File Naming

Naming conventions

It's often useful to use a structured naming system when working with adaptive music production. iMusic is built upon the concept of using filenames to tag the audiofiles with meaningful information. There are a set of predefined markup rules aimed for speeding up the implementation process.

ex:

// This file belongs to section "A", loopTrack "drums"
"sc-A_tr-drums.mp3"

// These two files belongs to section "A", loopTrack "keys"
// and is positioned in bar 1 on the first beat as two variations on the same part
// They will be randomly selected when their part is being played.
"sc-A_tr-keys_p-1.1_v-1.mp3"
"sc-A_tr-keys_p-1.1_v-2.mp3"

There is an "importer" available at http://momdev.se/interactivemusic/import/. The importer takes the information from the file names and generates all code needed to build the musical structure. The default mode would genarate the following code for the two files:

iMusic.loadFiles([
	"sc-A_tr-keys_p-1.1_v-1",
	"sc-A_tr-keys_p-1.1_v-2"
]);

Syntax

The following markup rules is supported:

Parameter	syntax	Values	Example	Comment
Section ID	sc	any string	sc-A
Track ID	tr	any string	tr-drums
Position	p	bar.beat.subbeat	p-2.1.25	bar 2, beat 1, 2nd sixteenth note
Motif ID	mt	any string	mt-fanfar
Quantize	q	any division	q-1-4	Quantized to nearest quater note
Upbeat	up	any number	up-2	Is played two beats before q-point
Sound ID	sn	any string	sn-explosion

There is also a mode for getting more detaild data. This allows for further editing of the data, including repeating, copying and moving files between your sections and tracks. This example shows the detailed data for the two files:

iMusic.loadData(
{
  "sections": [
    {
      "id": "A",
      "tracks": [
        {
          "id": "keys",
          "parts": [
            {
              "pos": "2.3",
              "url": [
                "sc-A_tr-keys_p-2.3_v-1",
                "sc-A_tr-keys_p-2.3_v-2"
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
});

By using this naming convention, you can later refer to a section, track, motif or sound through the keywords in the filename. The ewxample above will create a section named "A" and a track named "keys" and can therefor be targeted in this way:_

By using this naming convention, you can later refer to a section, track, motif or sound through the keywords in the filename. The ewxample above will create a section named "A" and a track named "keys" and can therefor be targeted in this way:

// play section "A"
iMusic("A").play();

// set the volume for the track named "keys"
iMusic("keys").set("volume", 0.5);

Examples