2025-06-05

role

Defines per-voice behavioral identity as a deterministic pressure influence over time.

1. Header

  • Name: role
  • Layer: onset
  • Concise role: Shapes each voice’s behavioral identity via composable, scalar pressure curves. Modulates activation pressure, persistence, and interaction tendencies.

2. Introduction

role expresses the latent identity of a voice: how it tends to act, persist, or yield within an ensemble or structure. It is not a trigger or router, but a pressure shaper — contributing time-varying scalar values to domains like pressure, constraint, and activation.

Each voice is assigned exactly one role form, parameterized by a, b ∈ [0,1]. This form influences:

  • Entry: how assertively or cautiously a voice initiates
  • Sustain: how easily it continues once active
  • Yield: how it responds to other voices or silence
  • Alignment: how it relates to structure (meter, grid, texture)

Roles guide expressive pacing and structural interplay — without affecting allocation or randomness.

3. Overview — Forms

Each role form defines a time-based scalar output influenced by parametric identity. These values shape downstream domains that determine onset eligibility and inter-voice interaction.

Form 0 — anchor

  • Behavior: aligns with metrical or structural grid

  • Analogy: downbeat kick, clave, walking bass

  • Parameters:

    • a: alignment strictness (0 = tolerant, 1 = grid-locked)

    • b: phase shift (0 = on-beat, 0.5 = offbeat)

Form 1 — responder

  • Behavior: avoids initiating; prefers entering after gaps

  • Analogy: echo, answer phrase, interstitial fill

  • Parameters:

    • a: inhibition sensitivity (0 = eager, 1 = avoids overlap)

    • b: reentry delay after inhibition clears

Form 2 — inertia

  • Behavior: resists change — persistence in both silence and activity

  • Analogy: pedal tone, legato line, ambient layer

  • Parameters:

    • a: entry threshold (0 = easily starts, 1 = reluctant)

    • b: persistence (0 = quick to stop, 1 = slow to exit)

Form 3 — bubble

  • Behavior: builds internal pressure over time, then releases

  • Analogy: burst clusters, flicker patterns, tension swells

  • Parameters:

    • a: accumulation rate (0 = fast, 1 = slow build)

    • b: burst magnitude (0 = subtle, 1 = strong)

Form 4 — contrastor

  • Behavior: avoids sounding near other active voices

  • Analogy: syncopation, call-and-response, staggered interplay

  • Parameters:

    • a: contrast sensitivity (0 = tolerant, 1 = avoids all overlap)

    • b: timing displacement (how far it shifts to avoid crowding)

4. Parameter Summary

Each form defines a unique behavioral role using only a and b. These are deterministic and directly map to perceptual behavior.

  • a: voice tendency (strictness, reactivity, persistence, accumulation)
  • b: contextual modulator (phase, delay, burst size, avoidance distance)

Note: role does not perform onset decisions. It emits scalar shaping functions which downstream domains apply as multipliers or thresholds.

5. Why these were chosen

These five forms were selected to provide a minimal, complete behavioral palette:

  • anchor — grid-locked or metrically assertive
  • responder — reactive and responsive to gaps
  • inertia — resistant to change; provides temporal cohesion
  • bubble — creates tension/release through latent accumulation
  • contrastor — generates syncopation and sparse interplay

They are:

  • Irreducible: no internal redundancy
  • Compositional: fully compatible with pressure, impulse, constraint, and interaction
  • Musically transparent: every form maps cleanly to perceptual behavior

6. What is not included

  • No dynamic routing or role switching (handled via segmentation, mutation)
  • No articulation shaping (dynamics, envelope handle expressive contour)
  • No trigger logic (impulse handles onset causality)

7. Conclusion

role defines the behavioral tendency of each voice — shaping how, when, and whether it engages with the musical structure. Rather than prescribing events, it emits continuous structural pressures that bias entry, persistence, and interaction.

By making identity parametric, deterministic, and structural, role supports fluid ensembles, realistic phrasing, and textural contrast — all without sacrificing reproducibility or control.

It answers: what kind of entity is this voice, and how does it behave over time?