Important Notice

The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

  ◄Details►   ◄Duration and Tempo►   ◄Tone►   ◄Operation►   ◄Substrings►
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Duration and Tempo Commands
 
  Duration   Action
  L n        Sets the length of each note. L 4 is a quarter note,
             L 1 is a whole note, etc. The range for n is 1-64.
             The length may also follow the note when a change of
             length only is desired for a particular note. For example,
               A 16 can be equivalent to L 16 A.
  MN         Sets "music normal" so that each note will play 7/8
             of the time determined by the length (L).
  ML         Sets "music legato" so that each note will play the full
             period set by length (L).
  MS         Sets "music staccato" so that each note will play 3/4 of
             the time determined by the length (L).
 
  Tempo      Action
  P n        Specifies a pause, ranging from 1-64. This option
             corresponds to the length of each note, set with L n.
  T n        Sets the "tempo," or the number of L 4 quarter notes in one
             minute. The range for n is 32-255. The default for n is 120.
 
    Note: Because of the slow clock-interrupt rate, some notes will not
          play at higher tempos (L 64 at T 255, for example).
 
  .          A period after a note causes the note to play 3/2 times
             the length determined by L (length) times T (tempo). The
             period has the same meaning as in a musical score.
             Multiple periods can appear after a note. Each period
             adds a length equal to one half the length of the
             previous period. For example,
               ■ The command A. plays 1 + 1/2 or 3/2 times the length
               ■ A.. plays 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 or 7/4 times the length.
             Periods can appear after a pause (P). In this case, the pause
             length is scaled in the same way notes are scaled.