force notes to be out of the valid MIDI range In this case the lowest or highest available note will be used You can specify a different OCTAVE for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a a a Chord Octave 4 5 4 21 10 Off To disable the generation of MIDI output on a specific track Bass Off This can be used anywhere in a file Use it to override the effect of a predefined groove if you wish This is simpler than resetting a voice in a groove The only way to reset this command is with a ON directive 21 11 On To enable the generation of MIDI output on a specific track which has been disabled with an OFF directive Bass On 138 21 12 Print Other Commands and Directives 21 12 Print The PRINT directive will display its argument to the screen when it is encountered For example if you want to print the file name of the input file while processing you could insert Print Making b
125. he other tests are binary they take two arguments LT Str1 Str2 Returns true if Str is less than Str2 Please see the discussion below on how the tests are done LE Str1 Str2 Returns true if str is less than or equal to Str2 EQ Strl Str2 Returns true if str is equal to Str2 2m s author probably suffers from mild dyslexia and can t remember if the command is IFEND or ENDIF so both are permitted Use whichever is more comfortable for you 110 18 3 Conditionals Variables Conditionals and Jumps NE Str1 Str2 Returns true if str is not equal to Str2 GT Str1 Str2 Returns true if str is greater than Str2 GE Str1 Str2 Returns true if str is greater than or equal to Str2 In the above tests you have several choices in specifying Str and Str2 At some point when MA does the actual comparison two strings or numeric values are expected So you really could do If EQ abc ABC and get a true result The reason that abc equals ABC is that all the comparisons in MA are case insensitive You can also compare a variable to a string If GT foo abc 99 66 29 will evaluate to true if the contents of the variable foo evaluates to something greater than abc But there is a bit of a gotcha here If you have set foo to a two word string then MA will choke on the command In the following example Set Foo A B If GT SFoo abc the comparison is passed the line If GT A B
126. iano IceRain JazzGuitar Kalimba Koto Marimba MelodicTom1 MetalPad MusicBox MutedGuitar MutedTrumpet NylonGuitar Oboe Ocarina OrchestraHit OrchestralHarp Organ1 69 88 110 33 73 60 35 101 120 31 127 94 22 125 96 26 108 107 12 117 93 10 28 59 24 68 79 53 46 16 Organ2 Organ3 OverDriveGuitar PanFlute Pianol Piano2 Piano3 Piccolo PickedBass PizzicatoString PolySynth Recorder ReedOrgan ReverseCymbal RhodesPiano Santur Saw Wave SeaShore Shakuhachi Shamisen Shanai Sitar SlapBass 1 SlapBass2 SlowStrings Solo Voice SopranoSax SoundTrack Space Voice Square Wave StarTheme SteelDrums SteelGuitar 17 18 29 75 72 34 45 90 74 20 119 15 81 122 77 106 111 104 36 37 49 85 64 97 91 80 103 114 25 171 A 2 MIDI Voices Strings SweepPad SynCalliope SynthBass1 SynthBass2 SynthBrass1 SynthBrass2 SynthDrum SynthStrings 1 SynthStrings2 48 95 82 38 39 62 63 118 50 51 Synth Vox TaikoDrum TelephoneRing TenorSax Timpani TinkleBell TremoloStrings Trombone Trumpet Tuba A 2 2 Voices By MIDI Value Pianol Piano2 Piano3 Honky TonkPiano RhodesPiano EPiano HarpsiChord Clavinet Celesta Glockenspiel MusicBox Vibraphone Marimba Xylophone TubularBells Santur Organ1 Organ2 Organ3 ChurchOrgan ReedOrgan Accordion Harmonica Bandoneon NylonGuitar SteelGuitar JazzGuitar CleanGuitar O 0 0 UN FWN KY O NO NO NNN WN
127. ignments 1 SOLO KEYBOARD So a MA track was created but if you compile this file and examine the resulting MIDI file you will find that the voice has not been set To overcome this insert the FORCEOUT command at the end of the track setup For example here is a more complete file which will set the keyboard track to TenorSax with a volume of 100 play a bar of accompaniment set a Trumpet voice with a louder volume play another bar and finally reset the keyboard to the default Piano voice Groove BossaNova Begin Solo Channel 1 Voice TenorSax MIDIVolume 100 ForceOut End 1 C Begin Solo Voice Trumpet MIDIVolume 120 ForceOut End 2G Begin Solo Voice Pianol MIDIVolume 127 ForceOut 117 19 5 MIDI Low Level MIDI Commands End Note The same or similar results could be accomplished with the MIDI command however it s a bit harder to use and the commands would be in the Meta track 19 5 MIDI The complete set of MIDI commands is not limitless but from this end it seems that adding commands to suit every possible configuration is never ending So in an attempt to satisfy everyone a command which will place any arbitrary MIDI stream in your tracks has been implemented In most cases this will be a MIDI Sysex or Meta event For example you might want to start a song off with a MIDI reset MIDI OxFO 0x05 Ox7e 0x7f 0x09 0x01 Oxf7 The values passed to the MIDI command are normal integers however th
128. iles When MA starts it checks for initialization files Only the first found file is processed The following locations files are checked in order 1 mmarc this is a normal file in the current directory 2 mmarc this is an invisible file in the users home directory 3 usr local etc mmarc 4 etc mmarc Only the first found file will be processed This means you can override a global RC file with a user specific one If you just want to override some specific commands you might want to 156 24 14 Library Files Paths Files and Libraries 1 Create the file mmarc in a directory with MA files 2 As the first line in that file have the command include mmarc to force the inclusion of your global stuff 3 Now place your directory specific commands in your custom RC file By default no RC files are installed You may want to create an empty mmarc file to eliminate a warning message An alternate method for using a different RC file is to specify the name of the file on the command line by using the i option see page 16 Using this option you can have several RC files in a directory and compile your songs differently depending on the RC file you specify The RC file is processed as a MA input file As such it can contain anything a normal input file can including music commands However you should limit the contents of RC files to things like SetOutPath SetLibPath MMAStart MMAEnd
129. included file is skipped this may surprise you if you have used the optional Start setting If you want the included file to start somewhere besides the start of the current bar you can use a BEATADJUST before the MIDIINC use another to move the pointer back right after the include to keep the song pointer correct Not all events in the included files are transferred notably all system and meta events other than text and lyric see above are ignored If you want to apply different VOLUME or other options to different tracks just do multiple includes of the same file with each include using a different track and options 19 10 MIDIMark You can insert a MIDI Marker event into the Meta track with this command The mark can be useful in debugging your MIDI output with a sequencer or editor which supports Mark events most do MidiMark Label will insert the text Label at the current position You can add an optional negative or positive offset in beats MidiMark 2 Label4 will insert Label4 2 beats into the next bar 19 11 MIDIPan In MIDI speak pan is the same as balance on a stereo By adjusting the MIDIPAN for a track you can direct the output to the left right or both speakers Example Bass MIDIPan 4 This command is only available in track mode The data generated is not sent into the MIDI stream until musical data is created for the relevant MIDI channel The value specified must be in the
130. ings This includes the master setting as well as individual track settings So 1f you are using the mythical groove Wonderful and think that the Chord Piano volume should be louder in a particular song it s easy to do something like Groove Wonderful Chord Piano Volume ff DefGroove Wonderful Now when you call this groove the new volume will be used Note that you ll have to do this for each variation of the groove that you use in the song In most songs you will not need to do major changes But it is nice to use the same volume each time though a section In most cases you 1l want to do a explicit setting at the start of a section For example 97 16 6 Saving and Restoring Volumes Repeat Volume mf Cresc ff 5 EndRepeat Another useful technique is the use of the LASTVOLUME macro For example Volume pp Cresc f 5 LastVolume restores to pp Volume and Dynamics 98 Chapter 17 Repeats MA attempts to be as comfortable to use as standard sheet music This includes repeats and endings More complex structures like D S Coda etc are not directly supported But they are easily simulated with by using some simple variables conditionals and GOTOs See chapter 18 for details Often as not 1t may be easier to use your editor to cut paste and duplicate Another alternate method of handling complicated repeats is to set sections of code in MSET see page 104 variables and simply expand those A section of
131. is false Nesting of IFs is permitted If ndef Foo Print Foo has been defined Else If def bar Print bar has been defined Cool Else Print no bar go thirsty Endif Endif works just fine Indentation has been used in these examples to clearly show the nesting and conditions You should do the same 18 4 Goto The GOTO command redirects the execution order of your script to the point at which a LABEL or line number has been defined There are really two parts to this 1 A command defining a label and 2 The GOTO command A label is set with the LABEL directive Label Pointl The string defining the label can be any sequence of characters Labels are case insensitive To make this look a lot more line those old BASIC programs any lines starting with a line number are considered to be label lines as well A few considerations on labels and line numbers JJ A duplicate label generated with a LABEL command will generate an error 112 18 4 Goto Variables Conditionals and Jumps JJ A line number label duplicating a LABEL is an error JJ A LABEL duplicating a line number is an error J Duplicate line numbers are permitted The last one encountered will be the one used J All label points are generated when the file is opened not as it is parsed JJ Line numbers really just comments do not need to be in any order The command Goto Pointl causes an immediate jump to a new point in the file If you are cu
132. is note 0 3 12 10 PrintChord Chord Voicing J Do Not include a chord name ie C or Bb in the definition Just the type The final example handles a minor problem in MA and diminished chords In most of the music the author of MA encounters the marking dim on a chord usually means a diminished 7th So when MA initializes it creates a copy of the dim7 and calls it dim But some people think that dim should reference a diminished triad It s pretty easy to change this by creating a new definition for dim DefChord dim 0 3 6 0 2 3 5 6 8 9 In this example the scale notes use the same notes as those in a dim7 You might want to change the Bbb 9 to Bb 10 or B 11 If you really disagree with the choice to make a dim7 the default you could even put this in a mmarc file It is even easier to use the non standard notation dim3 to specify a diminished triad 12 10 PrintChord This command can be used to make the create of custom chords a bit simpler Simply pass one or more chord types after the command and they will be displayed on your terminal Example PrintChord m M7 dim in a file should display m 0 3 7 0 2 3 5 7 9 11 Minor triad M7 0 4 7 11 0 2 4 5 7 9 11 Major 7th dim 0 3 6 9 0 2 3 5 6 8 9 Diminished MA assumes a diminished 7th From this you can cut and paste change the chord or scale and insert th
133. is the time signature denominator the length of the note getting a single beat In 3 you would set this to 4 The NN value must be an integer in the range of 1 to 126 The DD value must be one of 1 2 4 8 16 32 or 64 MIA assumes that all songs are in and places that MIDI event at offset 0 in the Meta track The TIMESIG value is remembered by GROOVESs and is properly set when grooves are switched You should probably have a time signature in any groove library files you create the supplied files all do The common time signatures common and cut are supported They are translated by MA to 4 and 3 The time value is saved restored with grooves so setting a time is redundant in this case 1 14 4 Beat Adjust Tempo and Timing 14 4 BeatAdjust Internally MA tracks its position in a song according to beats For example in a 4 piece the beat position is incremented by 4 after each bar is processed For the most part this works fine however there are some conditions when it would be nice to manually adjust the beat position JJ Insert some extra silent beats at the end of bar to simulate a pause J Delete some beats to handle a short bar JJ Change a pattern in the middle of a bar Each problem will be dealt with in turn In example 14 1 a pause is simulated at the end of bar 10 One problem with this logic is that the inserted beat will be silent but certain notes percussive things like piano of
134. itate walking bass lines Traditionally they are played on bass instruments like the upright bass bass guitar or tuba A WALK track uses a pattern to define the note timing and volume Which note is played is determined from the current chord and a simplistic algorithm There is no user control over the note selection 3 3 7 Solo and Melody SOLO and MELODY tracks are used for arbitrary note data Most likely this is a melody or counter melody but these tracks can also be used to create interesting endings introductions or transitions 3 3 8 Automatic Melodies Real composers don t need to fear much from this feature but it can create some interesting effects ARIA tracks use a predefined pattern to generate melodies over a chord progression They can be used to actually compose a bit of music or simply to augment a section of an existing piece 3 4 Silencing a Track There are a number of ways to silence a track JJ Use the OFF page 138 command to stop the generation of MIDI data JJ Disable the sequence for the bar with an empty sequence page 35 JJ Delete the entire sequence with SEQCLEAR page 36 JJ Disable the MIDI channel with a Channel 0 page 114 Please refer to the appropriate sections on this manual for further details 21 Chapter 4 Patterns MA builds its output based on PATTERNS and SEQUENCEs supplied by you These can be defined in the same file as the rest of the song data or can be incl
135. ite amazing how easy and effective it is to create different patterns sequences and special effects As MA was developed lots of silly things were tried this chapter is an attempt to display and preserve some of them The examples don t show any music to apply the patterns or sequences to The manual assumes that 1f you ve read this far you ll know that you should have something like 1 2G 3 G 4c as a simple test piece to apply tests to 25 1 Overlapping Notes As a general rule you should not create patterns in which notes overlap However here s an interesting effect which relies on ignoring that rule Begin Scale define S1 1 1 1 1 1 90 define S32 S1 x 32 Sequence S32 ScaleType Direction Both Voice Accordion Octave 5 End S1 is defined with a note length of 4 whole notes 1 1 1 1 so that when it is multiplied for S32 a pattern of 32 8th notes is created Of course the notes overlap Running this up and down a chromatic scale is interesting You might want to play with this a bit and try changing S1 to define S1 1 1 90 to see what the effect is of the notes overlapping 160 25 2 Jungle Birds Creating Effects 25 2 Jungle Birds Here s another use for SCALEs Someone certainly not the author decided that some jungle sounds would be perfect as an introduction to Yellow Bird groove Rhumba Begin Scale define S1 1 1 90 define S32 S1 x 32 Sequence S32 ScaleType Chromatic Dire
136. ks TRACKNAME NoteSpan TRACKNAME Octave TRACKNAME Range TRACKNAME Rskip TRACKNAME Rtime TRACKNAME Rvolume TRACKNAME SeqRnd TRACKNAME SeqRnd Weight TRACKNAME Strum only permitted in Chord tracks TRACKNAME Tone only permitted in Drum tracks TRACKNAME Unify TRACKNAME Voice TRACKNAME Voicing only permitted in Chord tracks TRACKNAME Volume 109 18 3 Conditionals Variables Conditionals and Jumps The TrackName macros are useful in copying values between non similar tracks and CHSHARE tracks For example Begin Bass Voice AcousticBass Octave 3 End Begin Walk ChShare Bass Voice Bass Voice Octave _Bass_Octave End 18 3 Conditionals The most important reason to have variables in MA is to use them available in conditionals In MA a conditional consists of a line starting with an IF directive a test a series of lines to process depending upon the result of the test and a closing ENDIF or IFEND directive An optional ELSE statement may be included The first set of tests are unary they take no arguments Def VariableName Returns true if the variable has been defined Ndef VariableName Returns true if the variable has not been defined In the above tests you must supply the name of a variable don t make the mistake of including a which will invoke expansion and result in something you were not expecting A simple example If Def InCoda 5 Cm 6 Endif T
137. l enable this In this mode the chord line is parsed and inserted as verse one into each bar The mode is enabled with On or 1 and disabled with Off or 0 After the chords are extracted they are treated exactly like a verse you have entered as to word splitting etc Note that the special chord z is converted to N C and directives after the z in constructs like C7zCS will appear with only the chord name 9 2 1 Chord Transposition If you are transposing a piece or if you with to display the chords for a guitar with a cappo you can tell MIA to transpose the chord names inserted with CHORDS ON Just add a transpose directive in the LYRIC command 54 9 3 Setting Lyrics Lyrics Lyric CHORDS 0n Transpose 2 Please note that the Lyrics code does not look at the global TRANSPOSE setting MA isn t too smart in it s transposition and will often display the wrong chord names in relation to sharp and flat names If you find that you are getting too many wrong names try setting the CNAMES option to either Sharp or Flat Another example Lyric CHORDS 0n Transpose 2 CNames Flat By default the flat setting is used In addition to Flat and Sharp you can use the abbreviations FP esp and FR You can and may well need to change the CNAMES setting anywhere in the song 9 3 Setting Lyrics Adding a lyric to your song is a simple matter a
138. ll print This is loop Loop Groove is Groove 1 A Am Inc Loop Bump the counter value RepeatEnd 4 If you use this option make sure the value of the counter is greater than 0 Also note that the values larger than the list count are looped to be valid The use of s for repeated names is also permitted For an example have a look at the file grooves mma included in this distribution You could get the same results with various if statements but this is easier 6 2 1 Overlay Grooves To make the creation of variations easier you can use GROOVE in a track setting Scale Groove Funny In this case only the information saved in the corresponding DEFGROOVE FUNNY for the SCALE track will be restored You might think of this as a groove overlay Have a look at the sample song Yellow Bird for an example When restoring track grooves as in the above example the SEQSIZE is not reset The sequence size of the restored track is adjusted to fit the current sequence size setting One caution with these overlays is that no check is done to see if the track you re using exists Yes the GROOVE must have been defined but not the track Huh Well you need to know a bit about how MA parses files and how it handles new tracks When MA reads a line in a file it first checks to see if the first word on the line is a simple command like PRINT MIDI or any other command which doesn t require a leading trackname
139. ll use a volume velocity of 80 of that used by the original note for all harmony notes it generates You can change this with the the HARMONY VOLUME command For example Begin Solo Voice JazzGuitar Harmony Open HarmonyVolume 80 End You can specify different values for each bar in the sequence The values are percentages and must be greater than O large values works just fine if you want the harmony louder than the original The command has no effect in DRUM or CHORD tracks 79 Chapter 14 Tempo and Timing MA has a rich set of commands to adjust and vary the timing of your song 14 1 Tempo The tempo of a piece is set in Beats per Minute with the Tempo directive Tempo 120 sets the tempo to 120 beats minute You can also use the tempo command to increase or decrease the current rate by including a leading or in the rate For example assuming the current rate is 120 Tempo 10 will increase the current rate to 130 beats minute The tempo can be changed series of beats much like a rit or acc in real music Assuming that a time signature of 4 the current tempo is 120 and there are 4 beats in a bar the command Tempo 100 1 will cause 4 tempo entries to be placed in the current bar in the MIDI meta track The start of the bar will be 115 the 2nd beat will be at 110 the 3rd at 105 and the last at 100 29 66 99 You can also vary an existing rate using a or
140. lowing list shows the available commands to set and manipulate variables Set VariableName String Mset VariableName MsetEnd UnSet VariableName ShowVars Inc Variablename value Dec Variablename value Vexpand ON Off All variable names are case insensitive Any characters can be used in a variable name The only excep ce 99 tions are that a variable name cannot start with a or a _ an underscore this is reserved for internal variables see below Variables are set and manipulated by using their names Variables are expanded when their name is prefaced by a space followed by single sign For example Set Silly Am Bm 1 Silly The first line creates the variable Silly the second creates a bar of music with the chords Am Bm 7 Note that the must be the first item on a line or follow a space character For example the following will NOT work 102 18 1 Variables Variables Conditionals and Jumps Set Silly 4a b c d 1 Am Silly However 1 Am Silly will work fine Following are details on all the available variable commands 18 1 1 Set Set or create a variable You can skip the String if you do want to assign an empty string to the variable A valid example is Set PassCount 1 You can concatenate variables or constants by using a single For example Groove Rhumba Repeat Set a _Groove Sus Groove Sa Groove Rhumbal Repeatend This can be
141. lus 7th and 9th mM7 Minor Triad plus Major 7th You will also see this printed as m maj7 m 7 min maj7 and min 7 which MIA accepts as well as the MA invalid forms AT and ming7 mM7 add9 Minor Triad plus Major 7th and 9th maj13 Major 7th including 5th plus 13th 9th and 11th not voiced maj7 Major 7th maj9 Major 7th plus 9th mb5 Minor triad with flat 5th aka dim min 7 Minor Triad plus Major 7th You will also see this printed as m maj7 m 7 min maj7 and minf7 which MA accepts as well as the MA invalid forms AT and ming7 min maj7 Minor Triad plus Major 7th You will also see this printed as m maj7 m 7 min maj7 and minf7 which MA accepts as well as the MA invalid forms AT and ming7 omit3 add9 riad root 5th and 9th omit3add9 Triad root 5th and 9th sus Suspended 4th major triad with the 3rd raised half tone sus2 Suspended 2nd major triad with the major 2nd above the root substituted for 3rd sus4 Suspended 4th major triad with the 3rd raised half tone sus9 7sus plus 9th 168 A 1 Chord Names Symbols and Constants In modern pop charts the M in a major 7th chord and other major chords is often represented by a A When entering these chords just replace the A with an M For example change GA7 to GM7 A chord name without a type is in
142. m tracks W All walking bass tracks B All bass tracks C All chord tracks A All arpeggio tracks S All scale tracks R All aria tracks All tracks almost the same as DWBCA see below Assuming the C is the chord and AB are the track specifiers CzAB mutes the ARPEGGIO and BASS tracks Z mutes all the tracks except for the drums Cz is not permitted ZAB is not permitted Assuming that you have a drum chord and bass pattern defined Fm z G7zC CmzD would generate the following beats 1 Drum pattern Fm chord and bass 51 8 5 Case Sensitivity Musical Data Format 2 Drum pattern only 3 Drum pattern and G7 bass no chord 4 Cm chord and bass no drum In addition there is a super z notation z forces all instruments to be silent for the given beats z is the same as zABCDWR except that the latter is not valid since it needs a prefixed chord The z notation is used when you have a tacet beat or beats The alternate notations can be used to silence specific tracks for a beat or two but this is used less frequently 8 5 Case Sensitivity In direct conflict with the rest of the rules for input files all chord names are case sensitive This means that you can not use notations like cm use Cm instead The z and the associated track specifiers are also case sensitive For example the form Zc will not work 52 Chapt
143. mmand you can use the absolute value in either as a decimal number or in hexadecimal by prefixing the value with a Ox or the symbolic name in the following tables The tables have been extracted from information at http www midi org about midi table3 shtml Note that all the values in these tables are in hexadecimal notation Complete reference for this is not a part of MA Please refer to a detailed text on MIDI or the manual for your synthesizer A 4 1 Controllers Alphabetically AllNotesOff AllSoundsOff AttackTime Balance BalanceLSB Bank BankLSB Breath BreathLSB Brightness Chorus Ctrl102 Ctr1103 Ctrl104 Ctrl105 Ctrl106 Ctr1107 Ctr1108 Ctrl109 Ctrl110 Ctrl111 Ctrl112 Ctrl113 Ctrl114 Ctrl115 Ctrl116 Ctr1117 Ctrl118 Ctrl119 Ctrl14 7b 78 49 08 28 00 20 02 22 4a 5d 66 67 68 69 6a 6b 6c 6d 6e 6f 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 Oe Ctr115 Ctr120 Ctrl21 Ctr122 Ctrl23 Ctrl24 Ctrl25 Ctrl26 Ctr127 Ctrl28 Ctrl29 Ctrl3 Ctr130 Ctr131 Ctr135 Ctrl41 Ctrl46 Ctrl47 Ctr152 Ctr153 Ctr154 Ctrl55 Ctr156 Ctr157 Ctr158 Ctr159 Ctrl60 Ctrl61 Ctrl62 Ctrl63 Of 15 16 17 18 19 la 1b Ic ld 03 le 1f 23 29 2e 2f 34 35 36 37 38 39 3a 3b 3c 3d 3e 3f Ctrl79 Ctr185 Ctr186 Ctr187 Ctr188 Ctr189 Ctrl9 Ctr190 Data DataDec DatalInc DataLSB DecayTime Detune Effectl Effectl1LSB Effect2 Effect2LSB Expression ExpressionLSB Foot FootLSB G
144. must be used as a base By default the fourth degree of the scale corresponding to the chord is a reasonable choice However you can change this with Chord 1 Voicing Center lt value gt The value in this command can be any number in the range 0 to 12 Try different values The color of your whole song might change Note that the value is the note in the scale not a chord note position This command only effects chords created with MODE OPTIMAL 12 1 4 Voicing Move To intensify a chord progression you may want to have ascending or descending movement of voicings This option in conjunction with the DIR optional see below sets the number of bars over which a move ment is done For the MOVE option to have any effect you must also set the direction to either 1 or 1 Be careful that you don t force the chord too high or low on the scale Use of this command in a REPEAT section can cause unexpected results For this reason you should include a SEQ command at the beginning of repeated sections of your songs In most cases the use of this command is limited to a section of a song its use is not recommended in groove files You might want to do something like this in a song 69 12 2 ChordAdjust Chord Voicing Select groove with voicing chords Chord Piano Voicing Move 5 Dir 1 more chords Chord Piano Voicing Move 5 Dir 1 more chords 12 1 5 Voicing Dir This option is used in conjunction with the MOVE option to se
145. n mi A 1 3 Diminished Chords In most pop and jazz charts it is assumed that a diminished chord is always a diminished 7th a dimin ished triad is never played MA continues this sometimes erroneous assumption You can change the behaviour in several ways change the chord notes and scale for a dim from a dim7 to a triad by follow ing the instructions on page 74 use the slightly oddball notation of mb5 which generates a diminished triad or use the more oddball notation dim3 Sometimes a reliable source agrees with us in this case Standardized Chord Symbol Notation is quite clear that dim is a Diminished 7th and a diminished triad should be notated as mil 169 A 1 Chord Names Symbols and Constants Notational notes In printed music a diminished chord is sometimes represented with a small circle symbol eg F and a half diminished as a small slashed circle e g C2 A half diminished chord in MA is specified with the notation m7b5 A 1 4 Slash Chords Charts sometimes use slash chords in the form Am E This notation is used mainly to indicate chord inversions For example the chord notes in Am E become E A and C with the E taking the root position MAA will accept chords of this type However you may not notice any difference in the generated tracks due to the inversions used by the current pattern You may also
146. n not quite true the command just duplicates the arpeggio notes the number of times specified in the RANGE setting 74 12 9 DefChord Chord Voicing You can define additional chord types at any time or redefine existing chord types The DEFCHORD command makes no distinction between a new chord type or a redefinition with the exception that a warning message is printed for the later The syntax of the command is quite strict DefChord NAME NoteList ScaleList where JJ Name can be any string but cannot contain a gt or space It is case sensitive Examples of valid names include dim NO3 and foo 12 xx JJ NoteList is a comma separated list of note offsets actually MIDI note values all of which are enclosed in a set of s There must be at least 2 note offsets and no more than 8 and all values must be in the range 0 to 24 Using an existing chord type a 7 chord would be defined with 0 4 7 10 In the case of a C7 chord this translates to the notes c e g bb JJ ScaleList is a list of note offsets again MIDI note values all of which are enclosed in a set of s There must be exactly 7 values in the list and all values must be in the range 0 to 24 Following on the C7 example above the scale list would be 0 2 4 5 7 9 10 or the notes c d e f g a bb Some examples might clarify First assume that you have a section of your piece which has a major chord
147. n 1 a velocity of 1 will be used if it is over 127 127 will be used Example VOLUME 80 OCTAVE Octave adjustment for all notes in the file Values in the range 4 to 4 are permitted Notes in drum tracks channel 10 will not be effected Example OCTAVE 2 TRANSPOSE Transposition adjustment settings in the range 24 to 24 are permitted If you do not set a value for this the global transpose setting will be applied expecting channel 10 drum notes Example TRANSPOSE 2 LYRIC This option will copy any Lyric events to the MA meta track The valid settings are On or Off By default this is set to Off Example LyRIC On TEXT This option will copy any Text events to the MA meta track The valid settings are On or Off By default this is set to Off Example TEXT On START Specifies the start point of the file to be included in beats For example Start 22 would start the include process 22 beats into the file The data will be inserted at the current song position in your MMA file The value used must greater or equal to 0 and may be a fractional beat value 18 456 if fine END Specifies the end point of the file to be included in beats For example End 100 would discard all data after 100 beats in the file The value used must be greater that the Start position and can be fractional TRACK A trackname must be be set into which notes are inserted You can set more than one track channel if y
148. n End constructs are expanded before variable expansion However Set A Define Arpeggio Begin a End 1s quite alright Even though you can use a variable to substitute for the REPEAT or IF directives using one for REPEATEND ENDREPEAT REPEATENDING LABEL IFEND or ENDIF will fail 106 18 2 Predefined Variables Variables Conditionals and Jumps Variable expansion should usually not be a concern In most normal files M4 will expand variables as they are encountered However when reading the data in a REPEAT IF or MSET section the expansion function is skipped but when the lines are processed after being stored in an internal queue variables are expanded 18 1 9 Stack Value Sometimes you just want to save a value for a few lines of code The STACK VALUE command will save its arguments You can later retrieve them via the _StackValue macro For example taken from the stdpats mma file StackValue SwingMode SwingMode On Begin Drum Define Swing8 1 0 90 x 8 End SwingMode StackValue Note that the _StackValue macro removes the last value from the stack If you invoke the macro when there is nothing saved an error will occur 18 2 Predefined Variables For your convenience MA tracks a number of internal settings and you can access these values with special macros All of these system variables are prefaced with a single underscore For example the current tempo is displayed with the variable TEMPO
149. n sustained tones It is permissible to combine notes with dots s and s The notation 2 4 would be the same as a whole note The actual duration given to a note will be adjusted by the ARTICULATE value page 133 Volume The MIDI velocity to use for the specified note For a detailed explanation of how MA calculates the volume of a note see chapter 16 MIDI velocities are limited to the range 0 to 127 However MA does not check the volumes specified in a pattern for validity In most cases velocities in the range 50 to 100 are useful Offset The offset into the current chord If you have for example a C minor chord C Eb and G has 3 offsets O 1 and 2 Note that the offsets refer to the chord not the scale For example a musician might refer to the fifth this means the fifth note of a scale in a major chord this is the third note which has an offset of 2 in MA Patterns can be defined for BASS WALK CHORD ARPEGGIO and DRUM tracks All patterns are shared by the tracks of the same type Chord Sus and Chord Piano share the patterns for Chord As a conve nience MA will permit you to define a pattern for a sub track but remember that it will be shared by all similar tracks For example Drum Define S1 1 0 50 and Drum woof Define S1 1 0 50 Will generate identical outcomes 4 1 1 Bass A bass pattern is defined with Position Duration Offset Volume Each group consists
150. n that directory is processed the PAN for the bass and walking bass voices are set to the left channel If the file specified by a MMASTART directive does not exist a warning message will be printed this is not an error Also useful is the ability to include a generic file with all the MIDI files you create For example you might like to have a MIDI reset at the start of your files simple just include the following in your mmarc file 155 24 12 MmaEnd Paths Files and Libraries MMAstart reset This includes the file reset mma located in the includes directory see page 154 Multiple MMASTART directives are permitted The files are processed in the order declared You can have multiple filenames on a MMASTART line One caution with MMASTART files the file is processed after the RC file just before the actual song file 24 12 MmaEnd Just the opposite of MMASTART this command specifies a file to be included at the end of a main input file See the comments above for more details To continue this example in your mmarc file you would have MmaEnd nopan and in the file nopan have Bass Pan 64 Bassl Pan 64 Bass2 Pan 64 Walk Pan 64 Walk1 Pan 64 Walk2 Pan 64 If the file specified by a MMAEND directive does not exist a warning message will be printed this is not an error Multiple MMAEND directives are permitted and processed in the order declared You can have multiple filenames on a MMAEND line 24 13 RC F
151. nare2 Tone SnareDruml Volume F Mallet Rate 32 Decay 3 Rvolume 3 Sequence z z z 1 1 100 End The following options are supported 21 8 1 Rate The RATE must be a valid note length i e 8 16 or even 16 8 For example Solo Marimba Mallet Rate 16 will set all the notes in the Solo Marimba track to be sounded a series of 16th notes JJ Note duration modifiers such as articulate are applied to each resultant note Itis guaranteed that the note will sound at least once JJ The use of note lengths assures a consistent sound independent of the song tempo To disable this setting use a value of 0 21 8 2 Decay You can adjust the volume velocity of the notes being repeated when MALLET is enabled Drum Snare Mallet Decay 15 The argument is a percentage of the current value to add to the note each time it is struck In this example assuming that the note length calls for 4 strikes and the initial velocity is 100 the note will be struck with a velocity of 100 85 73 and 63 Important a positive value will cause the notes to get louder negative values cause the notes to get softer 137 21 9 Octave Other Commands and Directives Note velocities will never go below 1 or above 255 Note however that notes with a velocity of 1 will most likely be inaudible The decay option value must be in the range 50 to 50 however be cautious using any values outside the range 5 to 5 since the volume velocity of t
152. nd discussed in the previous section the MIDIVOICE command is used to insert MIDI controller messages into your files Instead of sending the data for each bar as MIDISEQ does this command just sends the listed control events at the start of a track and then if needed at the start of each bar Again a short example Let us assume that you want to use the Release Time controller to sustain notes in a bass line Seqsize 4 Begin Bass 2 Voice NylonGuitar MidiVoice 1 ReleaseTime 50 Octave 4 Sequence 1 4 1 90 2 4 3 90 3 4 5 90 4 4 1 90 Articulate 60 End Cx 4 should give an interesting effect The syntax for the command is Track MIDIVoice lt beat gt lt controller gt lt Datum gt This syntax is identical to that discussed in the section for MIDISEQ above The lt beat gt value is required for the command it determines if the data is sent before or after the VOICE command is sent Some controllers are reset by a voice others not My experiments show that BANK should be sent before most others after Using a beat of 0 forces the MidiVoice data to be sent before the Voice control any other beat value causes the data to be sent after the Voice control In this silly example Voice Pianol MidiVoice 0 Bank 5 1 ReleaseTime 100 the MIDI data is created in an order like O Param Ch xx Con 00 val 05 0 ProgCh Ch xx Prog 00 O Param Ch xx Con 72 val 80 All the MIDI events occur at the sam
153. nd like so many things there is more than one way to do it Lyrics can be set for a bar in between a pair of s somewhere in a data bar For example z Pardon C me If I m E7 sentimental r C when we say good The alternate method is to use the LYRIC SET directive Lyric Set Hello Young Lovers Unlike the other LYRIC options the SET option must be the last one on a line and it does not use the sign If you are setting the lyric for a single verse the s are optional however for multiple verses they are used just like they are when you include the lyric in a data chord line The advantage to using LYRIC SET is that you can specify multiple bars of lyrics at one point in your file See the sample file egs lyrics mma for an example The lyrics for each bar are separated into individual events one for each word unless the option SPLIT BAR has been used in which case the entire lyric is placed at the offset corresponding to the start of the bar MIA recognizes two special characters in a LYRIC JJ A r is converted into an EOL character hex value 0x0D A W should appear at the end of each lyrical line 3This is a feature It permits you to have separate control over music generation and chord symbol display 4 Although the lyric can be placed anywhere in the bar it is recommended that you only place the lyric at the end of the bar All the examples follow this style a5 9 3 Setting Lyrics Lyrics
154. nds The files supplied in this distribution have been created to sound good on the author s setup A Casio WK 3000 keyboard But what if your hardware is different Well there are solutions Later in this chapter commands are shown which will change the preselected voice and tone commands and the default volumes At this time there are no example files supplied with MA but your contributions are welcome The general suggestion is that 1 You create a file with the various translations you need For example the file might be called yamaha mma and contain lines like VoiceTR Pianol Piano2 ToneTr SnareDrum2 SnareDruml VoiceVolTr Piano2 120 BottleBlow 80 DrumVolTr RideBell 90 Tambourine 120 Place this file in the directory usr local share mma includes 2 Include this file in your mmarc file Following the above example you would have a line Include yamaha That s it Now whenever you compile a MA file the translations will be done All of the following translation settings follow a similar logic as to when they take effect and that is at the time the VOICE VOLUME etc command is issued This may confuse the unwary if GROOVES are being used But the following sequence 128 20 1 VoiceTr Fine Tuning Translations 1 You set a voice with the VOICE command 2 You save that voice into a GROOVE with DEFGROOVE 3 You create a voice translation with VOICETR 4 You activate the previously defined GROOVE Wron
155. never be less than 1 MIDI tick in length To set the value use a line like Chord 1 Articulate 96 Articulate values must be greater than 0 and less than or equal to 200 Values over 100 will lengthen the note Settings greater than 120 will generate a warning You can specify a different ARTICULATE for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a Chord Articulate 50 60 30 Notes The full values for the notes are saved with the pattern definition The articulation adjustment is applied at run time The ARTICULATE setting is saved with a GROOVE 21 3 Copy Sometimes it is useful to duplicate the settings from one voice to another The COPY command does just that 133 21 4 Comment Other Commands and Directives Bass 1 Copy Bass will copy the settings from the Bass track to the Bass track The COPY command only works between tracks of the same type The following settings are copied JJ Articulate page 133 J Compress page 71 J Direction page 136 e Harmony page 77 J Invert page 72 J Octave page 138 J RSkip page 140 J RTime page 140 J RVolume page J ScaleType page 141 J Strum page 142 J Voice page 144 or Tone page 29 Volume page 94 Warning You are probably better off to use internal macros for this 21 4 Comment As previously discussed a comment in MA is anything following a in a line A second way of marking a comment is wi
156. ng Start a repeat ending 99 TRACK Riff lt pattern gt Define a special pattern to use in track for next bar 46 RndSeed lt Value gt Seed random number generator 139 RndSet lt variable gt lt list of values gt Randomly set variable 104 TRACK ScaleType lt Chromatic Auto gt Set type of scale Only for Scale tracks 141 Seq Set the sequence point bar pattern number 141 TRACK SeqClear Clears sequence for track or all tracks 36 TRACK SeqRnd lt On Off Tracks gt Enable random sequence selection for track or all tracks 37 TRACK SeqRnd Weight lt list of values gt Sets the randomization weight for track or global 39 182 Command Summary SeqSize lt value gt Set the number of bars in a sequence 39 TRACK Sequence lt pattern gt Set pattern s to use for track 34 Set lt name gt lt stuff gt Set the variable lt name gt to lt stuff gt 103 SetAutoLibPath lt path gt Set the Auto Include file path 152 SetIncPath lt path gt Set the path for included files 154 SetLibPath lt path gt Set the path to the style file library 152 SetMIDIplayer lt program gt Set the MIDI file player program 152 SetOutPath lt path gt Set the output filename 153 ShowVars Display user defined variables 105 StackValue lt stuff gt Push lt stuff gt onto a temporary stack Remove with special macro _StackValue 107 TRACK Strum lt value gt Set the strumming factor for Chord tracks 142 SwingMode lt on off
157. nternal buffer stays the same just the octave for the notes is changed So if the chord notes are C E G with the MIDI values 0 4 7 an invert of 1 would change the notes to C E G and the MIDI values to 12 4 7 12 12 6 Limit Chord Voicing A SEQUENCE or CLEARSEQ command resets INVERT to 0 This command on has an effect in CHORD and ARPEGGIO tracks And frankly ARPEGGIOs sound a bit odd with inversions If you use a large value for INVERT you can force the notes out of the normal MIDI range In this case the lowest or highest possible MIDI note value will be used 12 6 Limit If you use jazz chords in your piece some people might not like the results To some folks chords like 11th 13th and variations have a dissonant sound And sometimes they are in a chart but don t really make sense The LIMIT command can be used to set the number of notes of a chord used For example Chord Limit 4 will limit any chords used in the CHORD track to the first 4 notes of a chord So if you have a C11 chord which is C E G Bb D and F the chord will be truncated to C E G and Bb This command only applies to CHORD and ARPEGGIO tracks It can be set for other tracks but the setting will have no effect Notes LIMIT takes any value between 0 and 8 as an argument The 0 argument will disable the com mand This command applies to all chords in the sequence only one value can be given in the command
158. o disable all volume translations VoiceVolTr Empty table 20 4 DrumVolTr You can change the volumes of individual drum tones with the DRUMVOLTR translation This command works just like the VOICEVOLTR command described above It just uses drum tones instead of instrument voices For example if you wish to make the drum tones SnareDrum1 and HandClap a bit louder DrumVolTr SnareDrum1 120 HandClap 110 The drum tone names can be symbolic constants or MIDI values as in the next example DrumVolTr 44 90 31 55 All drum tone translations can be disabled with DrumVolTr Empty table 131 Chapter 21 Other Commands and Directives In addition to the Pattern Sequence Groove and Repeat and other directives discussed earlier and chord data MA supports a number of directives which affect the flavor of your music The subjects presented in this chapter are ordered alphabetically 21 1 AllTracks Sometimes you want to apply the same command to all the currently defined tracks for example you might want to ensure that no tracks have SEQRND set Yes you could go though each track and hope you don t miss any and explicitly issue the command Bass SegRnd Off Chord SeqRnd Off But AllTracks SeqRnd Off is much simpler Similarly you can set the articulation for all tracks with AllTracks Articulate 80 You can even combine this with a BEGIN END like Begin AllTracks Articulate 80 Seq
159. oducing the MA Standard Library Reference a trivial Python program is used to collate the output generated with a command like mma Dx1 w usr local lib mma swing Note the w option has been used to suppress the printing of warning messages 23 2 Author As part of the documentation package there is a AUTHOR command Author Bob van der Poel Currently AUTHOR lines are processed and the data is saved but never used It may be used in a future library documentation procedures so you should use it in any library files you write See the command summary page 14 148 23 3 DocVar Documentation Strings 23 3 DocVar If any variables are used to change the behavior of a library file they should be documented with a DOCVAR command Normally these lines are treated as comments but when processing with the Dxl or Dxh command line options the data is parsed and written to the output documentation files Assuming that you are using the MA variable SCHORDVOICE as an optional voice setting in your file you might have the following in a library file Begin DocVar ChordVoice Voice used in Chord tracks defaults to Piano2 End If NDef ChordVoice Set ChordVoice Piano2 Endif All variables used in the library file should be documented You should list the user variables first and then any variables internal to the library file To double check to see what variables are used you can add a SHOWVARS to the end of the library
160. of an beat offset for the start point the note duration the note offset and volume The note offset is one of the digits 1 through 7 each representing a note of the chord scale So if you want to play the root and fifth in a traditional bass pattern you d use 1 and 5 in your pattern definition See the supplied GROOVE Bluegrass for an example 4MIDI note on events are declared with a velocity value Think of this as the striking pressure on a piano gt This is a feature that you probably don t want to use but if you want to ensure that a note is always sounded use a very large value e g 1000 for the volume That way future adjustments will maintain a large value and this large value will be clipped to the maximum permitted MIDI velocity What really happens is that this definition is stored in a slot named DRUM 24 4 1 Defining a Pattern Patterns oe 99 The note offset can be modified by appending a single or multiple set of or signs Each will force the note up an octave each forces it down This modifier is handy in creating bass patterns when you wish to alternate between the root note and the root up an octave but users will find other interesting patterns There is no limit to the number of s or s You can even use both together if you re in a mood to obfuscate The note offset can be further modified with a single accidental
161. of library files defining standard rhythms These should all be installed under the directory usr local share mma lib stdlib The scripts cp install or ln install will install MA properly on most Linux systems Both scripts assume that main script is to be installed in usr local bin and the support files in usr local share mma If you want an alternate location you can edit the paths in the script The only supported alternate to use is usr share mma The difference between the two scripts is that 1n instal1l creates symbolic links to the current location cp install copies the files Which to use it up to you but if you have unpacked the distribution in a stable location it is probably easier to use the link version In addition you can run MA from the directory created by the untar This is not recommended but will show some of M s stuff In this case you 1l have to execute the program file mma py You should be root or at least you need write permissions in usr local1 to run either install script If you want to install MA on a platform other than Linux please get the latest updates from our website at www mellowood ca mma 1 4 Running MA For details on the command line operations in MA please refer to chapter 2 To create a MIDI file you need to 1 Create a text file also referred to as the input file with instructions which MA understands This includes the chord structure of the song the rhythm to
162. ol Voices apply only to the specified track The actual instrument can be specified via the MIDI instrument number or with the symbolic name See the tables in the MIDI voicing section page 171 for lists of the recognized names You can create interesting effects by varying the voice used with drum tracks By default Voice 0 is used However you can change the drum voices The supplied library files do not change the voices since this appears to be highly dependent on the MIDI synth you are using You can specify a different VOICE for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a Ej 144 21 23 Voice Other Commands and Directives Chord Voice Pianol Piano2 It is possible to set up translations for the selected voice see the VOICETR command see page 129 145 Chapter 22 Begin End Blocks Entering a series of directives for a specific track can get quite tedious To make the creation of library files a bit easier you can create a block For example the following Drum Define X 0 2 100 50 2 90 Drum Define Y 0 2 100 Drum Sequence X Y Can be replaced with Drum Begin Define X 0 2 100 50 2 90 Define Y 0 2 100 End Drum Sequence X Y Or even more simply with Drum Begin Define X 0 2 100 50 2 90 Y 0 2 100 End If you examine some of the library files you will see that this shortcut is used a lot 22 1 Begin The BEGIN command requires any number of arguments Valid examples incl
163. on below about multiple RIFFS JJ RIFF sequences are always enabled Even if there is no sequence for a track or if the z sequence is being used the pattern specified in RIFF will apply J The existing voicing articulation etc for the track will apply to the RIFF J It s quite possible to use a macro for repeated RIFFs The following example uses a macro which sets the VOLUME ARTICULATE etc as well as the pattern Note how the pattern is initially set as single whole note but redefined in the RIFF as a run controlled by another macro In bar 2 an eight note run is played and in bar 5 this is changed to a run of triplets Mset CRiff Begin Scale Define Run 1 1 120 Riff Run SSpeed Voice AltoSax Volume f Articulate 80 Rskip 5 End MsetEnd Groove Blues 1 C Set SSpeed 8 SCRiff 2G 3 G Set SSpeed 12 47 SCRIFF 5 C JJ A RIFF can only be deleted by using it i e a music bar follows the setting with a SEQCLEAR or by a track DELETE RIFFs can also be used to specify a bar of music in a SOLO or MELODY track Please see the Solo and Melody chapter 10 The above examples show how to apply a temporary pattern to a single bar the bar which follows the RIFF command But you can stack a number of patterns to be processed sequentially Each successive RIFF command adds a pattern to the stack these patterns are then pulled from the stack as successive chord lines are processed Recycling
164. ou have already defined a chord pattern which is played on beats 1 and 3 as Chord Define M13 1 4 80 3 4 80 you can create a new pattern which plays on same beats and adds a single push note just before the third beat Chord Define M1 3 M13 2 5 16 80 O0 A few points to note JJ the existing pattern must exist and belong to the same track JJ the existing pattern is expanded in place JJ it is perfectly acceptable to have several existing definitions just be sure to delimit each with a JJ the order of items in a definition does not matter each will be placed at the correct position in the bar This is a powerful shortcut in creating patterns See the included library files for examples 4 3 Multiplying and Shifting Patterns Since most pattern definitions are internally repetitious you can create complex rhythms by multiplying a copy of an existing pattern For example if you have defined a pattern to play a chord on beats 1 though 4 a quarter note strum you can easily create a similar pattern to play eighth note chords on beats 1 1 5 etc though 4 5 with a command like Track Define NewPattern OldPattern N where Track is a valid track name Chord Walk Bass Arpeggio or Drum as well as Chord or DRUM etc The is absolutely required N can be any integer value between 2 and 100 In example 4 7 a Drum pattern is defined which plays a drum ton
165. ou wish For example if you had the option DRUM 10 any notes in the MIDI file with a channel 10 setting would be inserted into the MA Drum track Similarity Solo Tenor 1 will copy notes from channel into the Solo Tenor track If the track doesn t exist it will be created Note this means that the channel assignment in your included file and the new MA generated file will most likely be different Example SOLO 1 A complete example of usage is shown in the files in the directory egs frankie in the distribution A short example MIDIinc File test mid Solo Piano 1 Drum 10 Volume 70 will include the MIDI file test mid at the current position and assign all notes in channel 1 to the Solo Piano track and the notes from channel 10 to the Drum track The volumes for all the notes will be adjusted to 70 of that in the original 121 19 10 MIDIMark Low Level MIDI Commands A few notes J J J MIDI files to be included do not have to have the same tempo MIDI adjusts this automatically on playback However the internal setting for beat division should be the same MA assumes a beat division of 192 this is set in bytes 12 and 13 of the MIDI file If the included file differs a warning is printed and MA will attempt to adjust the timings All files are parsed to find the offset of the first note on event notes to be included are set with their offsets compensated by that time This means that any silence at the start of the
166. ounded by lt gt brackets For example to set the volume of a chord to very loud you could use the string lt ffff gt in the chord specification page 91 Of course it is probably easier to set accented beats with the ACCENT directive page 92 T have borrowed heavily from the notation program MUP for the syntax used here For notation I highly recommend MUP and use it for most of my notation tasks including the creation of the score snippets in this manual MUP is available from Arkkra Enterprises http www Arkkra com 59 10 1 Note Data Format Solo and Melody Tracks Tilde The tilde character can appear as the first or last item in a note sequence As the last character it signals that the final note duration extend past the end of the bar as the first character it signals to use the duration extending past the end of the previous bar as an initial offset For details see below Null You can set a ignore or do nothing chord with the simple notation lt gt If this is the only item in the chord then that chord will be ignored This means that no tones will be generated and the offset into the bar will not be changed The use of the notation is mainly for tilde notation with notes held over multiple bars To make your note data more readable you can include any number of space and tab characters which are ignored by MA KeySig 1b F 4ca 2da 4fd F 4 af 8g f 4af c f F
167. ows how Seqsize 4 Begin Bass 2 Voice NylonGuitar Octave 4 Sequence 1 4 1 90 2 4 3 90 3 4 5 90 4 4 1 90 MIDIDef WheelStuff 1 1 0x7f 2 1 0x50 3 10 MidiSeq WheelStuff Articulate 90 End Cx 4 gt This is much easier to do with the MMAStart and MMAEnd options see chapter 24 123 19 12 MIDISeg Low Level MIDI Commands The MIDISEQ command is specific to a track and is saved as part of the GROOVE definition This lets style file writers use enhanced MIDI features to dress up their sounds The command has the following syntax TrackName MidiSeq lt Beat gt lt Controller gt lt Datum gt where Beat is the Beat in the bar This can be an integer 1 2 etc or a floating point value 1 2 2 25 etc It must be 1 or greater and less than the end of bar in 4 it must be less than 5 Controller A valid MIDI controller This can be a value in the range 0x00 to 0x7f or a symbolic name See the appendix page 176 for a list of defined names Datum All controller messages use a single byte parameter in the range 0x00 to Ox7f You can enter the values in either standard decimal notation or in hexadecimal with the prefixed 0x In most cases your code will be clearer if you use values like Ox7f rather than the equivalent 127 The MIDI sequences specified can take several forms 1 A simple series like MIDISeq 1 ReleaseTime 50 3 ReleaseTime 0 in this case the commands are applied to b
168. past the end of the current bar or if you use a tilde to start a bar which doesn t have one at the end of the previous bar 10 1 2 Using Defaults The use of default values can be a great time saver and lead to confusion For example the following all generate four quarter note f s Solo Riff 4f 4f 4f 4f Solo Riff 4f f f f Solo Riff 4f 4 4 4 Solo Riff 4f 10 1 3 Other Commands Most of the timing and volume commands available in other tracks also apply to SOLO and MELODY tracks Important commands to consider include ARTICULATE VOICE and OCTAVE Also note that TRANSPOSE is applied to your note data 61 10 2 KeySig Solo and Melody Tracks 10 2 KeySig If you are including SOLO or MELODY tracks you should set the key signature for the song KeySig 2b The argument consists of a single digit 0 to 7 followed by a b or 82 for flat keys or a for sharp keys As an alternate you can use a musical name like F or G The optional keywords Major or Minor these can be abbreviated to Maj or Min and case doesn t count can be added to this command This will accomplish two things 1 The MIDI track Key Signature event will be set to reflect minor or major 2 If you are using a musical name the proper key will be used Setting the key signature effects the notes used in SOLO or MELODY tracks and sets a MIDI Key Signature 2 event To summa
169. pattern so that this emphasis is automatically adjusted For example when setting a walking bass line pattern you could use a pattern definition like Define Walk W1234 1 4 100 2 4 70 3 4 80 4 4 70 However it is much easier to use a definition which has all the velocities the same Define Walk W1234 1 1 90 x 4 and use the ACCENT command to increase or decrease the volume of notes on certain beats Walk Accent 1 20 2 10 4 10 The above command will increase the volume for walking bass notes on beat 1 by 20 and decrease the volumes of notes on beats 2 and 4 by 10 You can use this command in all tracks When specifying the accents you must have matching pairs of data The first item in the pair is the beat which can be fractional the second is the volume adjustment This is a percentage of the current note volume that is added or subtracted to the volume Adjustment factors must be integers in the range 100 to 100 The ACCENTS can apply to all bars in a track as well you can set different accents for different bars Just use a pair to delimit each bar For example Bass Accent 1 20 1 30 3 30 The above line will set an accent on beat of bars 1 2 and 3 in bar 4 beats 1 and 3 will be accented You can use a to repeat a setting The can be enclosed in a delimiter if you want 3as opposed to mechanical 92 16 2 AdjustVolume Volume and Dynamics 16 2 AdjustVolume 16 2 1
170. ptions For example mma test processes the file test and creates the MIDI file test mid When is finished it displays the name of the generated file the number of bars of music processed and an estimate of the song s duration Note JJ The duration is fairly accurate but it does not take into account any mid bar TEMPO changes JJ The report shows minutes and hundredths of minutes This is done deliberately so that you can add a number of times together Converting the time to minutes and seconds is left as an exercise for the user 2 1 Command Line Options The following command line options are available Option Description V d 0 ugging and other aids to figuring out what s going on Show program s version number and exit Enable LOTS of debugging messages This option is mainly designed for program development and may not be useful to users A debug subset This option forces the display of complete filenames paths as they are opened for reading This can be quite helpful in determining which library files are being used Display patterns as they are defined The result of this output is not exactly a duplicate of your original definitions Most notable are that the note duration is listed in MIDI ticks and symbolic drum note names are listed with their numeric equivalents Actually the file test or test mma is processed Please read section 24 1 2A number of the debugging comm
171. r Commands and Directives Begin Bass Sus Sequence 11190 4 Articulate 100 Unify On Voice TremoloStrings End Without the UNIFY ON command the strings would be sounded or hit four times during each bar with it enabled the four hits are combined into one long tone This tone can span several bars if the note s remain the same The use of this command depends on a number of items aS The VOICE being used It makes sense to use enable the setting if using a sustained tone like Strings it probably doesn t make sense if using a tone like Pianol J For tones to be combined you will need to have ARTICULATE set to a value of 100 Otherwise the on off events will have small gaps in them which will cancel the effects of UNIFY J Ensure that RTIME is not set for UNIFY tracks since the start times may cause gaps J If your pattern or sequence has different volumes in different beats or bars the effect of a UNIFY will be to ignore volumes other than the first Only the first NOTE ON and the last NOTE OFF events will appear in the MIDI file You can specify a different UNIFY for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a e he Chord Unify On Off But you probably don t want to use this particular feature Valid arguments are On or 1 to enable Off or 0 to disable 21 23 Voice The MIDI instrument or voice used for a track is set with Chord 2 Voice Pian
172. r an ending Or you can have MA generate a complete melody over the song chords In a traditional song the melody depends on two parts patterns IE note lengths volume articulation and pitch usually determined by the chords in a song If you have been using MA at all you will know that that chords are the building block of what MA does already So to generate a melody we just need some kind of pattern And since MA already uses patterns in most things it does it is a short step to use a specialized pattern to generate a melody It might serve to look at the sample song files enclosed in this package in the directory egs aria Compile and play them Not too bad Just like other track you can create as many ARIAs as you want So you can have the tracks ARIA 1 ARIA and ARIA SILLY all at the same time And the majority of other commands like OCTAVE ARTICULATE etc apply to ARIAs The following commands are important to note Range Just like scale tracks A RANGE of 2 would let MA work on a 2 octave chord etc ScaleType Much like a scale track By default the setting for this is CHORD But you can use AUTO SCALE or CHROMATIC AUTO and SCALE are identical and force MA to select notes from the scale associated with the current chord CHROMATIC generates an 11 tone scale starting at the root note of the chord Direction As MA processes the song it moves a note selection pointer up or down By default DIRECTION is set to the singl
173. r of swing eights 16 Sixteenth 32 Thirty second 64 Sixty fourth 3 Eight note triplet 43 Quarter note triplet 23 Half note triplet 6 Sixteenth note triplet 5 Eight note quintuplet 0 A single MIDI tick The 81 and 82 notations represent the values of a pair of eighth notes in a swing pair These values vary depending on the setting of SWINGMODE SKEW see page 88 The note length 0 is a special value often used in drum tracks where the actual ringing length appears to be controlled by the MIDI synth not the driving program Internally a 0 note length is converted to a single MIDI tick Lengths can have a single or double dot appended For example 2 is a dotted half note and 4 adds an eight and sixteenth value to a quarter note Note lengths can be combined using For example to make a dotted eight note use the notation 8416 a dotted half 244 and a quarter triplet 3 3 oe 99 Note lengths can also be combined using a For example to make a dotted half you could use 1 4 Subtraction might appear silly at first but is useful in generating a note just a bit shorter than its full beat For example 1 0 will generate a note 1 MIDI tick shorter than a whole note This The start offset is the value of the first of a pair of swing eights plus a quarter before the second beat 23 4 1 Defining a Pattern Patterns can be used in generating breaks i
174. r of synths which accept SMF Casio Yamaha and others only accept type 0 files 1 This file has the data for each MIDI channel in its own track This is the default file generated by MIA You can set the filetype in an RC file or for that matter in any file processed by MMA with the command 119 19 8 MIDIGlis Low Level MIDI Commands MidiFile SMF 0 or MidiFile SMF 1 You can also set 1t on the command line with the M option Using the command line option will override the MIDISMF command if it is in a RC file By default MA uses running status when generating MIDI files This can be disabled with the command MidiFile Running 0 or enabled but this is the default with MidiFile Running 1 Files generated without running status will be about 20 to 30 larger than their compressed counterparts They may be useful for use with brain dead sequencers and in debugging generated code There is no command line equivalent for this option 19 8 MIDIGlis This sets the MIDI portamento in case you re new to all this portamento is like glissando between notes wonderful if you like trombones To enable portamento Arpeggio MIDIGlis 30 The parameter can be any value between 1 and 127 To turn the sliding off Arpeggio MIDIGlis 0 This command will work with any track including drum tracks However the results may be somewhat interesting or disappointing and many MIDI devices don t support portamento at all
175. range 0 to 127 and must be an integer 122 19 12 MIDISeg Low Level MIDI Commands MIDIPAN is not saved or restored by GROOVE commands nor is it effected by SEQCLEAR A MIDIPAN is inserted directly into the MIDI track at the point at which it is encountered in the music file This means that the effect of MIDIPAN will be in use until another MIDIPAN is encountered MIDIPAN can be used in MIDI compositions to emulate the sound of an orchestra By assigning different values to different groups of instruments you can get the feeling of strings horns etc all placed in the correct position on the stage MIDIPAN can be used for much cruder purposes When creating accompaniment tracks for a mythical jazz group you might set all the bass tracks Bass Walk Bass 1 etc set to aMIDIPAN 0 Now when practicing at home you have a full band and the bass player can practice without the generated bass lines simply by turning off the left speaker Because most MIDI keyboard do not reset between tunes there should be a MIDIPAN to undo the effects at the end of the file Example Include swing Groove Swing Bass MIDIPan 0 Walk MIDIPan 0 1 C 2 C 123 C Bass MIDIPan 64 Walk MIDIPan 64 19 12 MIDISeq It is possible to associate a set of MIDI controller messages with certain beats in a sequence For example you might want to have the Modulation Wheel set for the first beats in a bar but not for the third The following example sh
176. rary files you ll see that the hyphenated form is usually used to describe patterns All track names are case insensitive This means that the names Chord Sus CHORD SUS and CHORD sus all refer to the same track If you want to see the names defined in a song just run MA on the file with the c command line option 3 2 Track Channels MIDI defines 16 distinct channels numbered 1 to 16 There is nothing which says that chording should be sent to a specific channel but the drum channel should always be channel 10 2 The values 1 to 16 are used in this document Internally they are stored as values 0 to 15 2This is not a MIDI rule but a convention established in the GM General MIDI standard If you want to find out more about this there are lots of books on MIDI available 18 3 3 Track Descriptions Tracks and Channels For MA to produce any output a MIDI channel must be assigned to a track During initialization all of the DRUM tracks are assigned to special MIDI channel 10 As musical data is created other MIDI channels are assigned to various tracks as needed Channels are assigned from 16 down to This means that the lower numbered channels will most likely not be used and will be available for other programs or as a keyboard track on your synth In most cases this will work out just fine However there are a number of methods you can use to set the channels manually You might
177. rective For example Chord 1 Strum 5 sets the strumming factor to 5 for track Chord 1 Setting the STRUM in any track other than a CHORD track will generate a warning message and the command will be ignored The strum factor is specified in MIDI ticks Usually values around 10 to 15 work just fine The valid range for STRUM is 0 to 100 You can specify a different STRUM for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a ERr Chord Strum 20 5 10 Note When chords have both a STRUM and INVERT applied the order of the notes played will not necessarily be root third etc The notes are sorted into ascending order so for a C major scale with and INVERT of 1 the notes played would be E G C That is unless the DIRECTION see page 136 has been set to DOWN in which case the order would be reversed but the notes would be the same 21 20 Synchronize The MIDI tracks generated by MA are perfectly legit and should be playable in any MIDI file player However there are a few programs and or situations in which you might need to use the SYNCHRONIZE options 142 21 21 Transpose Other Commands and Directives First when a program is expecting all tracks to start at the same location or is intolerant of emptiness at the start of a track you can add a tick note at the start of each track Synchronize START will insert a one tick note on off event at MIDI offset 1 You can also generate
178. rently assigned channel with the TRACK CHANNEL macro 19 2 ChannelPref If you prefer to have certain tracks assigned to certain channels you can use the CHANNELPREF command to create a custom set of preferences By default MA assigns channels starting at 16 and working down to 1 with the expectation of drum tracks which are all assigned channel 10 If for example you would like the Bass track to be on channel 9 sustained bass on channel 3 and Arpeggio on channel 5 you can have a command like ChannelPref Bass 9 Arpeggio 5 Bass Sus 3 Most likely this will be in your MMARC file You can use multiple command lines or have multiple assignments on a single line Just make sure that each item consists of a trackname an and a channel number in the range to 16 19 3 ChShare MA is fairly conservative in its use of MIDI tracks Out of the box it demands a separate MIDI channel for each of its tracks but only as they are actually used In most cases this works just fine However there are times when you might need more tracks than the available MIDI channels or you may want to free up some channels for other programs If you have different tracks with the same voicing it s quite simple For example you might have an arpeggio and scale track Arpeggio Sequence Al6 z Arpeggio Voice Pianol Scale Sequence z S8 Scale Voice Pianol In this example MA will use different MIDI channels for the Arpeggio and the Scale No
179. rhumba mma both define the groove Rhumba2 The auto load see page 154 routines which search the library database will load the first Rhumba2 it finds and the search order cannot be determined To overcome this possible problem do a explicit loading of the correct file In this case simply do Use xyz rhumba near the top of your file And if you wish to switch to the groove defined in the standard file you can always do Use rhumba just before the groove call The USE will read the specified file and overwrite the old definition of Rhumba2 with its own This issue in covered in more detail on page 157 of this manual 45 Chapter Riffs In previous chapters you were shown how to create a PATTERN which becomes a part of a SEQUENCE And how to set a musical style by defining a GROOVE These predefined GROOVEs are wonderful things And yes entire accompaniment tracks can be created with just some chords and a single GROOVE But often a bit of variety in the track is needed The RIFF command permits the setting of an alternate pattern for any track for a single bar this overrides the current SEQUENCE for that track The syntax for RIFF is very similar to that of DEFINE with the exception that no pattern name is used You might think of RIFF as the setting of an SEQUENCE with an anonymous pattern A RIFF is set with the command Track Riff Pattern where Track is any valid MA track name Pattern
180. rize the following are all valid KEYSIG directives KeySig 2 Major KeySig 1b KeySig Ob Min KeySig F Min KeySig A Major 10 3 AutoSoloTracks When a expression is found in a chord line it is assumed to be note data and is treated as a RIFF You can have any number of Y expressions in a chord line They will be assigned to the tracks specified in the AUTOSOLOTRACKS directive By default four tracks are assigned Solo Solo 1 Solo 2 and Solo 3 This order can be changed AutoSoloTracks Melody Oboe Melody Trumpet Melody Horn Any number of tracks can be specified in this command but they must all be SOLO or MELODY tracks You can reissue this command at any time to change the assignments The list set in this command is also used to fill out melody lines for tracks set as HARMONYONLY Again an example For the most part MIDI Key Signature events are ignored by playback programs However they may be used in other MIDI programs which handle notation 62 10 4 Drum Solo Tracks Solo and Melody Tracks AutoSoloTracks Solo 1 Solo 2 Solo 3 Solo 4 Solo 2 HarmonyOnly 3Above Solo 3 HarmonyOnly 8Above Of course some voicing is also set and a chord line C 4a b c d The note data 4a b c d will be set to the Solo 1 track But if you ve not set any other note data by way of RIFF commands to Solo 2 and Solo 3 the note data will also be copied to these two tracks Note that the track Solo 4 is unaf
181. rrently in repeat or conditional segment of the file the remaining lines in that segment will be ignored MA does not check to see if you are jumping into a repeat or conditional section of code but doing so will usually cause an error Jumping out of these sections is usually safe The following example shows the use of both types of label In this example only lines 2 3 5 and 6 will be processed Goto Foo 1 Cm Label Foo 2 Dm 3 Goto 5 4 Am 5 Cm 6 Dm For an example of how to use some simple labels to simulate a DS al Coda examine the file lullaby of Broadway in the sample songs directory LA Chapter 19 Low Level MIDI Commands The commands discussed in this chapter directly effect your MIDI output devices Not all MIDI devices are equal Many of the effects in this chapter may be ignored by your devices Sorry but that s just the way MIDI is 19 1 Channel As noted in the Tracks and Channels chapter page 18 MA assigns MIDI channels dynamically as it creates tracks In most cases this works fine however you can if you wish force the assignment of a specific MIDI channel to a track with the CHANNEL command You cannot assign a channel number to a track if it already defined well see the section CHSHARE below for the inevitable exception nor can you change the channel assignments for any of the DRUM tracks Let us assume that you want the Bass track assigned to MIDI channel 8 Simply use
182. start on beat 4 z z z C lt 4 gt Hello F Young lovers Assuming 4 the above would put the word Hello at beat 4 of the first bar Young on the first beat of bar 2 and lovers on beat 3 of bar 2 Note there must not be a space inside the lt gt nor can there be a space between the bracket and the syllable it applies to Only the first lt gt is checked So if you really want to have the characters lt or gt in a lyric just include a dummy to keep MA happy C lt gt lt Verse_1 gt This is a Demo Example 9 1 shows a complete song with lyrics You should also examine the file egs lyrics mma for an alternate example Included in this distribution as songs twinkle mma 56 9 3 Setting Lyrics Lyrics Tempo 200 Groove Folk Repeat 1G Twinkle When the G Twinkle blazing C little sun is G star r gone r Am How I When he G wonder nothing D7 what you shines u G are r pon Ar 9 G Up a then you 10 D7 bove the show your 11 G world so little 12 D high Mr light r 13 G Like a Twinkle 14 D7 diamond twinkle 15 G in the all the 16 D7 sky r night Ar 17 G Twinkle 18 G twinkle 19 C Little 20 G star Mr 21 Am How I 22 G wonder 23 D7 what you 24 G are Ar in ono uf W ND Lyric Verse Inc RepeatEnd Example 9 1 Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 9 3 1 Limitations A
183. t of the scale is reset A WALK track recognizes the following option settings BOTH The default The bass pattern will go up and down a partial scale Some notes may be repeated UP Notes will be chosen sequentially from an ascending partial scale DOWN Notes will be chosen sequentially from a descending partial scale RANDOM Notes will be chosen in a random direction from a partial scale All four patterns are useful and create quite different effects The CHORD tracks DIRECTION only has an effect when the STRUM setting has a non zero value In this case the following applies UP The default Notes are sounded from the lowest tone to the highest DOWN Notes are sounded from the highest to the lowest BOTH The UP and DOWN values are alternated RANDOM Ignored uses UP You can specify a different DIRECTION for each bar in a sequence Repeated values can be represented with a Arpeggio Direction Up Down Both The setting is ignored by BASS DRUM and SOLO tracks 136 21 8 Mallet Other Commands and Directives 21 8 Mallet Some instruments Steel drums banjos marimbas etc are normally played with rapidly repeating notes Instead of painfully inserting long lists of these notes you can use the MALLET directive The MALLET directive accepts a number of options each an OPTION VALUE pair For example Solo Marimba Mallet Rate 16 Decay 5 This command is also useful in creating drum rolls For example Begin Drum S
184. t or is treated as a fermata is not clear but as far as MMA is concerned the command has no effect on timing 85 14 6 Cut Tempo and Timing instruct MA correctly Unfortunately the simple answer is it depends Again the answers will consist of some examples In this first case you wish to stop the track in the middle of the last bar The simplest answer is 1 C 36c z Unfortunately this will almost work But any chords which are longer than one or two beats may continue to sound This often gives a dirty sound to the end of the piece The simple solution is to add to the end of the piece Cut 2 Depending on the rhythm you might have to fiddle a bit with the cut value But the example here puts a all notes off message in all the active tracks at the start of beat 3 The exact same result can be achieved by placing Cut 3 before the final bar In this second example a tiny bit of silence is desired between bars 4 and 5 this might be the end of a musical introduction The following bit should work 1 6 2G 3 G AC Cut BeatAdjust 2 5 G In this case the all notes off is placed at the end of bar 4 and two tenths of a beat is inserted at the same location Bar 5 continues the track The final example show how you might combine CUT with FERMATA In this case the sheet music shows a caesura after the first quarter note and fermatas over the quarter notes on beats 2 3 and 4 1
185. t the direction 1 or 1 of the movement 12 1 6 Voicing Rmove As an alternate to movement in a specified direction random movement can add some color and variety to your songs The command option is quite useful and safe to use in groove files The argument for this option is a percentage value specifying the frequency to apply a move in a random direction For example Chord 3 Voicing Mode Optimal Rmove 20 would cause a movement randomly up or down in 20 of the bars As noted earlier using explicit movement instructions can move the chord into an undesirable range or even off the keyboard how ever the algorithm used in RMOVE has a sanity check to ensure that the chord center position remains approximately in a two octave range 12 2 ChordAdjust The actual notes used in a chord are derived from a table which contains the notes for each variation of a C chord this data is converted to the desired chord by adding or subtracting a constant value according to the following table Gb 6 B 1 Di 3 G 5 Cb 1 Eb 3 Gi 4 Bi 0 E 4 Ab 4 C 0 Fb 4 A 3 ct 1 Et 5 AB 2 Db 1 F 5 Bb 2 D 2 Fi 6 This means that when MA encounters an Am chord it adjusts the notes in the chord table down by 3 MIDI values an F chord is adjusted 5 MIDI values up This also means that A chords will sound lower than F chords 70 12 3 Compress Chord Voicing In most cases this works just fine but there are
186. ten will continue to sound this is related to the decay of the note not that MA has not turned off the note Frankly this really doesn t work too well which is why the FERMATA page 83 was added Time 4 1 Cm 10 Am C BeatAdjust 1 Example 14 1 Adding Extra Beats In example 14 2 the problem of the short bar is handled In this example the sheet music has the majority of the song in 4 time but bar 4 is in 4 This could be handled by setting the TIME setting to 2 and creating some different patterns Forcing silence on the last 2 beats and backing up the counter is a bit easier 1 Cm 4 Am z BeatAdjust 2 Example 14 2 Short Bar Adjustment Note that the adjustment factor can be a partial beat For example 2 14 5 Fermata Tempo and Timing BeatAdjust 5 will insert half of a beat between the current bars Finally in example 14 3 the problem of overlapping bars is handled We want to change the GROOVE in the middle of a bar So we create the third bar two times The first one has a z silence for beats 3 and 4 the second has z for beats 1 and 2 This permits the two halves to overlap without conflict The BEATADJUST forces the two bars to overlap completely Groove BigBand 1c Groove BigBandFill 2 Am 37 PEZ BeatAdjust 4 Groove BigBand z F 5 F Example 14 3 Mid Bar Groove Change 145 Fermata A fermata or pause in written music tells the musician
187. teresting patterns and variations This chapter should certainly give more detail and many more examples The following commands help manipulate sequences in your creations Tf you run MA with the s option you ll see pattern names in the format _1 The leading underscore indicates that the pattern was dynamically created in the sequence In reality there is always a sequence defined for every track but it might be a series of rest bars 35 5 2 SeqClear Sequences 5 2 SeqClear This command clears all existing sequences from memory It is useful when defining a new sequence and you want to be sure that no leftover sequences are active The command SeqClear deletes all sequence information with the important exception that SOLO tracks are ignored Alternately the command Drum SeqClear deletes all drum sequences This includes the track Drum Drum1 etc If you use a sub track Chord Piano SeqClear only the sequence for that track is cleared In addition to clearing the sequence pattern the following other settings are restored to a default condition JJ Track Invert setting J Track Sequence Rnd setting J Track MidiSeq setting 2 Track octave J Track voice 3 Track Rvolume J Track Volume J Track RTime J Track Strum CAUTION It is not possible to clear only a track like DRUM or CHORD using this command The command Chord SeqClear resets all CHORD tracks
188. terpreted as a major chord or triad For example the chord C is identical to CM MA has an large set of defined chords However you can add your own with the DEFCHORD command see page 74 A 1 1 Octave Adjustment Depending on the key and chord sequence a chord may end up in the wrong octave This is caused by MA s internal routines which create a chord all of the tables are maintained for a C chord and the others are derived from that point by subtracting or adding a constant To compensate you can add a leading or to the chordname to force the movement of that chord and scale up or down an octave For example the following line will move the chord up and down for the third and fourth beats Cm Fm Gm D7 The effect of octave shifting is also highly dependent on the voicing options in effect for the track You ll have to listen to the MA output to determine when and where to use this adjustment Hopefully it won t be needed all that much If you have a large number of chords to adjust use the CHORDADJUST command page 70 A 1 2 Altered Chords According to Standardized Chord Symbol Notation altered chords should be written in the form Cmi 32 However this is pretty hard to type and parse So we ve used the convention that the altered intervals should be written in numerical order Cm 5b9 Also note that we use m for minor which appears to be more the conventional method tha
189. tes 133 Author lt stuff gt A specialized comment used by documentation extractors 148 AutoSoloTracks lt tracks gt Set the tracks used in auto assigning solo melody notes 62 BarNumbers Leading lt number gt on data line ignored 49 BarRepeat Data bars can repeat with a nn 50 BeatAdjust lt beats gt Adjust current pointer by lt beats gt 82 Begin Delimits the start of a block 146 TRACK ChShare lt track gt Force track to share MIDI track 115 TRACK Channel lt 1 16 gt Force the MIDI channel for a track 114 TRACK ChannelPref lt 1 16 gt Set a preferred channel for track 115 ChordAdjust lt Tonic adj gt Adjust center point of selected chords 70 Comment lt text gt ignore discard lt text gt 134 TRACK Compress lt value gt Enable chord compression for track 71 TRACK Copy lt source gt Overlay lt source gt track to specified track 133 TRACK Cresc lt start end count gt Decrease volume over bars 95 TRACK Cut lt beat gt Force all notes off at lt beat gt offset 85 Debug lt options gt Selectively enable disable debugging levels 135 Dec lt name gt value Decrement the value of variable lt name gt by 1 or lt value gt 105 TRACK Decresc lt start end count gt Increase volume over bars 95 DefChord lt name notelist scalelist gt Define a new chord 74 DefGroove lt name gt Description Define a new groove 40 TRACK Define lt pattern gt Define a pattern to use in a track 22
190. th Psyco http psyco sourceforge net and have found speed increases in the order of 15 to 20 Output seems fine so use it if speed is important to you 44 filter mode could be added to MA but I m not sure why this would be needed if Chapter 3 Tracks and Channels This chapter discusses MA tracks and MIDI channels If you are reading this manual for the first time you might find some parts confusing If you do just skip ahead you can run MA without knowing many of these details 3 1 MA Tracks To create your accompaniment tracks MA divides output into several internal tracks There are a total of 8 different types of tracks and an unlimited number of sub tracks When MA is initialized there are no tracks assigned however as your library and song files are processed various tracks will be created Each track is created a unique name The track types are discussed later in this chapter but for now they are BASS CHORD WALK DRUM ARPEGGIO SCALE MELODY SOLO and ARIA oe 99 All tracks are named by appending a and name to the type name This makes it very easy to remem ber the names without any complicated rules So drum tracks can have names Drum 1 Drum Loud or even Drum a long name The other tracks follow the same rule In addition to the hyphenated names described above you can also name a track using the type name So DRUM is a valid drum track name In the supplied lib
191. th the COMMENT directive This is quite useful in combination the BEGIN and END directives For example Begin Comment This is a description spanning several lines which will be ignored by MMA End You could achieve the same with 134 21 5 Debug Other Commands and Directives This is a description spanning several lines which will be ignored by MMA or even Comment This is a description spanning Comment several lines which will be Comment ignored by MMA One minor difference between and COMMENT is that the first is discarded when the input stream is read the more verbose version is discarded during line processing Quite often it is handy to delete large sections of a song with a BEGIN COMMENT END on a temporary basis 21 5 Debug To enable you to find problems in your song files and perhaps even find problems with MA itself various debugging messages can be displayed These are normally set from the command line command line page 14 However it is possible to enable various debugging messages dynamically in a song file using the DEBUG directive In a debug statement you can enable or disable any of a variety of messages A typical directive is Debug Debug On Expand Off Patterns 0n Each section of the debug directive consists of a mode and the command word ON or OFF The two parts must be joined by a single You may use the values 0 for Off and 1 for On if desired
192. the following two lines are equivalent Bass Sequence Bassl Bassl Bass2 Bass2 Bass Sequence Bassl Bass2 6699 The special pattern name no quotes just a single hyphen or a single z can be used to turn a track off For example if you have set the sequences in example 5 1 and decide to delete the Bass halfway though the song you could oe 99 Bass Sequence oe 99 6699 The special sequences or z are also the equivalent of a rest or tacet sequence For example in defining a 4 bar sequence with a 1 5 bass pattern on the first 3 bars and a walking bass on bar 4 you might do something like Bass Sequence Bass4 13 z Walk Sequence z Walk4 4 If you already have a sequence defined you can repeat or copy the existing pattern by using a single as the pattern name This is useful when you are modifying an existing sequence For example assume that we have created a four bar GROOVE called Neato Now we want to change the CHORD pattern to use for an introduction but we really only want to change the fourth bar in the pattern Groove Neato Chord Sequence 1 2 90 Defgroove Neatolntro When a sequence is created a series of pointers to the existing patterns are created If you change the definition of a particular pattern later in your file the new definition will have no effect on your existing sequences Sequences are the workhorse of ma With them you can set up many in
193. thing like 162 26 3 Where s the GUI Frequency Asked Questions G quency Groove Swing endmset Set the music into a Use the macros for an series of macros A A B Solo 8 A mset A form Print Section A SA C A G B endmset set Count 1 mset B label a print Section B solo Dm inc COUNT Em if le count 8 endmset goto A mset Solo endif Print Solo Section Count A Am B7 Cdim Note that the Print lines are used for debugging purposes The case of the variable names has been mixed to illustrate the fact that Solo is the same as SOLO which is the same as solo Now if you don t like things that look like old BASIC program code you could just as easily duplicate the above with Groove Swing Dm repeat Em repeat Set Count 1 Print Section A Repeat Cc Print Solo Count G Am If Def count Inc Count eof Repeatending 7 Endif Repeatend Endrepeat Repeatend Print Section B The choice is up to you 26 3 Where s the GUI I really think that MA is a cool program But it needs a GUI Are you planning on writing one Will you help me if I start to write one Thanks for the kind comments The author likes MA too A lot 163 26 4 Where s the manual index Frequency Asked Questions Some attempts have been made to write a number of GUIs for MA But nothing seemed to be much more useful than the existing text interface So why waste too much time There is nothing wrong with gr
194. this with the 0 command line option Second some programs think wrongly that all tracks should end at the same point Adding the com mand Synchronize END will delete all MIDI data past the end of the last bar in your input file and insert MIDI all notes off events at that point You can also generate this effect with the 1 command line option The commands can be combined in any order Synchronize End Start is perfectly valid 21 21 Transpose You can change the key of a piece with the Transpose command For example if you have a piece notated in the key of C and you want it played back in the key of D Transpose 2 will raise the playback by 2 semi tones Since MA s author plays tenor saxophone Transpose 2 which puts the MIDI keyboard into the same key as the horn is not an uncommon directive You can use any value between 12 and 12 All tracks with the logical exception of the drum tracks are effected by this command 21 22 Unify The UNIFY command is used to force multiple notes of the same voice and pitch to be combined into a single long tone This is very useful when creating a sustained voice track For example consider the following which might be used in real groove file 3Timidity truncates the start of tracks up to the first MIDI event when splitting out single tracks 4Seq24 does strange looping if all tracks don t end identically 143 21 23 Voice Othe
195. times when the F chord might sound better lower than the A You can force a single chord by prefacing it with a single or see page 169 But if the entire song needs adjustment you can use CHORDADJUST command to raise or lower selected chord pitches ChordAdjust E 1 F 1 Bb 1 669 Each item in the command consists of a pitch Bb C etc an and an octave specifier 1 0 or 1 The pitch values are case sensitive and must be in upper case there must not be a space on either side of the To a large extent the need for octave adjustments depends on the chord range of a song For example the supplied song A Day In The Life Of A Fool needs all E and F chords to be adjusted down an octave The value 0 will reset the adjustment to the original value setting a value a second time has no effect 12 3 Compress When MA grabs the notes for a chord the notes are spread out from the root position This means that if you specify a C13 you will have an A nearly 2 octaves above the root note as part of the chord Depending on your instrumentation pattern and the chord structure of your piece notes outside of the normal single octave range for a chord may sound strange Chord Compress 1 Forces MAA to put all chord notes in a single octave range This command is only effective in CHORD and ARPEGGIO tracks A warning message is printed if it is used in other
196. tion is simply an gt and a number between 5 and 5 immediately following the chord name The chord will be rotated as specified by the value after the gt For example the chord C gt 2 will generate the notes G C and E F gt 1 gives C F and A There is an important difference between this option and a slash chord in inversions neither the root note nor the associated scale are modified 170 A 2 MIDI Voices A 2 MIDI Voices Symbols and Constants When setting a voice for a track IE Bass Voice NN you can specify the patch to use with a symbolic constant Any combination of upper and lower case is permitted The following are the names with the equivalent voice numbers A 2 1 Voices Alphabetically 5thSaw Wave Accordion AcousticBass AgogoBells AltoSax Applause Noise Atmosphere BagPipe Bandoneon Banjo BaritoneSax Bass amp Lead Bassoon BirdTweet BottleBlow BowedGlass BrassSection BreathNoise Brightness Celesta Cello Charang ChifferLead ChoirAahs ChurchOrgan Clarinet Clavinet CleanGuitar ContraBass Crystal DistortonGuitar EPiano EchoDrops 86 21 32 113 65 126 99 109 23 105 67 87 70 123 76 92 61 121 100 42 84 83 52 19 71 27 43 98 30 102 EnglishHorn Fantasia Fiddle FingeredBass Flute FrenchHorn FretlessBass Glockenspiel Goblins GuitarFretNoise GuitarHarmonics GunShot HaloPad Harmonica HarpsiChord HelicopterBlade Honky TonkP
197. tory 3 Now when your song wants to use a groove you have two choices a Include the file with the USE directive For example 1f you have created the file rock mma and want to use the GROOVE rock8 you would i place the directive USE BVDP ROCK near the top of the song file Note it might not be apparent from the typeface here but the filename here is all lowercase In Unix Linux case is important so please make sure of the case of the filenames in commands like USE ii enable the groove with the directive GROOVE ROCK8 and here the case is not important since MA thinks that upper and lower case are the same b Force MA to use your groove directory by resetting the auto lib directory again the case for the path is important SetAutoLibPath bvdp You will have to update the MA database with the g or G command line options for this to work If you elect this route please note that the files in the standard library will not be available but you can use both with something like this Groove Metronome2 4 Z 2 SetAutoLibPath bvdp Groove BossaNova the bossa from lib bvdp not stdlib chords The nice thing about this method is that you can have multiple sets of library files all us ing the same GROOVE names To create a different version you just need to change the SETAUTOLIBPATH variable in your song file or for a collection of songs put the variable in your MMARC file For those who really need to know
198. ts that these files are probably better without MMaAstart and MMAend MA will automatically include a file at the beginning or end of processing see page 156 Typically these files are named MMASTART and MMAEND Common usage is to not use the extension if the file is in the current directory use the file if it is in an includes directory One further point to remember is that filenames specified on the command line are subject to wild card expansion via the shell you are using 24 2 Tilde Expansion On Unix like systems all filenames may be prefaced with tilde or a tilde with a user name All file operations in MA honor this convention This includes the setting of library and include paths The result of this operation is system dependent See the entry for os path expanduser in the Python library reference 24 3 Eof Normally a file is processed until its end However you can short circuit this behavior with the EOF directive If MA finds a line starting with EOF no further processing will be done on that file it s just as if the real end of file was encountered Anything on the same line after the EOF is also discarded You may find this handy if you want to test process only a part of a file or if you making large edits to a library file It is often used to quit when using the LABEL and GOTO directives to simulate constructs like D C al Coda etc 151 24 4 LibPath Paths Files and Libraries 24 4 LibPath The s
199. ual chance of being selected There are times when you may want to change this behaviour For example you might have a sequence like this Chord Sequence C1 C2 C3 C4 and you feel that the patterns C1 and C2 need to be used twice as often as C3 and C4 Simple Chord SeqRndWeight 2 2 1 1 Think of the random selection occurring like selecting balls out of bag The SEQRNDWEIGHT command fills up the bag In the above case there will be two C1 and C2 balls one C3 and C4 ball for a total of six balls This command can be used in both a track and global context The effects are saved in GROOVES SEQCLEAR will reset both global and track contexts to the default equal condition 5 5 SeqSize The number of bars in a sequence are set with the SeqSize command For example SeqSize 4 sets it to 4 bars The SeqSize applies to all tracks This command resets the sequence counter to 1 If some sequences have already been defined they will be truncated or expanded to the new size Trun cation is done by removing patterns from the end of the sequence expansion is done by duplicating the sequence until it is long enough ao Chapter 6 Grooves Grooves in some ways are MA s answer to macros but they are cooler easier to use and have a more musical name Really though a groove is just a simple mechanism for saving and restoring a set of patterns and se quences Using grooves it is easy to create sequence libraries
200. ude Begin Drum Begin Chord2 Begin Walk Define Once a BEGIN block has been entered all subsequent lines have the words from the BEGIN command prepended to each line of data There is not much magic here BEGIN END is really just some syntactic sugar 146 22 2 End Begin End Blocks 22 2 End To finish off a BEGIN block use a single END on a line by itself Defining musical data repeats or other BEGINs inside a block other than COMMENT blocks will not work Nesting is permitted Eg Scale Begin Begin Define stuff End Sequence stuff End A BEGIN must be competed with a END before the end of a file otherwise an error will be generated The USE and INCLUDE commands are not permitted inside a block 147 Chapter 23 Documentation Strings It has been mentioned a few times already the importance of clearly documenting your files and library files For the most part you can use comments in your files but in library files you use the DOC directive In addition to the commands listed in this chapter you should also note DEFGROOVES section 6 For some real life examples of how to document your library files look at any of the library files supplied with this distribution 23 1 Doc A Doc command is pretty simple Doc This is a documentation string In most cases DOCs are treated as COMMENTs However if the Dx option is given on the command line DOCs are processed and printed to standard output For pr
201. uded see chapter 24 from a library file A pattern is a definition for a voice or track which describes what rhythm to play during the current bar The actual notes selected for the rhythm are determined by the song bar data see chapter 8 4 1 Defining a Pattern The formats for the different tracks vary but are similar enough to confuse the unwary Each pattern definition consists of three parts JJ A unique label to identify the pattern This is case insensitive Note that the same label names can be used in different tracks for example you could use the name MyPattern in both a Drum and Chord pattern but this is probably not a good idea Names can use punctuation characters but oe 99 must not begin with an underscore _ The pattern names z or Z and are also reserved 6699 J A series of note definitions Each set in the series is delimited with a JJ The end of the pattern definition is indicated by the end of line In the following sections definitions are shown in continuation lines however it is quite legal to mash all the information onto a single line The following concepts are used when defining a pattern Start When to start the note This is expressed as a beat offset For example to start a note at the start of a bar you use 1 the second beat would be 2 the fourth 4 etc You can easily use off beats as well The and of 2 is 2 5 the
202. unds which match the sequence length Here s a short concocted example see the library files for many more Drum Define S1 1 0 90 Drum Define S2 S1 x 2 Drum Define S4 S1 x 4 SeqClear SeqSize 4 Drum Sequence S4 S2 S2 S4 Drum Tone SnareDruml SideKick LowToml Slap Here the drum patterns S2 and S4 are defined to sound a drum on beats 1 and 3 and 1 2 3 and 4 respectively see section 4 3 for details on the option Next a sequence size of 4 bars and a drum sequence are set to use this pattern Finally MA is instructed to use a SnareDruml sound in bar 1 a SideKick sound in bar 2 a LowTom1 in bar 3 and a Slap in bar 4 If the song has more than four bars this sequence will be repeated In most cases you will probably use a single drum tone name for the entire sequence but it can be useful to alternate the tone between bars To repeat the same tone in a sequence list use a single a 4 2 Including Existing Patterns in New Definitions Patterns The tone can be specified with a MIDI note value or with a symbolic name For example a snare drum could be specified as 38 or SnareDrum1 Appendix A 3 lists all the defined symbolic names It is possible to substitute tone values See the TONETR command see page 130 4 2 Including Existing Patterns in New Definitions When defining a pattern you can use an existing pattern name in place of a definition grouping For example if y
203. use the tempo etc The file can be created with any suitable text editor 2 Process the input file From a command line the instruction mma myfile lt ENTER gt will invoke MA and assuming no errors are found create a MIDI file myfile mid 3 Play the MIDI file with any suitable MIDI player 4 Edit the input file again and again until you get the perfect track 5 Share any patterns sequences and grooves with the author so they can be included in future releases An input file consists of the following information 1 MA directives These include TEMPO TIME VOLUME etc See chapter 21 2 PATTERN SEQUENCE and GROOVE detailed in chapters 4 5 and 6 3 Music information See chapter 8 4 Comment lines and blank lines See below 11 1 5 Comments Overview and Introduction Items 1 to 3 are detailed later in this manual Please read them before you get too involved in this program 1 5 Comments Proper indentation white space and comments are a good thing and you really should use them But in most cases MA really doesn t care JJ Any leading space or tab characters are ignored JJ Multiple tabs and other white space are treated as single characters JJ Any blank lines in the input file are ignored Each line is initially parsed for comments A comment is anything following a 2 forward slashes Comments are stripped from the input stream Lines starting with the COMMENT directive are also ig nored See the
204. useful in calling GROOVE variations 18 1 2 NewSet The NEWSET command works the same as SET with the exception that that it is completely ignored if the variable already exists So NewSet ChordVoice JazzGuitar and If NDef ChordVoice Set ChordVoice JazzGuitar Endif have identical results 103 18 1 Variables Variables Conditionals and Jumps 18 1 3 Mset This command is quite similar to SET but MSET expects multiple lines An example MSet LongVar 1 Cm 2 Gm 3 G7 MsetEnd It is quite possible to set a variable to hold an entire section of music perhaps a chorus and insert this via macro expansion at various places in your file Each MSET must be terminated by a ENDMSET or MSETEND command on its own separate line Be careful if you use an MSET variable in a PRINT statement you ll probably get an error The PRINT command will print the first line of the variable and the remainder will be reinserted into the input stream for interpretation Special code in MA will maintain the block settings from BEGIN END So you can do something like Mset Spam Line one Line 2 333 EndMset Begin Print Spam End 18 1 4 RndSet There are times when you may want a random value to use in selecting a GROOVE or for other more creative purposes The RNDSET command sets a variable from a value in a list The list can be anything just remember that each white space forms the start of a new item So RndSet Var 12345 will s
205. usted A setting of O disables the adjustment for a track this is the default When set the note velocity after the track and master volume adjustments is randomized up or down by the value Again using the above example let us assume that a note in the current pattern gets a MIDI velocity of 88 The random factor of 10 will adjust this by 10 up or down the new value can be from 78 to 98 The idea behind this is to give the track a more human sounding effect You can use large values but it s not recommended Usually values in the 5 to 10 range work well You might want slightly larger values for drum tracks Using a value greater than 30 will generate a warning message Notes JJ No generated value will be out of the valid MIDI velocity range of 1 to 127 JJ A different value can be used for each bar in a sequence Scale RVolume 10 0 20 JJ A can be used to repeat values 16 6 Saving and Restoring Volumes Dynamics can get quite complicated especially when you are adjusting the volumes of a track inside a repeat or other complicated sections of music In this section attempts to give some general guidelines and hints For the most part the supplied groove files will have balanced volumes between the different instruments If you find that some instruments or drum tones are consistently too loud or soft spend some time with the chapter on Fine Tuning page 128 Remember that GROOVEs save all the current volume sett
206. ve processing on these files In processing an input song file MA can encounter several different types of input files For all files the initial search is done by adding the file name extension mma to file name unless it is already present then a search for the file as given is done For files included with the USE directive the directory set with SETLIBPATH is first checked followed by the current directory For files included with the INCLUDE directive the directory set with SETINCPATH is first checked fol lowed by the current directory 150 24 2 Tilde Expansion Paths Files and Libraries Following is a summary of the different files supported Song Files The input file specified on the command line should always be named with the mma exten sion When MA searches for the file it will automatically add the extension if the file name specified does not exist and doesn t have the extension Library Files Library files really should all be named with the extension MA will find non extension names when used in a USE or INCLUDE directive However it will not process these files when creating indexes with the g command line option these index files are used by the GROOVE commands to automatically find and include libraries RC Files As noted in the RC File discussion see page 156 M4 will automatically include a variety of RC files You can use the extension on these files but common usage sugges
207. w if you force channel sharing Scale ChShare Arpeggio both tracks will use the same MIDI channel This is really foolproof in the above example especially since the same voice is being used for both Now what if you wanted to use a different voice for the tracks 115 19 4 ForceOut Low Level MIDI Commands Arpeggio Sequence Al6 z Arpeggio Voice Pianol Strings Scale Sequence z S8 Scale ChShare Arpeggio You might think that this would work but it doesn t MA ignores voice changes for bars which don t have a sequence so it will set Pianol1 for the first bar then Strings for the second so far so good But when it does the third bar an ARPEGGIO it will not know that the voice has been changed to Strings by the Scale track So the general rule for track channel sharing is to use only one voice One more example which doesn t work Arpeggio Sequence A8 Scale Sequence S4 Arpeggio Voice Pianol Scale Voice Pianol Scale ChShare Arpeggio This example has an active scale and arpeggio sequence in each bar Since both use the same voice you may think that it will work just fine but it may not The problem here is that mA will generate MIDI on and off events which may overlap each other One or the other will be truncated If you are using a different octave 1t will work much better It may sound okay but you should probably find a better way to do this When a CHSHARE directive is parsed the shared
208. want to read the sections on CHANNEL page 114 CHSHARE page 115 ON page 138 and OFF page 138 Why bother with all these channels It would be much easier to put all the information onto one channel but this would not permit you to set special effects ike MIDIGLIS or MIDIPAN for a specific track It would also mean that all your tracks would need to use the same instrumentation 3 3 Track Descriptions You might want to come back to this section after reading more of the manual But somewhere the different track types and why they exist needs to be detailed Musical accompaniment comes in a combination of the following J Chords played in a rhythmic or sustained manner JJ Single notes from chords played in a sustained manner JJ Bass notes Usually played one at a time in a rhythmic manner JJ Scales or parts of scales Usually as an embellishment JJ Single notes from chords played one at time arpeggios JJ Drums and other percussive instruments played rhythmically Of course this leaves the melody but that is up to you not MA but if you suspect that some power is missing here read the brief description of SOLO and MELODY tracks page 21 and the complete Solo and Melody Tracks chapter page 58 MIA comes with several types of tracks each designed to fill different accompaniment roles However it s quite possible to use a track for different roles than originally envisioned For example th
209. xpand the sequence size for the ARIA just like other tracks Process a few bars of music Load a new groove but this time with a SEQSIZE of 2 Now the ARIA will be truncated This behaviour is duplicated in other tracks as well but it might be unexpected here JJ DIRECTION can not be changed on a bar per bar basis It applies to the entire sequence You can make dramatic changes to your songs with a few simple tricks Try modifying the DIRECTION set tings just slightly use several patterns and SEQRND to generate less predicable patterns use HARMONLYONLY with a different voice and pattern Oh and have fun 66 Chapter 12 Chord Voicing In music a chord is simply defined as two more notes played simultaneously Now this doesn t mean that you can play just any two or three notes and get a chord which sounds nice but whatever you do get will be a chord of some type And to further confuse the unwary different arrangements of the same notes sound better or worse in different musical situations As a simple example consider a C major chord Built on the first third and fifth notes of a C major scale 1t can be manipulated into a variety of sounds 1st Inversion Root Wide Position 2nd Inversion These are all C major chords but they all have a different sound or color The different forms a chord can take are called voicings Again this manual is not intended to be a primer on musical theory that
210. y 2 You can set a different harmony method for each bar in your sequence The following are valid harmony methods 2 or 2Below Two part harmony The harmony note selected is lower on the scale 2Above The same as 2 but the harmony note is raised an octave 3 or 3Below Three part harmony The harmony notes selected are lower 3Above The same as 3 but both notes are raised an octave Open or OpenBelow Two part harmony however the gap between the two notes is larger than in 2 OpenAbove Same as Open but the added note is above the original 8 or 8Below A note octave lower is added SAbove A note 2 octave higher is added 16 or 16Below A single note two octaves below is added 77 13 2 HarmonyOnly Harmony 16Above A single note two octaves above are added 24 or 24Below A single note three octaves below is added 24Above A single note three octaves above is added You can combine any of the above harmony modes by using a For example OPEN 8Below will produce harmony notes with an Open harmony and a note an octave below the current note 3Above 16 will generate 2 harmony notes above the current note plus a note 2 octaves below SBelow 8Above 16Below will generate 3 notes one 2 octaves below the current one an octave below and one an octave above There is no limit to the number of modes you can concatenate Any duplicate notes generated will be ignored All harmonies are created using t

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