Notation

In this section we will discuss how to use the Clan Lord notation to write actual music you can use in the game. For the technical requirements and how to really use your work, please have a look here. To follow along with the examples we will provide here, you might want to be ingame in the bards fields basement with an instrument at hand or use a programm like Clan Lord Tune Helper / CLTH (Mac) or the Java Bard Tool by Atoro (Windows & probably Linux).

Notes

In theory the use of notes is pretty straight forward in CL notation. To play a c, you can simply use the letter c. If you want the c to be followed by a g, write cg. To determine the duration of a note, simply put a number between 1 and 9 for the amount of beats right after the note, the default value here is 2, so c equals c2. A short way to write a note with the duration of 4 beats, is to use the capital letter that describes that note, e.g. C being the same as c4. A capital letter with a duration will be treated just like a lowercase letter with a duration though.

And example for this might look like this:

c8DEc8e6fDfgEDc8

Now you can also alter the pitch of every note by a semitone. To raise it, use # between the note and its duration, to lower it, use a . as an equivalent of ♭. If we take our short melody from above and lower every e to an e flat (e♭), we will get the following result:

c8DE.c8e.6fDfgE.Dc8

Pauses

While notes are extremely important, pauses are almost as valuable and very much underated. Well placed pauses can provide structure for a whole piece or a short rhythm and create tension and release (a very good formula for writing music by the way). As an example have a listen at the first seconds of For Those Who Departed Forever by Bingro. But to stay with our example from earlier, we may change it to the following:

c8p4de.c8e.6fDpf1g1E.Dc8

You can use pauses in the same way as notes by using the character p and a duration with 2 being the default if no duration is set.

Octaves

In Clan Lord we can use the range of three octaves reaching from c to b. They are indicated by three different characters while everything coming after \ will be in the lowest octave, the middle one is activated by = and the highest with /. If no octave is specified yet, Clan Lord will always use the middle octave per default. Some instruments are even capable to play one more note above the /-scale by using /b#.

\cdefgab=cdefgab/cdefgabb#

Also you can go one octave up by using + or down with -.

=cdefgab+cdefedc-bagfedc

So now we can play our little melody in three different pitches:

\c8p4de.c8e.6fDpf1g1E.Dc8p8=c8p4de.c8e.6fDpf1g1E.Dc8p8/c8p4de.c8e.6fDpf1g1E.Dc8

Chords

In order to play more than one note at the same time, we can use [] around that notes that are to be played followed by the amout of beats, this time four beats would be the default. So if we want to add a baseline to our melody, it might go as follows:

[\c]8=c8[\g]8=p4de.[\c]8=c8[\e.]8=e.6f[\a.]8=Dpf1g1[\g]=E.D[\c]8=c8

This baseline can be extended to full chords.

[\ce.g]8=c8[\dgb.]8=p4de.[\ce.g]8=c8[\ce.a.]8=e.6f[\dgb.]8=Dpf1g1[\e.gb.]=E.[\dgb.]=D[\ce.g]8=c8

Tempo & Volume

Since music is not only defined by notes and their duration but also by tempo, we can change the tempo by using @ and the desired beats per minute. For Clan Lord we can only use 60 to 180 bpm though, but we can speed up by using @+ and slow down with @- and the amount by how much we want to change it. Our melody sped up and slowed down towards the end could sound like this:

@165[\ce.g]8=c8[\dgb.]8=p4de.[\ce.g]8=c8@-10[\ce.a.]8=e.6f@-10[\dgb.]8=Dpf1g1@-10[\e.gb.]=E.[\dgb.]=D@-10[\ce.g]8=c8

Also we can add a volume to our music. The use is almost similar to speed, but with a range of 1 to 9 in combination with %. The default is 9 and % and %9 are the same. Now we have to consider the notes in chords and the notes that are not in chords as they are treated as two independent lines of music. This means that I can turn the volume up for chords while turning it down for the melody outside of the chords at the same time.

@165[%6\ce.g]8=c8[\dgb.]8=p4de.[%7\ce.g]8=%8c8@-10[\ce.a.]8=e.6f@-10[%8\dgb.]8=%7Dpf1g1@-10[%\e.gb.]=%6E.[\dgb.]=D@-10[\ce.g]8=c8

Loops

You may also repeat a certain section of your music or all of it by using () and the amount of times you want to have it being repeated. You can also use alternate endings by using | and a number which indicates the time at which the following ending should be played. The very last time may be indicated by !.

(@165[%6\ce.g]8=%c8[%5\dgb.]8=p4de.[%7\ce.g]8=%8c8@-10[%7\ce.a.]8=e.6f@-10[%8\dgb.]8=%7Dpf1g1@-10[%\e.gb.]=%6E.[\dgb.]=D|1@-10[\ce.a.]8=a.8|2@-10[\e.gb.]8=e.8!@-10[\ce.g]8=c8)3

Now the use of @-10 becomes more apparent as we are now able to speed loops up without having to write them out. And you can also loop loops. For example:

@180/c@165c@150c@135c@120c@105c@90c@75c

becomes

@180(/c@-15)8

and could also be

@180((/c@-15)4)2