General messing about with instrument tokens. Toady's making me learn new things again...
Perhaps someone with greater musical skill could elaborate further than I could on these tokens so far:
SOUND_PRODUCTION- how is sound produced from the instrumentPLUCKED_BY_BP - bodypart plucks the instrument
PLUCKED - part used to pluck instrument. two tokens, the plucking part and the part being plucked
BOWED - bowed string instruments, violin cello etc. two tokens, bow and string part.
STRUCK_BY_BP - bodypart strikes the instrument, eg. hand percussion
STRUCK - tool percussion. two tokens, the beater and the part thats beaten
VIBRATE_BP_AGAINST_OPENING - ??
BLOW_AGAINST_FIPPLE - a fipple is the small, opening end of a recorder
BLOW_OVER_OPENING_SIDE - blow into an opening that is on the SIDE of the instrument. see chinese flutes, they are usually blown from the side instead of from one end.
BLOW_OVER_OPENING_END - blow into one end, like a basic flute
BLOW_OVER_SINGLE_REED - a reed is a vibrating component inside an instrument, usually woodwind, for eg. the clarinet. when air passes through the instrument, the reed vibrates the moving air. this one refers to one vibrating reed.
BLOW_OVER_DOUBLE_REED - two reeds that vibrate against each other.
BLOW_OVER_FREE_REED - a free-hanging reed that vibrates up and down from its default position, in contrast to the single reed that only vibrates one direction from its default position. harmonicas use free reeds i think.
STRUCK_TOGETHER - self-explanatory, but only one token? huh.
SHAKEN - self-explanatory, instrument is shaken (not stirred).
SCRAPED - two tokens. one part is used to scrape over the irregular surface of the other part.
FRICTION - two tokens. bowed instruments are already covered, so i guess this refers to anything else that uses friction but is not bowed. personally, i'm going to use it for musical glasses.
RESONATOR - uses resonance to make music. umm... i'm in the dark about this one, but try googling resonator guitars, think its referring to those.
BAG_OVER_REED (two tokens) - is this.... for bagpipes?
AIR_OVER_REED (two tokens) - a reed instrument, but here the air intake is not from the performer, but from an external source. for eg. an accordion. based off that logic, the tokens should be the part providing the air and the part making the noise.
AIR_OVER_FREE_REED (two tokens) - the free-reed version of the above.
AIR_AGAINST_FIPPLE (two tokens) - the fipple version of the above.
PITCH_CHOICE- how do you select and control the instrument's pitchMEMBRANE_POSITION - drums etc with membranes
SUBPART_CHOICE - ??
KEYBOARD - self-explanatory, keyboard-based
STOPPING_FRET - control pitch using frets, which are those raised parts on the neck of a guitar. uses two tokens for the body and strings
STOPPING_AGAINST_BODY - so, this is for fretless instruments then. basically you take one part (strings) and you press it against the other part (neck).
STOPPING_HOLE - generic flutes I believe. you use your fingers to cover the holes and produce different notes.
STOPPING_HOLE_KEY - keyed flutes
SLIDE - a slide is that part in a trombone or trumpet that gets slid back and forth to control the pitch.
HARMONIC_SERIES - self-explanatory, though not sure about examples tbh. uhh... xylophone?
VALVE_ROUTES_AIR - uses valves to control air and thus the pitch, like organs.
BP_IN_BELL - assume it's for bell-type instrument. but why call it 'bodypart in bell'?
FOOT_PEDALS - pedals. requires two tokens, the part that reacts to being pedalled and the pedal part
PITCH_RANGEA crash course in pitch for those with zero musical knowledge like me. DF modding uses Cents as a unit of measurement. The reason Cents was used is because it is a logarithmic scale with constant intervals, whereas hertz isnt.
For eg:
C6 (High C) is 2400 Cents, and 1046 Hertz.
C5 (Treble C) is 1200 Cents, and 523 Hertz.
C4 (Middle C) is 0 Cents, and 262 Hertz.
C3 (Bass C) is -1200 Cents, and 131 Hertz.
C2 (Low C) is -2400 Cents, and 65 Hertz.
An octave refers to the difference between two pitches that are of the same note (in this case, the note C). So C5 is an octave higher than C4, C6 is 3 octaves higher than C3. You will notice that every time you go up an octave, the Hertz doubles, but the Cents only increases by 1200. They all basically sound like C, but the pitch will be different (ie. low like bass or high-pitched).
Of course, instruments don't just play C. In between C4 and C5 for example, you will get: B3 C4 C#4 D4 D#4 E4 F4 F#4 G4 G#4 A#4 B4 C5 and then it starts again from C5 this time to C6. Left to right, they're going through increasing pitch.
Note that the sharp notes (#) can also be known as flats for the successive notes. C# can be called D-flat, A# can be called B-flat.
REGISTERFor this you can specify timbre for specific pitch ranges. Say you have an instrument with pitch range -1000 to 1000:
[REGISTER:-1000:0:EERIE:RASPY:PIERCING]
[REGISTER:0:1000:GRACEFUL:SONOROUS:SWEET]
From pitch -1000 to 0, the sound in general will be something out of a Saw movie.
From pitch 0 to 1000, the sound morphs into a graceful, sonorous, sweet thingy.
Hey, nobody said it had to make sense.
Feel free to call me out if I provide any misinformation. I don't claim to be a person with much musical knowledge, only a guy who knows some Google-fu.