Authoring Style-Based Segments

A style-based segment is a largely prebuilt piece of music that the author constructs from the following elements:

• Style. As explained in Authoring Styles, a style consists of general information about the music (time signature, tempo, and so on) as well as patterns.
• Chord progression. This might be derived automatically by the authoring tool from a chordmap (by choosing a path through the chord chart), or else entered manually by the author.
• Series of commands for selecting appropriate patterns at set times. As explained under Authoring Styles, a characteristic of the patterns in styles is that they may be designated as embellishments (intro, fill, break, and end) and may also be assigned a certain groove range by the author. The command track of the segment might instruct the style playback engine to select an intro pattern and play it for the first measure, then play only patterns with a groove level of 25 for the next four measures, then play a break, and so on.
• Band. The author can assign instruments and PChannels to all the parts played by the various patterns.