Building Beats

Here is an example of defining a single drum part in using the Sequence, Rest and DrumStroke classes:

Sequence(
  Rest(Quarter),
  Sequence(
    DrumStroke(Snare, Quarter, Medium),
    Sequence(Rest(Quarter), DrumStroke(Snare, Quarter, Loud)))).repeat(20)

This will reproduce a classic snare pattern of playing the snare on beats 2 and 4.

This nested Sequence however is not the most readable way to define this pattern.

There is a more idiomatic way to write & combine notes courtesy of the syntax provided by the sounds-of-scala library.

+ operator

We can use the + operator to make a more idiomatic definition:

Rest(Quarter) + DrumStroke(Snare, Quarter, Medium) + Rest(Quarter) + DrumStroke(Snare, Quarter, Loud)

Drumstroke builder methods

We also have some DrumStroke builder methods to make this more readable:

RestQuarter + SnareDrum + RestQuarter + SnareDrum

And potentially even more concisely:

r4 + sn + r4 + sn

These are more readable and are equivalent to the initial definition.

* operator

We can also use the * operator to repeat a pattern:

(RestQuarter + SnareDrum + RestQuarter + SnareDrum) * 20

| operator

If we want to indicate bars, we can use the | operator:

  RestQuarter + SnareDrum + RestQuarter + SnareDrum 
  | RestQuarter + SnareDrum + RestQuarter + SnareDrum

The 'repeat' method

We can also repeat a section of music a specific number of times using the repeat method:

(RestQuarter + SnareDrum).repeat(4)

For continuous looping during playback, set Playback.Loop on the Track instead — see The Song Type.