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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.
To enable harmony notes, use a command like:
| Solo Harmony 2 |
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:
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The following options do not look at the current chord, they just add a “harmony note” based on the current note. Since they are all simple octave relationships there should be no dissonances generated.
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Please note that the current scale/chord is not considered when determining the interval.
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:
| Solo Harmony :5 |
would generate a harmony note 5 semitones above the solo note. This is the same as a perfect fourth.
Adding the octave modifier:
| Solo Harmony -1:5 |
will generate the same perfect fourth a full octave below the solo note. Other examples include:
| Arpeggio Harmony 2:2 |
| Bass Harmony :24 |
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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”.
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You can force the selection of a random harmony by concatenating a number of harmony types with commas. For example:
| Solo Harmony Open,OpenAbove,OpenBelow |
will select a harmony from one of the types in the list. Each time a harmony note is needed a new random selection will be made.
The special type NONE can be used to cause no harmony note to be generated.
It is perfectly acceptable to combine a random selection with the “+” combination:
| Bass Harmony Bottom+Open,OpenBelow,None |
will force the bottom note of the current chord to be added to one of the harmony types, or if NONE is selected, no additional note at all.
As noted elsewhere in this section, no spaces are permitted in a random list (spaces are used to set harmonies for different sequence points).
| F FzC F / {4a;b;c;d;} |
no harmony notes will be generated for the second beat.
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:
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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 |
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.
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:
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Begin Solo
Voice JazzGuitar Harmony Open HarmonyVolume 80 End |
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.