Groove Levels

One of the more powerful ways that DirectMusic exposes adaptive audio is with the groove level. Groove level is a musical or emotional intensity setting that adjusts in real time according to rules you define as part of your playback environment. You can set up different moods within a DirectMusic piece and assign those moods to different groove levels. For instance, someone could produce a progressive trance piece with sparse musical activity on groove level 1 and increase the intensity of the music through various groove levels. This can be achieved by adding more notes and instruments, or by setting higher volumes. You can then assign the different intensity (groove) levels to trigger upon changes in the playback environment. Say you create a DirectMusic piece for stand-alone music listening; you could set a rule that switches groove levels according to the time of day or even the number of windows the listener has open on the desktop. The possibilities are truly endless.

We discuss groove levels in much more detail in the section on Style-based Segments in Chapter 4.