Mini notation

Mini notation is compact temporal notation written inside strings. It is embedded in Common Lisp rather than replacing it: a string such as "bd [hh hh] sn hh" is an argument to a pattern literal, and the code around it stays ordinary Lisp.

Two entries are easy to misread:

• _ lengthens the preceding event’s whole span. It does not add an attack. The difference between an event’s whole span and the part a query sees is explained in Patterns and time.
• :N after a sound selects a sample variant. It does not change pitch; absolute pitches belong to notes, described in Pitch, harmony, and tuning.

The following are complete musical examples. They use the bd, sn, hh and cp SuperDirt banks; see what sound-bearing examples need.

(d1! (s "bd [hh hh] sn [hh hh hh]"))

(d1! (s "<<bd cp> [sn hh] <hh hh cp>>"))

(d1! (s "hh*<2 4 8 16>"))

(d1! (e 3 8 bd))

• The first subdivides two slots with brackets, into two and then three hh events.
• The second nests alternations inside an alternation, with a bracket group among the choices.
• The third combines * with a < ... > alternation.
• The fourth uses the e literal for compact Euclidean construction. Inside a string, the Euclidean suffix (as in "bd(3,8)") describes a Euclidean attack structure.

Nested groups are structural, not a requirement to hand-count a fixed number of notes. A group describes how a slot is divided, however many tokens it holds.

The distinction becomes particularly useful for part and stem slice notation. Slice strings are ordinary mini notation; they are not required to contain eight tokens merely because the default source division has eight slices. A part slice string is timed in ordinary Mora cycles by default, while a stem :p string is timed by default in source slices of the selected recording (see slice timing). Nested alternations and rests in a slice string do not retune the sample. See Stems and sample libraries.