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Lesson 1

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Random Continuous

At this point, the four Music Segments you have always play in the same order, which can get a little old if the player remains in this exploratory mode very long. To provide some variety, you can randomize the order of the Music Segments. There are various playback modes that change how the objects contained within a Group are played.

  1. In the Group’s playback mode menu, change the property to say Random Continuous and then play the Explore music container to hear the results.

    Notice how the Play Cursor randomly moves between Music Segments. This creates much more variety and, in fact, you may be hearing an arrangement that the original composer never even considered. This does, however, mean that sometimes the Explore-Theme you put at the top of the playlist will not likely play first. That’s OK for now, you’ll address this shortly, but you can use some other options to give it a better chance to be heard.

    In some situations you just want to hear certain Music Segments like the Explore-Theme more often, while others, like the Explore-Rhythm, you may want to hear less often. It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with the Explore-Rhythm, but it contains a different chord structure with a lead instrument that wasn’t intended to be heard as frequently. It’s more of an occasional reprieve from the other section. This is accomplished using a weighting feature like that used with Random Containers found in the Actor-Mixer Hierarchy. By default, all segments have the same weight so the odds of a segment being played are the same each time a transition is made.

  2. Increase the Explore-Theme weight to 75, and lower the Explore-Rhythm weight to 25.

    Now the Explore-Theme Music Segment will be heard more often, while the Explore-Rhythm segment is heard less often.

    In addition, the Avoid Repeat property prevents Music Segments from being heard in close succession, regardless of weighting. By default the value is set to 1, which means that the last segment played will never be played right after itself. In music, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for a section like a chorus to play back-to-back. To allow this to happen, you need to set the Avoid Repeat settings to a value of 0.

  3. Set the Avoid Repeat property of the Group to 0, then play the Explore Music Playlist Container and observe the behavior.

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