Note Tweaking

Another way to use the pedal point chord playmode is with secondary Segments or motifs. If you play a really long note with the Don't Cut Off and Regenerate on Chord Change flags specified in the note's properties page, some cool harmonies can result. In the tutorial project, visit the Regeneration bookmark. Play the Segment featuring the Chord Track using the main Play button, and then play the other Segment with the secondary Segment toolbar. The notes continue past the end of the Segment, adjusting to every new chord that comes along! In this case, the pedal point chord playmode setting is not specified in the part but on the notes themselves.

There are other things that you can do to individual notes using their properties pages. You can tell the engine to harmonize a note to a chord that has not arrived by tweaking the map to chord value. This is great for pickups. You can avoid having one note randomly transpose an octave because it hit a range limit. Do this by setting groups of notes to transpose together with the Override Inv. Group feature. You can tweak the scale and chromatic offsets that we discussed earlier in the Note Properties box. You can tell a note when it is appropriate for it to cut off. For example, you can tell DirectMusic to cut off the note if it is not in the new chord's scale or chord tone list.