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Ornament

Individual notes in various tracks can be embellished or ornamented by using standard musical “tricks” like grace notes, mordents, etc. This is specified with the ORNAMENT command. This command is valid in CHORD, BASS, WALK, ARPEGGIO and SCALE tracks. This command has a number of valid options, all set in the OPTION=VALUE format. Following are the recognized options:

Type
  This is the type of embellishment to use. Valid settings are MORDENT, TURN, TRILL, GRACE and 3AFTER. The effects are best illustrated in standard notation:

Chromatic
  By default, when selecting the additional notes to use MMA uses the scale list for the current chord. This ensures that the added notes blend with the rest of the accompaniment. The exception occurs when the initial note is part of a modified pattern;16.1 in this case a chromatic note is used.

  The CHROMATIC option forces the use of chromatic notes. It is set with CHROMATIC=ON. You can also use TRUE to enable; OFF or FALSE to disable.

Place
  Valid settings are ABOVE, BELOW, RANDOM. The examples shown above are all with the default option ABOVE in effect. Using the PLACE=BELOW setting moves the embellishments down below the note. The final option, PLACE=RANDOM, places the ornament randomly.

Duration
  The time-slice given to the main note and the embellishment can be set with this option. By default the embellishment is given 20% of the duration (the remaining 80% going to the note). This is pretty straightforward to use, except that in the TRILL setting this sets the number of pairs of notes to use (for example, in TYPE=TRILL DURATION=25 you will get each note divided into 4 pairs). The ARTICULATE setting will effect both the main note and the embellishments. When using the 3AFTER setting a duration of 75 will set all 4 notes to the same duration.

Pad
  This option adds (or subtracts) duration to both the ornamented and main portion of the note(s). Optionally, you can set 2 values (a comma separated pair, eg. PAD=10,20) which will set different values for the main note and the ornamentation (in that order). The value(s) are set as percentage value(s). The default is to add 10% to each note. The placement (the start time) of both notes is determined by the note duration specified in the pattern; this option effects the “overlay” time. Judicious use of this option will give the notes/ornamentation a more legato or staccato feel. Both values must be in the range of -100 to 100.

Volume
  The relative volume (actually MIDI velocity) of the embellishments defaults to 75% of the main note. You can make added notes louder (VOLUME=150) or softer (VOLUME=50).

Beats
  Set the offsets on which the embellishments will be applied. Beats are specified in the same manner as pattern offsets (here). The beats (offsets) are a comma separated list:

  Scale Ornament Beats=1,3.25,4

Bars
  Limit the ornamentation to specified bars in the sequence. This is a comma separated list. For example, if you have a 4 bar sequence you could limit the ornamentation to the first and third bars in the sequence with:

  Arpeggio Ornament Type=Moderent Bars=1,3

  To make life more interesting (and confusing) this can be combined with the BEATS option, above. You can disable this setting (the default) with the special value “All”.

Rskip
  Skip a random number of ornamented notes. The setting must be in the 0 to 100 range (with 0 turning the feature off and 100 skipping every event). RSKIP is only applied to events permitted by the BEATS and BARS options. Also, the track setting for RSKIP is further applied to generated notes.

For reference, here is a setting line which duplicates the defaults:

Bass Ornament Type=None Chromatic=Off Duration=20.0 Pad=10.0,10.0 Volume=75.0 Place=ABOVE Beats= Rskip=0 Bars=

To disable all ornamantations you can use an empty command or the single keywords “None” or “Off”:

Scale Ornament Scale Ornament Off

There are a number of examples in the `egs/ornament` directory.

Some points to note:

- If the HARMONY setting is enabled, the ORNAMENT options are applied only to the main note, not the harmony.

- In CHORD tracks the top (highest pitch) note is ornamented.

- The ARTICULATE setting is applied to the ornamented and original notes. In some cases this can lead to overlaps or a gap between the notes.

- All options are reset to default when an OPTION command is encountered. It probably makes more sense this way than only changing some ... certainly there should be less confusion. If you want to change only one or two options you can do:

  Chord Ornament $_Chord_Ornament Beats=1,3

  in which case only the BEATS are modified.

- You cannot set different ornaments for bar sequences, only limit them with the BARS option. If you need, for example, an ornament in first bar, and a different one in the third, simply make a copies of the track, set the sequence for the first track's bars so that you have an empty first track; set the second track's sequence to compliment and set the ornament, etc.16.2

- An empty option string can be used for the PLACE and BARS settings (eg. BASS ORNAMENT PLACE=). This is mainly for use in macros. You can do something like:

  Bass Ornament $_Walk_Ornament

#### Footnotes

... pattern;16.1
  This can occur in BASS patterns which have a or modifier.
... etc.16.2
  This is a deliberate departure from the normal MMA syntax. It's quite unlikely that you would want more that one ornamentation setting in a sequence, but quite likely that you'd only want a setting to be applied to a certain bar in the sequence.