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<TITLE>Tao User Manual -- Describing Musical Events</TITLE>
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<H2>Describing Musical Events</H2>
Having introduced the various elements which comprise <B>Tao</B>'s synthesis
language we now take a look at how to describe musical <EM>events</EM><A NAME="1">
using</A> the score language provided. The term
<EM>event</EM> needs some clarification before we start though. In <B>Tao</B>
the term is used to signify <EM>anything</EM>
which occurs during a performance, either at a particular instant in time
or over some time interval. Events come in all shapes and sizes from
low-level events such as setting the value of a parameter, to high-level
events such as playing a bowed note on a stringed instrument.
<P>Many events, especially the higher level musical events are hierarchical
in nature. For example in order to describe an event such as bowing a
note on a string the event will be broken down into sub-events such as
the following:
<P><UL><LI>Apply the bow to the string;
<LI>Increase the velocity of the bow over some short time interval to
create an attack, at the same time as controlling the downward
force of the bow;
<LI>Hold the velocity steady for some time interval;
<LI>Decrease the velocity steadily for some time interval;
<LI>Remove the bow from the instrument.
</UL>
<P>Such high-level events are referred to as <EM>compound events</EM><A NAME="2">.</A>
All compound events no matter how complex eventually reduce down to
low-level events, examples of which are given below:
<P><UL><LI>Evaluating expressions and assigning values to parameters;
<LI>Changing the attributes of an instrument;
<LI>Changing the attributes of a device;
<LI>Applying a device to an instrument or removing it again;
<LI>Coupling instruments together;
<LI>Displaying text output in the shell window to give feedback about how
a performance is progressing;
<LI>Specifying output sources;
<LI>Writing audio samples to output files.
</UL>
<P>The rest of this section takes a closer look at the various techniques
which are commonly used to implement compound events.
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<LI><A HREF="UserManual_77.html">Streams of Events and Iteration</A>
<LI><A HREF="UserManual_78.html">Comparison with Csound</A>
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<tr><td colspan="3" class="addr"><!-- bottom panel --><ADDRESS><FONT SIZE=-1>©1999,2000 Mark Pearson
<A HREF="mailto:m.pearson@ukonline.co.uk">m.pearson@ukonline.co.uk</A> April 30, 2000</ADDRESS><BR></td></tr><!-- end bottom panel --></table></BODY></HTML>
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