The Score Body

The Body is the part of the Score where the actual musical information to control a digital Instrument is included. It is made up of a list of events; sorted by the time they take place in order to keep real-time compatibility.

An event is a group of words that define a message sent to the synthesizer controller. The standard event statement is made up of four statements sorted this way: T V P:PV, where T is Time Statement, V is Variable Statement, P is Parameter Statement, and PV is Parameter Value Statement.

These, together, conform a message that means: Modify Parameter (P) referring to variable (V) according to its new value (PV) at the moment specified (T).

The Time Statement includes features such as the possibility to use standard time, SMPTE timecode or musical Beat notation and relative increments.

Variable statements can refer to user defined variables or directly to Instruments or Generators initialized.

There is a clear relation between the structure of a MetriX statement and an object-oriented message. The Variable is the receiving object, the Parameter is the message selector or operation that the receptor should execute and the Parameter Value is simply the arguments passed in the message. As already mentioned, a musical score can be seen as the set of messages that are sent to musical objects during a performance.