I'm pleased to announce the release of my program mma - Musical MIDI Accompaniment version: Beta 0.16 MMA is a accompaniment generator -- it creates midi tracks for a soloist to perform with. User supplied files contain pattern selections, chords, and MMA directives. MMA is very versatile and generates excellent tracks. It comes with an extensive user-extendable library with a variety of patterns for various popular rhythms, an extensive user manual, and many demo songs. MMA is a command line driven program. It creates MIDI files which need a sequencer or MIDI file play program. MMA is written in Python. You'll need Python 2.3 (or later) for MMA to function. MMA is supplied in 4 tar.gz archives. Included: mma-bin -- the main script and library files. mma-html -- documentation in HTML format. mma-pdf -- documentation in PDF format. mma-songs -- a collection of about 230 songs in MMA format. If you get all four download packages the total size is still less than 1.5 megabytes. MMA is currently in final BETAs. We are hoping for a 1.0 release in winter 2005. Right now we need help in debugging the program, creating songs for distribution, and new and improved library files. Best of all, MMA is free. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It has been developed on a Linux platform, but should be usable on just about any system. A detailed page now exists on our web site on how-to install on a Windows system. MMA is available on my personal home page: http://mypage.uniserve.com/~bvdp/mma/ If you have any questions or comments, please send them to: bvdp@uniserve.com Beta 0.16: Lots of little bug fixes, new SWINGMODE, more note offset and length options, NOTESPAN directive, better KEYSIG support, enhanced VOLUME options, negative offsets (prior bar) in patterns. You really need to read the DOCS for all this! Comments appreciated! -- Bob van der Poel ** Wynndel, British Columbia, CANADA ** EMAIL: bvdp@uniserve.com WWW: http://mypage.uniserve.com/~bvdp