Condition Syntax #

Fugalist is pretty flexible about how to write conditions. You can use comparison operators to combine the actual note length (NoteLength) and Dorico’s predefined note lengths.

Examples of simple comparisons:

NoteLength == veryShort
note length < medium
very short < note length
note length == very long

Dorico’s predefined note lengths:
very short: shorter than 0.1875 seconds, (i.e., shorter than a dotted 16th note at 120bpm)
short: between 0.1875 seconds and 0.375 seconds, (i.e., longer than a dotted 16th note at 120bpm but shorter than a dotted 8th note at 120bpm)
medium: between 0.375 seconds and 0.75 seconds, (i.e., longer than a dotted 8th note at 120bpm but shorter than a dotted quarter note at 120bpm)
long: between 0.75 seconds and 1.5 seconds (i.e., longer than a dotted quarter note at 120bpm but shorter than a half note at 120bpm)
very long: longer than 1.5 seconds (i.e., longer than a half note at 120bpm)

Comparison operators:
<=
<
>=
>
==
!=

You can combine simple comparisons with and. Examples:

NoteLength > short and NoteLength < long
very short < note length AND note length < long

Note-length ranges arise frequently; Fugalist provides a short-cut. The following two examples are equivalent:

short < note length <= long
short < NoteLength AND note length <= long

Fugalist checks the syntax of your conditions, but it doesn’t try to ensure that they make sense.
If you write
shortt < note length
Fugalist will tell you that “shortt” isn’t something it understands.
But (currently at least) Fugalist doesn’t make any attempt to determine whether your conditions actually make sense. For example, if one of your conditions is
NoteLength < short and Notelength > long
Fugalist will happily put that in your expression map in spite of the fact that it can never actually be true.

Empty Condition #

An empty condition is always true. That’s useful if you just want to adjust length or octave transposition for one of your VST sounds without paying attention to note length.