Acoustic guitar style

[kara]

I got an e-mail from a MMA user stating that MMA was very good for piano,drum & bass tracks but that he had
troubles with strummed accoustic guitar styles. And the question if I had any tips for him.
So I promissed him to post the answer here.

ok let's go, mind you I won't rewrite the excelent manual of MMA here, but build a style as an example

We start with the standard stuff and the definition of the rifs
Note : This is just my style of creating MMA files, you can allso define the rifs inline (see the MMA manual)...

Code:

SeqClear
SeqSize 4
Time 4
Timesig 4 4 

Begin Bass Define
	// - Nylon Guitar
			NG1	1 4+8 1 98 ; 3 4+8 1 98
			END1    1 4+8 1 107
End

Begin Chord Define
	// - Nylon Guitar
			NG10	1.5 4+8 0 107  ; 2.5 2 0 106  ; 3.5 4+8 0 104  
			NG20	1.5 4+8 0 107  ; 2.5 4 0 106  ; 3.5 4+8 0 102  ; 4 4 0 104
			END10    1 4+8 107 0  
End

What did I do here :
I actually devided our guitar in 2 instruments
- The tumb picking of the bass string (bass define) and the strumming of the other string (chord define)
- The NG are the normal riffs used trough the song, the END I will use for the last bar

Next we'll define the instruments and the groove

Code:

Begin Bass-Nylonguitar
	Voice NylonGuitar
	Octave 4
	Sequence NG1
End

Begin Chord-NylonGuitar
	Voice NylonGuitar
	Articulate 105
	Strum 8
	Octave 4
	Sequence NG10 NG20
End


DefGroove Acoustica1

We notice 2 specials in the chord-Nylonguitar
- The strum keyword, which will make our player strum the notes as he does on a real guitar.
You can experiment here with different speeds.
- The articulate keyword, which allows the notes to ring trough as on a real guitar (see the manual)

Now that we have a groove, we can create our song
Just standard stuff here

Code:

Keysig Bb
Tempo 70
Lyric CHORDS=On
Groove Acoustica1
MidiMark Intro
Bb
MidiMark Verse1
Bb
Gm
Cm
D7
G
G7
Cm
Cm / Bb
// Chorus
Eb
Dm
Cm
F7

Bb  
Gm
Cm
F

As you can see I used a couple of special keywords here too
- Lyrics CHORDS=On : Will place the chord name as a lyric event, this make it easy to have the chord names in your sequencer.
- A couple of MidiMark command, again easy if your sequencer support standard MIDI markers.

When you play the generated MIDI you'll hear that in some spots the chords sound a bit high,
the D7 chord on bar 5 is an example of this.
Now, you know, MMA is a MIDI generating program and doesn't know anything about playing guitar, but there are a
couple of tricks to handle this.
First thing to try is the keyword 'Voicing Mode=Optimal', see the MMA manual.

We change the Chord-NylonGuitar as follows :

Code:

Begin Chord-NylonGuitar
	Voice NylonGuitar
	Voicing Mode=Optimal
	Articulate 105
	Strum 8
	Octave 4
	Sequence NG10 NG20
End

If you play the generated MIDI file now, you'll hear that it sounds way better.
If you still don't like the sound of some chords, you can allso use the inversion of the chord (see MMA manual)
EX : Try D7>1 or D7>-1
Or you could allso drop the chord an octave, this won't sound good here, but I mention it just for reference
Ex : -D7

Let's add a decent end to our song.
For accoustic styles like this, I like to end with a single note and one a octave higher played at the same time.
Easy to do, we allready defined the riffs, the only thing we have to do is to define the groove

This is what we add, under the first groove :

Code:

Begin Bass-Nylonguitar
	Voice NylonGuitar
	Octave 4
	Sequence END1
End

Begin Chord-NylonGuitar
	Voice NylonGuitar
	Voicing Mode=Optimal
	Articulate 105
	Strum 0
	Octave 4
	Sequence END10
End


DefGroove EndAcoustica1

Nothing special here.
And we add the change of groove in our song just before the last bar :

Code:

Groove EndAcoustica1
Bb

You can download the MMA file and render it for yourself or in case you don't have MMA YET listen to the music which is allso
attached to this post.

If you have any questions, you can ask them here, if I don't have an answer, I'm sure Bob will

In the next episode we will make this style a bit more complete.
Until then Happy MMA'ing

k

[kara]

No question, good this means everybody follows 

As a preparation for the next step, I've added a drumtrack to the song.
Nothing fancy, except for the fact to show how easy it is to make drumtracks with the standard lib provided by bvdp 

I've allso added some humanization to our guitar player, see the chord-guitar groove.
Now that our guitar player learned how to play I've changed the tempo of the song and augmented a bit the strum speed.

As usual, if you have any question, just ask
Until then Happy MMA'ing
 
k

[bvdp]

I find it very interesting how much the addition of a drum makes. I've found the same when creating my own grooves.

However, when I listen to live music (or even some things which have been recorded) the lack of a drum doens't bother me. I'm assuming that the big difference is that MMA is not "real" and needs the additional punch of a drum.

Either that, or looking at a pretty girl singing takes my mind off the lack of a drum

[kara]

Since our style definition is growing and I have some further plans with it, it's time to reorganise our file a bit and give it a logical structure.
As with a lot of things in MMA there are different ways of doing this, I'll show you my standard ways of doing it, but you can allways adapt it to your way of working.

Here it goes

I start the file with the pattern definitions. Most complicated patterns I put in this sections, this way want I want to modify something, I know where to find them

Code:

Time 4
Timesig 4 4 
Include stdpats

SeqClear

//------------- The patterns used in the style --------------------------------

Begin Bass Define
	// - Nylon Guitar
			NG1	1 4+8 1 98 ; 3 4+8 1 98
			END1    1 4+8 1 107
	// - Real Bass
			RBAINT	4.5 8 5 80
			RBA1	B11
			RBA2	B11 ; 4.5 8 5 85
			RBA3	1 4 1 97 ; 2.5 8 5 98 ; 3 4 1 98 ; 4.5 8 5 85
			RBAEND	1 8 1 85 ; 1.5 8 4 88 ; 2 4 5 98 ; 3 2 1 100
End

Begin Chord Define
	// - Nylon Guitar
			NG10	1.5 4+8  107  ; 2.5 2  106  ; 3.5 4+8 104  
			NG20	1.5 4+8 107  ; 2.5 4 106  ; 3.5 4+8 102  ; 4 4 104
			END10    1 4+8 107   
			NGPREF	1 2 107; 1.5 2 106  ; 2 2 104
End

Next comes the instrument definitions, but NO sequence definitions

Code:

//------------- Instrument definitions ----------------------------------------

Begin Bass-RealBass
	Voice AcousticBass
	Rtime 10
	Rvolume 4
	Octave 3
	Articulate 100
	Rtime 5
	Rvolume 10
	SeqRnd On
End

Begin Bass-Nylonguitar
	Voice NylonGuitar
	Octave 4
	Sequence NG1
End

Begin Chord-NylonGuitar
	Voice NylonGuitar
	Voicing Mode=Optimal
	Articulate 105
	Strum 5
	Rtime 5
	RVolume 5
	Direction BOTH
	Octave 4
End


Begin Drum-HH
	Tone ClosedHiHat
	Rtime 5
	Rskip 5
	Rvolume 5
End

Begin Drum-Cym
	Tone CrashCymbal1
	Volume p
End

Begin Drum-Kick
	Tone KickDrum1
	Volume mf
	Rskip 20
	Rtime 5
	Rvolume 10
End

Begin Drum-Snare
	Tone SnareDrum1
End

Begin Drum-Cabasa
	Tone Cabasa
	Rskip 40
	Rtime 10
	Rvolume 20
End

Begin Drum-Shake
	Tone Shaker
	Rskip 40
	Rtime 10
	Rvolume 20
End

Now that everything is setup, we can make our grooves.
In the grooves, we defines which sequences will be used for the different instruments and allso which instruments won't play.

Code:

//----------------------- Grooves ---------------------------------------------


///// Standard groove used in the verse ////
SeqSize 4
Bass-Realbass Sequence RBA1 RBA2 RBA3
Bass-Nylonguitar Sequence NG1
Chord-NylonGuitar Sequence NG10 NG20
Drum-HH Sequence D8
Drum-Cym Sequence D1 z
Drum-Kick Sequence { D13; D23 Shift .5 }
Drum-Snare Sequence D24
Drum-Shake Sequence D1234
DefGroove Acoustica1

///////// SIMPLE 1 BAR END /////////////////
Seqsize 1

Drum-HH Sequence -
Drum-Cym Sequence -
Drum-Snare Sequence -
Drum-Shake Sequence -
Drum-Kick Sequence D1
Bass-RealBass Sequence RBAEND
Bass-Nylonguitar Sequence END1
Chord-NylonGuitar Strum 0
Chord-NylonGuitar Sequence END10
DefGroove EndAcoustica1

/// A simple count in ///////////
Seqsize 1

Drum-HH Sequence -
Drum-Cym Sequence -
Drum-Shake Sequence -
Bass-Nylonguitar Sequence -
Chord-NylonGuitar Sequence -
Drum-Snare    Sequence D134 
Drum-Kick  Sequence D1234
Bass-RealBass Sequence RBAINT

DefGroove IntroAcoustica1

And finally comes the song itself.
I usualy separate the song itself in another file. The advantage is that you have your style available for other songs that you want to compose. Just for this example I'll keep the song into the same file.

Next mma file that I post, where I will extend the style, will be reorganized that way.

Feel free to ask questions

k
 

[Oren]

Feel free to ask questions

Question: May I borrow your brain for a few weeks?

(I'm impressed )

[kara]

Feel free to ask questions

Question: May I borrow your brain for a few weeks?

(I'm impressed )

You know Oren, it's actualy easier to do then to explain, once you get the principle.
This series of articles here, are a follow up on my basic tutorial on creating styles, which should be available on the MMA site. In that tutorial I explain how you can create a simple style from scratch.
And here I build further on that knowledge.

k

[folderol]

I think I'm in the boat as Oren here

I usewd to think I was quite smart, but I'm finding it very heavy going trying to make sense of this. Probably simply because it requires a completely different way of thinking to what I'm familiar with,

[kara]

You know Will, when I first saw MMA, I was exactly thinking the same thing 
I installed it, tried it, looked at it, and didn't understand a yota  and put it aside.
But like I hate to give up, I tought 'listen that guy guy bvdp spend years developping this, I could at least spend a couple of days reading the manual  ' which I did.
And it all came clear to me and showed to my 2 things
- Once you understand the logic of the syntax, it's realy simple.
- It's extremly powerfull.

Once I played a bit with it, I had the impression that the creation of styles wasn't explained enough in the manual. And then I took the descission that MMA would be THE open source project I would participate and
- Wrote the primer on creating styles myself (Bob do you know where that one is, I didn't find it on the website ?)
- Became beta tester of the software
- Since then I'm discussion some features with bvdp on a regular base, of which most are implemented now and we are preparing some features for the new version.

MMA is free, it won't cost you money, the only thing you have to invest is your time to learn it.

By the end of this series of posts, you'll hear the audio example of the full track and you'll realize how powerfull it is 

So, stay tuned....

k

PS
And I forgot to mention, that what I'm showing here is the advanced possibilities of creating your own user style. But MMA comes with a lot of standard styles, where you wouldn't need this.
Creating a song with an existing style is as simple as this

Code:

// This Can't Be Love                                 . 
Tempo 160
Groove Swing 

1	F6 / / /
2	F9 / / /
3	Bb6 / / /
4	Eb9 / / /
5	Am7 / / /
6	Dm7 / / /
7	G9 / / /
8	Gm7 / C9 /
9	F6 / / /
10	F9 / / /
11	Bb6 / / /
12	Eb9 / / /
13	Am7 / Dm7 /
14	Gm7 / C9 /
15	F6 / / /
16	/ / / /
17	Em7 / / /
18	A9 / / /
19	Dm7 / / /
20	/ / / /
21	Am7b5 / / /
22	D7 / / /
23	Gm7 / / /
24	C9 / / /
25	F6 / / /
26	F9 / / /
27	Bb6 / / /
28	Eb9 / / /
29	Am7 / Dm7 /
30	Gm7 / C9 /
31	F69 / / /
32	Gm7 / C9 /
33	F69   

k

[bvdp]

The tutorial on creating lib or style files is included in the MMA distro. It is the tutorial as  "Library File Creation" section. Even has a footnote attributing it all to our good friend Kara

[kara]

The tutorial on creating lib or style files is included in the MMA distro. It is the tutorial as  "Library File Creation" section. Even has a footnote attributing it all to our good friend Kara

I didn't look in the only obvious place where it should be 

k

[kara]

For those that are still with me, attached the new MMA style file.
Modifications :

- Reorganisation of the file as explained in previous post. Mind you, this is my way of making styles, there are other ways, look at the included files written by bvdp.
- Added a bass, nothing special here
- Added the drums
- Added a couple of grooves, to keep it interesting 

And for those that don't have MMA yet, also an audio file of the actual status 

Coming next : Some variations on the grooves, so that we can build a chorus to our song.

Happy MMA'ing 

[folderol]

Hmmmm

Hmmmm

Just had a listen to the audio, and I have to admit it sounds very good. I really will have to find time to investigate this.

[kara]

Hmmmm

Hmmmm

Just had a listen to the audio, and I have to admit it sounds very good. I really will have to find time to investigate this.

Stay tuned, it's only the start
I promise you, you'll be amazed how good it gets

k
 

[bvdp]

Thanks for this series. Having a user show how a nice sound is created, step by step, is much more instructive than anything I can do. And, yes, I would do it completely differently ... such is the power and curse of a free-form program like MMA.