Note Dependencies

A dependency is what happens when one note's expression names another note. This tutorial builds a chain, shows you how to read it on screen, and shows you how to get out of it.

Prerequisites: the beginner tutorials.

What a dependency is

Write this in Note 2's frequency field:

[1].f

Note 2 now depends on Note 1's frequency. Change Note 1 and Note 2 follows, without you touching it. [1] means "note with id 1"; .f means frequency. The other shortnames are .t (startTime) and .d (duration).

Legacy JavaScript syntax

module.getNoteById(1).getVariable('frequency')

Why bother

Suppose you want three notes: a root, a fifth above it, and an octave above it.

Written as numbers — at the default base of 263 Hz, that is 263, 394.5, 526. Now transpose the passage. You edit three notes, and you do arithmetic to do it.

Written as relationships:

Note	Frequency
1	base.f
2	[1].f * (3/2)
3	[1].f * 2

Change Note 1 once and the other two move with it, exactly in tune, forever. That is the whole idea.

Build a chain

Step 1: the root

1. Click the BaseNote, Clean Slate the workspace, then click the BaseNote again.
2. In ADD NOTE / SILENCE, accept the defaults (base.f, beat(base), base.t) and click Create.

Note 1 inherits the BaseNote's pitch — 263 Hz by default.

Step 2: a note that depends on it

1. With Note 1 selected, keep the position on At End.
2. Set Frequency to [1].f * (3/2) — a perfect fifth above Note 1.
3. Start Time is already [1].t + [1].d. That is a second dependency: Note 2's timing follows Note 1's too.
4. Click Create Note.

Step 3: extend it

Select Note 2 and create Note 3 from it, At End:

Field	Expression
Frequency	[2].f * (4/3)
Start Time	[2].t + [2].d (already filled in)

You now have a chain: BaseNote → Note 1 → Note 2 → Note 3. Change the BaseNote's frequency and all three move.

Reading the lines

Select a note. Coloured lines appear between it and the notes it is related to. They only show while a note is selected — click empty background and they vanish.

Colour	Property
Orange	frequency
Teal	startTime
Purple	duration

Thickness	Meaning
Thick	what the selected note depends on
Thin	what depends on the selected note

So selecting Note 2 in the chain above gives you thick orange and thick teal lines back to Note 1, and thin orange and thin teal lines forward to Note 3.

TIP

Start dragging a note and the lines that do not matter for that gesture fade almost to nothing. Move a note and the teal (startTime) lines stay bright while orange and purple dim; resize it and the purple (duration) lines stay bright instead. The app is showing you what your gesture will actually disturb.

Dependencies you will actually use

Sequential timing

[1].t + [1].d

Start when Note 1 ends. The At End radio writes this.

Simultaneous timing

[1].t

Start when Note 1 starts. The At Start radio writes this. This is how chords are built.

An offset

[1].t + beat(base) * (1/2)

Half a beat after Note 1 starts. Write the offset in beats, not seconds — [1].t + (1/2) would mean half a second, which will not survive a tempo change.

Shared duration

Give several notes the same length by pointing them all at one:

Note	Duration	Role
1	beat(base) * 2	the master
2, 3, 4	[1].d	followers

Resize Note 1 and they all resize. Purple lines will show you the group.

Multi-property

A note can take different properties from different notes:

Property	Expression
frequency	[1].f * (5/4)
startTime	[3].t
duration	[3].d

Its pitch belongs to Note 1's harmonic structure; its timing belongs to Note 3's rhythm.

Circular dependencies are rejected

If A depends on B and you try to make B depend on A, the app refuses the edit. It also refuses an expression that references its own note.

The rejection tells you why: the validator's message appears in red under the Save button — a cycle, a self-reference or a typo each get their own wording — and the old expression stays until you fix it.

Getting out of a chain

Sometimes a note needs to stop following its parent — but stay exactly where it is. Two buttons in the widget's EVALUATE section do that.

Liberate Dependencies

Select a note, click Liberate Dependencies, confirm.

Every note that referenced this note has the reference replaced by this note's own raw expressions. The dependents keep their pitches, positions and lengths — they just no longer point here. The note itself survives, unchanged.

Use it when you want to delete or radically change a note without dragging its children along.

INFO

Liberate Dependencies is not offered on measure bars, and is refused if something tries to call it on one.

Evaluate to BaseNote

Select a note, click Evaluate to BaseNote, confirm.

This rewrites the selected note's own startTime, duration and frequency so they reference nothing but the BaseNote. The note stops depending on anything else, and it does not move.

It is smarter than freezing numbers: it traces the frequency chain algebraically, so a TET note written base.f * 2^(7/12) stays a power expression rather than collapsing into an ugly approximate fraction.

From the BaseNote, the same section offers Evaluate Module, which does this to every note at once. It flattens the entire dependency graph onto the BaseNote — useful before exporting, destructive to the structure you built.

Deleting a note in a chain

Selecting a note gives you two delete buttons, and they do very different things:

Button	Effect
Keep Dependencies	The dependents are liberated first, then the note is removed. They keep their positions.
Delete Dependencies	The note and every note that depends on it are removed. The doomed notes are highlighted in red before you confirm.

Deleting a multi-note selection with the group widget's Delete all behaves like Keep Dependencies: notes outside the selection that depended on a deleted note are liberated, not cascaded, so they hold their positions.

Verifying your chain

1. Select the root and change its frequency.
2. Every dependent should move, in tune.
3. Select each note and read the Evaluated: line against the Raw: expression.

If a note is not updating, check the note id in the expression: [7].f when you meant [1].f is the most common mistake, and it fails quietly because note 7 may well exist.

Next

• Octave Manipulation — moving a note, and everything under it, by an interval
• Working with Measures — dependency chains made of measure bars
• Complex Dependencies — branching and diamond structures
• Expression Syntax — the full grammar