Chords can now be placed anywhere in a bar, not only on-the-beat. The extended "@" syntax permits this. Eg. To place a chord change at beats 1 and 3.5 you could "Cm@1 D@4.5". The old syntax works fine. See the manual chapter on "Musical Data" for details. ** August 24, 2009 -- released test/dev version 1.5a ALLGROOVES was not honoring and non-track commands. They were set, but not saved into the groove. Fixed Added slice notation for variables. You can now do cool stuff like $myvar[3] or $_Bass_Octave[0]. OCTAVE settings can now increment or decrement by using values like +1, -2, etc. This is handy! ARTICULATE settings can now inc/dec by using +/- values. For solo/melody strings an additional articulation can be set for each note/chord. This is done in the <> by specifying a percent adjustment. Values can be 1..200 (same as ARTICULATE). They are in effect for the duration of the bar and are still adjusted by the articulation setting for the bar. Handy for specifying staccato notes. See the very fine manual for details. The Volume setting can also have a default "Volume=" for compatibility. Future <> options may follow. MidiInc: The StripSilence=On/Off option has been added. Use to to avoid stripping off any leading silence in an imported MIDI track. ** December 28, 2009 -- released test/dev version 1.5b Enhanced the SEQUENCE define code so that multiple lines without '\' can be used. Added the Plectrum track-type. This track is designed to emulate picked or strumed intruments like guitars. Quite complex and generates nice sounds. Read the manual! ** February 14, 2010 -- released test/dev verfsion 1.5c Fixed lib doc generation for plectrum tracks. Added MidiCopyright, MidiCue and MidiText commands. MidiVoice and MidiSeq - fixed so that {} not required for single seq (as advertised in the docs). Minor doc revisions. Minor program code restructuring. ** March 27, 2010 -- released test/dev version 1.5d Lyrics: \n and \r now start a new line in column 1 (not 2). Added Karmode: does syllable splits on '-', changes extension from .mid to .kar and inserts some meta info. Added global MidiTName command. This overwrites the song name automatically inserted from the filename. Added global MidiText command. Fills out the Track MidiText. Modified code for Track MidiText and Track MidiCue so that the text is now queued until the track is created. It was being put into the meta track. Plectrum bug fixes: Strings now mute properly on chord changes; non-base tracks (like Plectrum-Banjo) now work with tuning changes. Fixed a spelling mistake ... program changes should now come into effect at the proper offset! When running -g/G a check is made for duplicate groove defs. Please don't ask how many hours I wasted editing the wrong file before I noticed that I had an identical groove name in 2 different files ... and the groove I was editing was not the one being loaded. Created an archive directory for all the old CHANGES* files. ** April 11, 2010 - Released test/dev version 1.5d RVolume, Rtime: Expanded syntax now accepts a range in the form x1,x2. The old single value format is still (and will continue to be) supported. This extended syntax permits fine tuning. Plectrum: Now honors rtime settings. Failure to find psyco on startup no longer generates warning message. Honestly, it appears to make less than 2% of a speedup and it will mostly likely be deleted completely in the next MMA series. I'm guessing that both the MMA and Python code have gotten better over the years. Failure to find the default mmarc file now only generates a warning in debug mode.