Events

Events do all the fun stuff. When a Step is triggered, all the Events in that Step fire and their effects are resolved (from top to bottom). Events can control other machines, send MIDI messages, manipulate playback, and even change the properties of Sequences, Steps and other Events.

Main Dialog showing a Peer Ctrl Event

Main dialog showing the properies for a Peer Ctrl Event.

There are many types of Event but they can be broadly grouped into four categories; Peer, MIDI, Control and Transport. Here's a brief overview of the different types. Each type is explained in more detail on its own page. Other Events types might happen in the future so feel free to make suggestions.

Peer Events

Peer Events control parameters on other machines. They're awesome, even if the interface isn't very pretty.

Event Type Description
Peer Ctrl Control up to four parameters on a target machine.
Peer Note Send a sequence of notes to a target machine. Also allows control of two additional parameters.

MIDI Events

MIDI Events are for sending MIDI out of Buzz to control all those cool hardware synths you've got.

Event Type Description
MIDI Ctrl Output a MIDI message.
MIDI Note Output a sequence of MIDI notes.

Control Events

Control Events are for changing things in Magic itself. They're super sneaky.

Event Type Description
Page Change Change the active Page.
Step Jump Force a target Sequence to jump to a specific Step.
Trigger Sequence Trigger a target Sequence.
Rule Change Change the completion rule for a target Step.
Reset All Reset all Sequences, Steps and Events on the current Page.
Reset Sequence Reset a target Sequence to its initial state.
Reset Step Reset a target Step to its initial state.
Reset Event Reset a target Event to its initial state.
Set Triggers Change a target Sequences note triggers.
Enable Sequence Enable/disable a target Sequence.
Enable Event Enable/disable a target Event.

Transport Events

There's only one Transport Event so far but it's so good it deserves a table all to itself.

Event Type Description
Transport Event Start/stop playback and recording, jump to a specified position in the song. Transporty stuff. See Transport Event

Common Event Properties

The top half of the Event properties panel contains controls which are common to all Event types, although some types don't use all of them.

Property Description
Label Event label shown in the Object Tree. If no label has been specified, a label will be generated automatically based on the Event settings. To revert to automatic labelling, simply delete the text from the label field.
Enable Enable/disable Event. When disabled, Accumulator will not count, note sequences will not advance.
Probability Percentage chance of the Event firing when the parent Step is triggered. See Notes.
Accumulator Specified as "Threshold:Offset:Limit" with Offset and Limit being optional.
Threshold is how many times the Event must be triggered before if fires.
Offset sets the initial counter value. Set it to the same value as Threshold to make an Event respond to the first triggering.
Limit, if specified, will stop the Event from firing after it has fired the specified number of times.
Note that if the probability setting prevents the Event from firing, the accumulator count is still increased. This might need an option.
The current accumulator count is displayed in the label above the value field. If a limit is specified, the firing count will be displayed too.
Trigger Mode The trigger mode specifies the Event behaviour for accumulator counting and latched notes. See Trigger Modes below.
Velocity Range Notes outside the specified range will not trigger the Event. Right-click on the fields to access predefined velocity layers from the global resources.
Velocity Scaling Source Whether to inherit the Step value or use the local value.
Velocity Scaling Value If the value is inherited, the field will be disabled. The field label will indicate where the value originates.
Note-off mode How to handle trigger note-off. See Note-off Modes below.
On Delay Time/Units How long the Event should wait before firing. See Delay Values.
Off Delay Time/Units If Event uses note-off, how long to wait if Off Mode is not Ignore or Instant. See Delay Values.

Note-Off Mode

Different Events may or may not care about note-offs. Those that do can either wait to receive a real one or force one after a certain amount of time, optionally factoring in any On-Delay settings. If you don't need an Event to process note-offs you should set its Off-Mode to "Ignore". This is especially important if the triggering notes are coming from a Buzz pattern without note-offs, which will cause the processing queue to grow as it fills up with Events waiting for note-offs that will never happen.

Mode Description
Ignore Do nothing. Events with this setting are removed from the processing queue immediately after firing. All other modes cause the Event to stay in the queue until it has received the appropriate note-off.
Instant Note-offs are processed immediately, as soon as they are received. This setting disregards any On-Delay so it is possible for a note-off to happen before the Event note-off has happened.
Delay Note-off processing is delayed according to the Off-Delay settings. This setting also disregards any On-Delay.
Delay Rel. Note-off is delayed the combined On-Delay and Off-Delay settings. This effectively lengthens the note by the Off-Delay amount.
Force Forces the Event note-off to occur after the time specified by the Off-Delay settings. This setting disregards the On-Delay.
Force Rel. Forces note-off to occur after the combined On-Delay and Off-Delay settings. This effectively forces the note to be the length specified by the Off-Delay.
Latch Forces the Event note-off to occur next time the Event is triggered, after any Off-Delay time. This setting disregards the On-Delay.
Latch Rel. Forces the Event note-off to occur next time the Event is triggered, after the combined On-delay and Off-Delay.

Trigger Modes

The trigger modes specify how an Event will behave when it is triggered by multiple notes.

Prior to Magic 1.18 all Events used what is now 'Common Accumulator' mode. Old songs will maintain the correct behaviour but the default trigger mode for new Events is now 'Common'. You can change the default mode in the options menu.

Mode Description
Common All triggering notes count as the same trigger. The accumulator counter will increment on any note and if the Event is latched, any note will end the latch.
Common Accumulator The accumulator counter will increment on any note but latches must be ended by their triggering note.
Individual Accumulator counters and note latches are maintained seperately for every triggering note.