Subsections
Harmony
MMA 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
MMA is a wonderful musical
creator when it comes to harmonies, don't be fooled.
MMA 's 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 or a specified interval. And its notion of “open” is
certainly not that of traditional music theory. But, all that said,
the results can be quite pleasing.
Harmony
To enable harmony notes, use a command like:
You can set a different harmony method for each bar in your sequence.
There are two kinds of harmony: chordal and interval.
Harmonies based on the current chord examine the chord and select
notes to add from that chord. This method ensures that the resulting
harmony will be consonant ... but not necessarily exciting. The
following mnemonic values can be used to set a chord-based harmony:
- 2 or 2Below
- Two part harmony. The harmony note
selected is lower (on the scale).
- 28Below
- Two part harmony, the harmony note is lowered by an
additional octave.
- 2Above
- The same as “2”, but the harmony note is raised an
octave.
- 28Above
- The same as “2Above”, but the harmony note is
raised by two octaves.
- 3 or 3Below
- Three part harmony. The harmony notes
selected are lower.
- 3Above
- The same as “3”, but both notes are raised an
octave.
- 38Above
- Same as “3”, but the two harmony notes are raised
by two octaves.
- 38Below
- Same as “3”, but the two harmony notes are lowered
by two octaves.
- Open or OpenBelow
- Two part harmony, however the gap
between the two notes is larger than in “2”.
- Open8Below
- Same as “OpenBelow”, but the harmony note is
lowered by an additional octave.
- OpenAbove
- Same as “Open”, but the added note is above the
original.
- Open8Above
- Same as “OpenAbove”, but the added note is
raised by an additional octave.
- 8 or 8Below
- A note 1 octave lower is added.
- 8Above
- A note 2 octave higher is added.
- 16 or 16Below
- A single note two octaves below is
added.15.1
- 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.
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Secondly, you can harmonize using specific intervals. Intervals like
this are quite common in commercial music, but you must be careful in
MMA with this method since it is easy to create dissonant or
clashing sounds (which you may or may not want).
To specify an interval type harmony start a “name” with a leading
“:” or an octave specifier and a “:” (the presence of a single
“:” tells
MMA that you want to use an interval). The octave can
be any value between -4 and 4. This is the number of octaves to add or
subtract to the interval. The “name” part of the interval can be
specified in a two of different ways:
- Value: A single value specifying the number of
semitones to offset the harmony note. For example:
would generate a harmony note 5 semitones above the solo note. This
is the same as a perfect fourth.
Adding the octave modifier:
will generate the same perfect fourth a full octave below the solo
note. Other examples include:
which
generates harmony notes 26 semitones above the note, and
for “harmony” notes 2 octaves above the note.
- Mnemonic: A descriptive term for the interval. The
following table lists the basic terms which
MMA recognizes:
Mnemonic |
Semitones |
|
|
Unison |
0 |
MinorSecond |
1 |
MajorSecond |
2 |
DiminishedThird |
2 |
MinorThird |
3 |
AugmentedSecond |
3 |
MajorThird |
4 |
DiminishedFourth |
4 |
PerfectFourth |
5 |
AugmentedThird |
5 |
AugmentedFourth |
6 |
DiminishedFifth |
6 |
PerfectFifth |
7 |
DiminishedSixth |
7 |
MinorSixth |
8 |
AugmentedFifth |
8 |
MajorSixth |
9 |
DiminishedSeventh |
9 |
MinorSeventh |
10 |
AugmentedSixth |
10 |
MajorSeventh |
11 |
DiminishedEight |
11 |
Octave |
12 |
AugmentedSeventh |
12 |
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To make typing a bit easier, you can shorten any of Minor, Major,
etc. to the first three letters (Min, Maj, etc.) and the values
Second, Fifth, etc. to an integer (2, 5, etc.). So, “MajorSeventh”
could be entered as “Major7” or “MajSeventh” or “Maj7”.
Many of the about intervals are going to sound “odd” to say the
least. Others are duplications of the chord based intervals, for
example “Octave” is the same as “8Above”.
You can combine any of the above harmony modes by using a “+” (no
spaces!). 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.
- 8Below+8Above+16Below
- will generate 3 notes: one 2 octaves
below the current, one an octave below, and one an octave above.
- -1:Per4+8Above
- generates 2 harmony notes: one a perfect
fourth above, less an octave (same as a perfect fifth below) plus
a note a full octave above.
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- There is no limit to the number of modes you can concatenate.
Any duplicate notes generated will be ignored.
- To disable harmony use a “0”, “-” or “None”.
- Be careful in using harmonies. They can make your song sound
heavy, especially with BASS notes (applying a different
volume may help).
- The duration of the harmony notes will be the same as the
original note.
- The command has no effect in DRUM or CHORD tracks.
- If the “note” at the current position is already a “chord”
(let's say you have a solo and you set “4a;bc;d;e”) beat 2 will not
have a harmony applied. This can be useful to skip harmony on
certain notes: just set the note twice (i.e. “4aa;bb;2c” will only
have harmony applied to beat 3 and the duplicate notes will be
stripped before the MIDI is generated).
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 HARMONYONLY track playing a violin. The following
snippet is extracted from the song file “Cry Me A River” and sets up
two different choir voices:
Begin Arpeggio
Sequence A4
Voice ChoirAahs
Invert 0 1 2 3
SeqRnd
Octave 5
RSkip 40
Volume p
Articulate 99
End
Begin Arpeggio-2
Sequence A4
Voice VoiceOohs
Octave 5
RSkip 40
Volume p
Articulate 99
HarmonyOnly Open
End
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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 “-”, “None” or “0” disables the 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.
HarmonyVolume
By default,
MMA will 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 HARMONYVOLUME command. For example:
Begin Solo
Voice JazzGuitar
Harmony Open
HarmonyVolume 80
End
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You can specify different values for each bar in the sequence. The
values are percentages and must be greater than 0 (large values work
just fine if you want the harmony louder than the original). The
command has no effect in DRUM or PLECTRUM tracks.
Footnotes
- 15.1
- Please don't confuse
MMA ś idea of
16ABOVE (and other variants) with the proper musical
notation of 15va, etc. A single note two octaves below
another is (on a keyboard) 15, not 16, whole tones down.