Using Transition Segments

The play event also supports three other parameters — an AudioPath on which to play this Segment, a transition Segment to play prior to playing this Segment, and a PlayingSegment to play relative to (use the measure, beat, marker, etc., boundaries). We come back to the last one in the next section. But for now, let's take a quick look at transition Segments. Remember that each parameter in a call to a DirectX Audio Scripting function is separated by a comma. We just want to use the default AudioPath, so we can leave the second parameter blank or use the special keyword "nothing" to indicate that it should be ignored and use the default.

 Sub StartActionMusic ActionMusic.Play (AtMeasure, nothing, RampUpAction) End Sub 

…which is equivalent to:

 Sub StartActionMusic ActionMusic.Play (AtMeasure, , RampUpAction) End Sub 

Both versions of the routine would do the same thing — at the next measure of the primary Segment, play the RampUpAction Segment that we've authored as a transition Segment; when it finishes, play ActionMusic.

Stopping a Piece of Audio

Now our music is chugging along, but we need to be able to stop it eventually (assuming it was authored to loop for a while, or we just need to get back to authoring for a bit!). The basic stop call is similar to our basic play call:

 Sub ExitRoom RoomAmbience.Stop End Sub 

Again, by default, the stop occurs on the Segment's default boundary (which was probably immediate). You can use the single parameter of Segment.Stop to specify a more specific boundary or (if you are using Style-based Segments) to tack an end embellishment pattern onto the ending of the Segment. Again, see the DirectMusic Scripting Reference portion of the DirectMusic Producer help file for a complete list of options. As an example, when we exit the room, we want to stop our music at the next beat. We could create the following routine:

 Sub ExitRoom RoomAmbience.Stop (AtBeat) End Sub