Musician Archive
Thread: Writing a composition, advanced lessons
Well, I thought I'd share what I use. A warning though.... As soon as you start this macro, your main chat window becomes spam central. I recomment making a copy of the spatial tab but taking out system messages, and dragging that off the main chat bar for this.
Now lets say I have a bit of music. To the tune of starwars3. For simplicity sake I'll assume theres 3 instruments, a Traz, a Chid horn and a Nalargon. For simplicity sake I'll also say that in this music I have a verse, and a chorus. The verse will be flourish 5 on the traz, 2 on the chid, and 3 on the nalargon. The chorus will be flourish 6 on the traz, 3 on the chid, and 4 on the nalargon. So to put that in terms of aliases....
mymusictrazverse /b 5 t;/pause 4;/
mymusicchidverse /b 2 c;/pause 4;/
mymusicnalverse /b 3 n;/pause 4;/
mymusictrazchorus /b 6 t;/pause 4;/
mymusicchidchorus /b 3 c;/pause 4;/
mymusicnalchorus /b 4 n;/pause 4;/
Now lets say I want to play a verse, a chorus, a verse and a chorus then stop the band. First, the order of playing them...
mymusicchidmusic /mymusicchidverse mymusicchidchorus mymusicchidverse mymusicchidchorus
mymusictrazmusic /mymusictrazverse mymusictrazchorus mymusictrazverse mymusictrazchorus
mymusicnalmusic /mymusicnalverse mymusicnalchorus mymusicnalverse mymusicnalchorus
Finally, putting it all together....
playmymusic /startband starwars3;/changeband starwars3;/pause 2;/mymusicchidmusic;/mymusictrazmusic;/mymusicnalmusic stopband
Note the presence or lack of semicolons between commands is important. It is not a typo. Now, what this will do is it will start the music aliases which will start the verse aliases, then when the verse aliase is done, it starts the chorus alias, then when that's done it starts the verse alias, then the chorus alias. When the chorus alias is done it does nothing, EXCEPT the nalargon which stops the band.
Now several things that make this work. First, by putting ;/ at the end of the aliases, I can then list two aliase names (IE /alias1 alias2) and it will do them in order, as opposed to if there was a ; between them. (IE /alias1;/alias2) That is why the aliases all have an appropriate length pause at the end. It is not at the end of the music aliases, because the ability to do this "stacks". Meaning I could do /mymusicchidmusic mymusicchidmusic and it would play it twice instead of once. In this example, that ability is only used to stop the band.
Second, it has a separate alias for each instrument. When I am doing these myself, I usually split it out into sounds.. One alias would, for example, do /b 1 t;/b 1 s;/b 1 fa to flourish the Traz, Slitherhorn and Fanfar the same. This isn't enough to cause a timing problem.
Third, as I noted above, since each alias just has a simple set of commands between pauses, the pause timing is not disrupted enough to notice.
This is also a really powerful way to write aliases, as it makes reordering the arrangement very easy. Lets say I wanted to take out the first chorus and just play the verse twice. I just have to remove the first chorus from the list. You can have as many different bits of music as you want and arrange them in any order.
Message Edited by Tiaga on 01-17-2004 04:23 PM
i am totally overwhelmed by all this. but kora and i have been trying to find a way to do this. (well, more kora than me
but we've discussed it.)and by the way...how do you know all this?! jsut blows my mind
can't wait to try it out tiaga! thanks for the continued music lessons.
so wait, to trigger a macro inside another macro, i say /macroname;?
As to how I know this... I just play around with things and see what I can get it to do.
The first is in game:
/alias name commands
For example, /alias delayedwave /pause 5;/wave
Then you could /delayedwave or even /delayedwave Luke
The second is to create a file "aliases.txt" in your SWG directory and put in 1 alias per line, for example:
delayedwave /pause 5;/wave
The third is to create a file named anything else in your SWG directory. Then you can load the aliases from it with /load filename. The aliases are listed the same as in the alias.txt file.
When you use the /alias method, it gets saved in aliases.txt as well.
Tiaga, is there any way to get /alias to stop spitting out "executing alias so-and-so" when you run the alias? I use an alias to type in my City's chat channel, because I prefer to keep spatial or guildchat as my default chat channel, and typing /chat send <chatchannelname> is cumbersome.
Great thread, BTW. 
NewJedi wrote:
Tiaga, is there any way to get /alias to stop spitting out "executing alias so-and-so" when you run the alias? I use an alias to type in my City's chat channel, because I prefer to keep spatial or guildchat as my default chat channel, and typing /chat send <CHATCHANNELNAME> is cumbersome.
Great thread, BTW.
There is, but you lose a few things in the process. See, the problem is aliases aren't any sort of message. Alias messages are in the same category as the "Unknown command" message when you enter a bad / command. They are supposed to go to your current view, so no matter what view you have selected, you still see the messages.
What I did isdrag all the tabs off my main chat bar into a new chat window. That is, I put them all in a new window. This left no tabs on the main chat window. Then I hide the now empty chat window with ctrl-enter in the default keybinding. To finish off, I drag the new window to where the default window had been.
However, there are downsides. Remember how I said it's in the same category as the unknown command message?You lose that too. You may not even know you mistyped a command. The /alias command alone normally lists alias, and /alias name gives you what that alias is. You lose both of those as well. Furthermore, you lose the ability to set a default chat channel.
There is a middle ground... Leave a tab in the main chat window for these messages. There are downsides to this too. For one you've got a bit of space taken up on the screen for something you rarely use, but don't choose when you use it, so you can't just hide it when it isn't needed. On top of that, by removing all tabs from the main chat window, you force the friend connect/disconnect messages onto all your other chat windows. If you leave one there, then you get connect/disconnect messages in the tab you leave there and nowhere else.
It would be nice if there was a way to turn off the "executing alias" text. Due to my extensive use of aliases, I chose the first method, but I still occasionally stare blankly trying to figure out why nothing happened when I typed something, only to remember that I don't see a message for a bad command. Not seeing alias messages isn't a big loss. If I need to see it, I can just drag a tab back to the main chat window.
For sending to a chat channel... You can just type /channelname. Unfortunately it can't be abbreviated like commands, you need the full name.
WOW Tiaga Kudos to you. I would read all that but I am sure my head would explode. lol I have printed it out and will take the next couple of days to read and review this process. This is VERY different from how I compose. It more orchestration really. I LOVE IT!!!
just my 2 notes,
Brog