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Nonrepetitive Soundscapes

In this scenario, you create soundscapes, or textures of background sounds, that differ each time they are played or looped.

For example, suppose you want to create a soundtrack for a battle scene in which many soldiers are fighting hand-to-hand. Although you might want to play particular sounds to reflect important events, the whole battle is played out against a background of shouts, clashing weapons, neighing horses, and so on. Using a simple wave file, the application plays exactly the same sounds over and over again. This repetition is easily recognized by the user, and the illusion of reality is lost. You want the individual sounds to be played more chaotically.

By composing DirectMusic Producer segments that contain variations in pattern tracks or wave tracks, you create a soundscape that automatically varies when played. Each time a segment is played or looped, DirectMusic selects a variation number for each wave track part and each pattern track part, and plays only the waves or notes that you have marked as valid for that variation number. The result is a very large number of possible combinations of sounds. The soundtrack, rather than being repetitive and predictable, becomes much more random and realistic.

When implementing this scenario, consider the following:

Concepts

How-to


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