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:

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.

Chord Based

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.

Interval Based

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:

  1. Value: A single value specifying the number of semitones to offset the harmony note. For example:

    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
    which generates harmony notes 26 semitones above the note, and
    Bass Harmony :24
    for “harmony” notes 2 octaves above the note.

  2. 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

    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”.

Combining Harmonies

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.

Some notes and cautions


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

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

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

... added.15.1
Please don't confuse MMA 's idea of 16ABOVE (and other variants) with the proper musical notation of 15ma (often incorrectly shown as 15va), etc. A single note two octaves below another is 15, not 16, whole tones down.