Play – AMT Datasouth PAL User Manual

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_play

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PAL supports seven octaves of notes. Each octave contains 12 total notes. This makes a total of 84
notes available for playing. Octaves begin with the note "C" at the low end and range up to note
"B" at the high end. The following diagram shows one octave on a piano keyboard.

C D E F G A B C

One Octave

The ScoreStr parameter to the _play operator contains a human readable sequence of simple one
and two character instructions. These instructions provide PAL with the necessary information to
play both short and long melodies.

The following table lists the one and two character instructions which can reside within ScoreStr.
PAL treats all instructions as case sensitive. Therefore, the programmer must specify the
instructions in upper or lower case exactly as shown in the table.

Instruction

Operation

Play the indicated note within the current octave.

indicates any one of the

upper case letters from A to G inclusive. As listed below, the user may use the
characters

, and

following each note to modify the note's pitch and

duration.

Set the length of all subsequent notes. n specifies the note length as 1/n. For
example, L1 specifies whole-notes, L2 specifies half-notes, L3 specifies third-
notes. n may range from one to 64.

Selects "music legato" for all subsequent notes. Music legato plays each note for
the entire duration of its length.

Selects "music normal" for all subsequent notes. Music normal plays each note
for 7/8 of the note's length. A rest of 1/8 of the note's length will follow each
note.

Selects "music staccato" for all subsequent notes. Music staccato plays each note
for 3/4 of the note's length. A rest of 1/4 of the note's length will follow each
note.