Nonrepetitive Soundscapes
In this scenario, you create soundscapes, or textures of background sounds, that differ each time they are played or looped.
For example, suppose you want to create a soundtrack for a battle scene in which many soldiers are fighting hand-to-hand. Although you might want to play particular sounds to reflect important events, the whole battle is played out against a background of shouts, clashing weapons, neighing horses, and so on. Using a simple wave file, the application plays exactly the same sounds over and over again. This repetition is easily recognized by the user, and the illusion of reality is lost. You want the individual sounds to be played more chaotically.
By composing DirectMusic Producer segments that contain variations in pattern tracks or wave tracks, you create a soundscape that automatically varies when played. Each time a segment is played or looped, DirectMusic selects a variation number for each wave track part and each pattern track part, and plays only the waves or notes that you have marked as valid for that variation number. The result is a very large number of possible combinations of sounds. The soundtrack, rather than being repetitive and predictable, becomes much more random and realistic.
When implementing this scenario, consider the following:
- In a style-based segment, you can create note patterns and use DLS instrument regions to play different sound effects for different notes. Alternatively, you can use a wave track.
- A wave or note in a part can be assigned to any number of variations up to 32. The more variations you assign the sound to, the more often it will be played.
- Use multiple parts or multiple tracks to increase the amount of variability. One part has only 32 possible variations, but three parts can be played together in 32,768 different ways.
- Use groove levels to enable the application to vary the overall effect of the soundtrack. For example, the battle could increase in intensity, resulting in a choice of patterns containing louder or more frequent sounds.
- It is also possible to manipulate combinations of sounds by using variations. For example, the sound of a weapon strike occurs at a certain point in variations 1 to 10; a cry of pain occurs immediately after, but it is only valid for variations 1 to 3. The result is that a cry can occur only after a weapon strike, but not every weapon strike is followed by a cry.
- You can control how variation numbers are selected at run time. For example, they can be chosen completely at random, randomly but without repeating until all have been played, or in sequence.
- You can lock variations in one track to variations in another, so that, for example, a certain wave is always played when a certain musical variation is selected.
Concepts
How-to
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