Notes

There are multiple ways to write notes in the Sardine Pattern Language. Most of the time, the way you will write notes will depend on context. You can play absolute notes, notes in the context of a scale, frequencies instead of notes, etc...

Note using the custom syntax

There is a special representation to write notes using the english name of notes: ABCDEFG. Notes can also be flat (b) or sharp (#) and receive an octave number like so: C5b.

Notes will be converted to a numerical MIDI note value (e.g C3 is 60).
- MIDI Notes start at 0 and end at 127. You can use numbers as well if you prefer.

@swim
def notes(p=0.5, i=0):
    D('pluck', midinote='C5 D5 E5 F5 G5', i=i)
    again(notes, p=0.5, i=i+1)

The syntax to write notes is the following:

A capital letter indicating the note name: C D E F G A B.
- Optionally, you can write Do Ré Mi Fa Sol La Si (french note system).
An optional flat or sharp: #, b.
An optional octave number: 0..9.

Math with notes

Notes are just numbers. If you want to go up an octave, you can just write an addition: C5 + 12. You can also add a note to an other note, etc... You can make use of that to generate weirdly shaped chords, for transposing or inverting things: {([0 4 7 9 10 11]+50)^1}.

Note qualifiers

You can use the @ operator to qualify a note. Qualyfing a note means that you are turning it into a specific collection of notes (a collection of intervals, a collection of scale notes, etc).

A note will become a collection of notes based on the initial note.
- C@penta will yield a major pentatonic scale based on C4: [60 62 64 67 69].

@swim
def notes(p=0.5, i=0):
    D('pluck', n='C5@penta', i=i)
    again(notes, p=0.5, i=i+1)

Be careful with this rule! This will instantly turn a single token into a list of x tokens. Filter part of your newly generated collection for better control. Note that this can become really explosive if you play carelessly with collections and polyphony!

To put it bluntly, the collection mechanism if very crude and raw. It was introduced in the alpha version of Sardine as a way to play notes but some people still rely on it to play their music! To play chords and harmonies, prefer the Ziffers patterning language that is included with Sardine or use the scale system for better precision.

qualifiers = {

    ##########
    # Chords #
    ##########

    "dim": [0, 3, 6, 12],
    "dim9": [0, 3, 6, 9, 14],
    "hdim7": [0, 3, 6, 10],
    "hdim9": [0, 3, 6, 10, 14],
    "hdimb9": [0, 3, 6, 10, 13],
    "dim7": [0, 3, 6, 9],
    "aug": [0, 4, 8, 12],
    "augMaj7": [0, 4, 8, 11],
    "aug7": [0, 4, 8, 10],
    "aug9": [0, 4, 10, 14],
    "maj": [0, 4, 7, 12],
    "maj7": [0, 4, 7, 11],
    "maj9": [0, 4, 11, 14],
    "minmaj7": [0, 3, 7, 11],
    "five": [0, 7, 12],
    "six": [0, 4, 7, 9],
    "seven": [0, 4, 7, 10],
    "nine": [0, 4, 10, 14],
    "b9": [0, 4, 10, 13],
    "mM9": [0, 3, 11, 14],
    "min": [0, 3, 7, 12],
    "min7": [0, 3, 7, 10],
    "min9": [0, 3, 10, 14],
    "sus4": [0, 5, 7, 12],
    "sus2": [0, 2, 7, 12],
    "b5": [0, 4, 6, 12],
    "mb5": [0, 3, 6, 12],

    ##########
    # Scales #
    ##########

    "major": [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11],
    "minor": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10],
    "hminor": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11],
    "vminor": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10],
    "penta": [0, 2, 4, 7, 9],
    "acoustic": [0, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10],
    "aeolian": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10],
    "algerian": [0, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17],
    "superlocrian": [0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10],
    "augmented": [0, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11],
    "bebop": [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11],
    "blues": [0, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10],
    "chromatic": [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11],
    "dorian": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10],
    "doubleharmonic": [0, 1, 4, 5, 8, 11],
    "enigmatic": [0, 1, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11],
    "flamenco": [0, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11],
    "gypsy": [0, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10],
    "halfdim": [0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10],
    "harmmajor": [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11],
    "harmminor": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11],
    "hirajoshi": [0, 4, 6, 7, 11],
    "hungarianminor": [0, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11],
    "hungarianmajor": [0, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10],
    "in": [0, 1, 5, 7, 8],
    "insen": [0, 1, 5, 7, 10],
    "ionian": [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11],
    "istrian": [0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7],
    "iwato": [0, 1, 5, 6, 10],
    "locrian": [0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10],
    "lydianaug": [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11],
    "lydian": [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11],
    "majorlocrian": [0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10],
    "majorpenta": [0, 2, 4, 7, 9],
    "minorpenta": [0, 3, 5, 7, 10],
    "melominup": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11],
    "melomindown": [0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10],
    "mixolydian": [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10],
    "neapolitan": [0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11],
    "octatonic": [0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11],
    "octatonic2": [0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10],
    "persian": [0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11],
    "phrygian": [0, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10],
    "prometheus": [0, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10],
    "harmonics": [0, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9],
    "tritone": [0, 1, 4, 6, 7, 10],
    "ukrainian": [0, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10],
    "whole": [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10],
    "yo": [0, 3, 5, 7, 10],
    "symetrical": [0, 1, 2, 6, 7, 10],
    "symetrical2": [0, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10],
    "messiaen1": [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10],
    "messiaen2": [0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10],
    "messiaen3": [0, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11],
    "messiaen4": [0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11],
    "messiaen5": [0, 1, 5, 6, 7, 11],
    "messiaen6": [0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8],
    "messiaen7": [0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11],

    ##############
    # Structures #
    ##############

    "fourths": [0, 4, 10, 15, 20],
    "fifths": [0, 7, 14, 21, 28],
    "sixths": [0, 9, 17, 26, 35],
    "thirds": [0, 4, 8, 12],
    "octaves": [0, 12, 24, 36, 48],
}

Chord inversions

You can write chord/sequence inversions using the ^ syntax:

The right hand side of the expression accept any number: ^(1~5).
- You can also feed negative numbers for inverting a chord downwards.
Chord inversions work on anything that is a list. Write custom chords!

@swim
def notes(p=0.5, i=0):
    D('pluck', midinote='C5@maj7^(0~4)', i=i)
    again(notes, p=0.5, i=i+1)

Polyphony

Note polyphony

You can use the { and } delimiters to turn any pattern into a polyphonic pattern. Sardine makes a distinction between two types of polyphony:
- Note polyphony: multiple notes played together.
- Parametric polyphony: same event played multiple times with different synthesis parameters.

@swim
def poly(p=0.5, i=0):
    D('superpiano', 
        cutoff=500,
        midinote='{D@maj9} {G@maj7^0} {D@maj9} {G@dim7^1}',
        i=i, d=2, r=0.25
    )
    again(poly, p=P('0.5!4 0.25!2', i), i=i+1)

There a some rules to understand with polyphony and polyphonic messages. These rules can sound quite counter-intuitive if you understand polyphony coming from a classical music or score music background.

The size of a polyphonic event – meaning the number of messages sent for one occurence of an event - is equal to the length of the largest polyphonic pattern you declared.

In the first example, we have a 4-5 note polyphony. Every polyphonic element from our pattern is a major 9 or 7 chord (e.g [62, 66, 69, 73, 76]). It means that if you have a polyphony of 2 somewhere and a polyphony of 4 elsewhere, your first polyphony will be distributed over the second one:

PATTERN:

1.  [1 2 3 4]
2.  [0 1]

RESULT (POLYPHONY):

1.  [1 2 3 4]
2.  [0 1 0 1]

To illustrate the preceding rule we just talked about, here is a truly bizarre example. Half of our chord is played by a tuned bassdrum, the other half by a piano. Even though this may look odd, this is fully compliant with how parameters are handled by Sardine.

@swim
def poly(p=0.5, i=0):
    D('{[bd  superpiano]}', cutoff=500, midinote='{D@maj9} {G@maj7^0} {D@maj9} {G@dim7^1}', i=i, d=2, r=0.25)
    again(poly, p=Pat('0.5!4 0.25!2', i), i=i+1)

We have two clear alternations, one between the superpiano and bd sound sets, the other between the four or five values that form our chords. It is then natural that half of our polyphony will be composed from a tuned bassdrum and the remaining half from a tuned piano.

Once you get use to this novel way of thinking about polyphonic patterns, you will see that it opens up some space for interesting polyphonic interactions between sounds :) It is currently not possible to limit the number of voices generated by an event. Be careful! It is quite easy to get overrun and to kill your computer playing with polyphony!

Parametric polyphony

Everything can become polyphonic. Just wrap anything between { and } and you will return the same event piled up multiple times with different parameters. It allows you to be very creative with patterns.

@swim
def poly(p=0.5, i=0):
    D('drum:[1 6]', speed='{[1 rand]} {[2 1.9]}', i=i, d=3)
    D('drum:2', cutoff='{[[500:2000,100] 500]}', i=i, d=2)
    D('bd', shape=0.5, i=i, d=4)
    again(poly, p=0.5/2, i=i+1)

Sardine Documentation