05 Playing
play a musical object
There are several ways to start listening to your musical object.
Note that the editor plugin has keyboard shortcuts to play musical objects instead of using functions such as cmd+3 = play and cmd+5 = stop.
play
s = sequence('C E G')
play(s)
The function play will schedule all the notes of a musical object.
The first note(s) start at the moment of evaluation.
In this example the C note from the sequence s will be played immediately, the E and G are scheduled to play one and two quarter durations later.
The actual time is dependent on the value of BPM, beats-per-minute, at the time of evaluation. You can change the tempo by using the bpm function.
sync
s1 = sequence('C E G')
s2 = sequence('C5 E5 G5')
sync(s1,s2)
play(s1,s2)
The function sync will schedule all musical objects at the same time.
The first notes of each musical object will start at the moment of evaluation.
In this example the C and C5 notes from the sequences s1 and s2 are played immediately.
Using the play function, all musical object will be played after each other.
play, stop loop
s1 = sequence('C E G')
lp_s1 = loop(s1)
play(lp_s1)
stop(lp_s1)
The function play and stop apply to Loop and Listen objects only.
Basicly, it will play one or more musical objects, each after the other, repeatedly.
Both functions require a variable, here lp_s1 to which a loop is assigned and is needed for you to stop playing.
The function play will start playing the loop immediately.
The function stop will stop this loop.
track
bpm(120)
f1 = sequence('C D E C')
f2 = sequence('E F 2G')
f3 = sequence('8G 8A 8G 8F E C')
f4 = sequence('2C 2G3 2C 2=')
v1 = join(f1,f1,f2,f2,f3,f3,f4)
t = track('frere',1,
onbar(1,v1),
onbar(3,v1),
onbar(5,v1))
play(t)
To schedule multiple sequences in a timeline, you can create a track.
A track uses a bar count to set the start time of playing a musical ohject.
The example is a well-know melody, “Frere Jacques”, in which the same melody is repeated with an offset of 2 bars.
The variable v1 is the combination of several sequences such as f1 and f2.
The track specifies the MIDI channel, here 1, and multiple entries on the timeline using the onbar function.
multitrack
all = multitrack(drumTrack,pianoTrack,bassTrack)
play(all)
export("my-project",all)
A multitrack is simply a collection of parallel tracks.
It can be used to play all tracks at once or to export to a MIDI file (my-project.mid).
stop playing
If you want to stop all playing (including loops and listeners) then use the editor shortcut cmd+k.
You can also stop the melrose program using the command :q or :Q.