Harmony
According to the Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music, “Harmony is that aspect of music which is controlled by the simultaneous sounding of different pitches”.
There are two aspects of ‘Harmony’ control in ArtSong:
- Selecting the scales and chords which will establish sets of simultaneously allowed note-pitch values,
- Deciding how each Track component’s generated pitches will be filtered-by (or mapped-to) the allowed set of pitches.
Key Signature
By default all ArtSong compositions have a ‘Key Signature’. The scale of the Key Signature defines a default set of pitches to which all generated pitches are mapped during composition.
This default Key Signature is set in the Composition Component’s Property editor.
Composition Component events can be used to change the default Key Signature within the composition:
- Select composition component,
- Draw event,
- Select a new Key Signature in the Event Editor.
Pitch Mapping
Each track component provides several alternative pitch mapping strategies. Generated pitches can be mapped to an underlying scale (default), a chord (if present), or not mapped/filtered at all (equivalent to using a chromatic scale).
In addition to the basic chord or scale options, several metric-strength related pitch options also exist. These alternative mappings strategies use different pitch sets depending upon whether note generation is occurring on a ‘strong’ beat or a ‘weak’ beat.
These latter options require the presence of one of the metric algorithms and depend upon the ‘metric threshold’ setting in the Composition Component Properties editor.
Scales Component
The Composition Component’s Key Signature property limits you to basic major, minor, and chromatic scales. The Scales Component allows you to use any previously defined scale.
Insert the Scales Component by right-clicking in the Component Pane, selecting Insert Component… from the pop-up menu, and selecting the Scale Component from the ‘Types’ Tab and click OK.
- Use the Scale Component’s events to add scales to your composition project:
- Draw the event,
- When the Scale Event Data Editor opens: select a Scale and Root. Click Ok.
- The Scale Event will be added to your project.
- During composition the Scale will be inserted into the composition stream and used to filter generated pitches by any component using the ‘Scales’ pitch mapping options.
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