Symbols are the basic concepts which make a clear distinction between traditional computer music languages and Symbolic Composer. Instead of processing notes, Symbolic Composer processes symbols and tonalities, which will result notes when combined. When compiling the MIDI file, symbols and tonalities are combined with mechanism called symbol-mapping. On this process symbol a gets a value of the first note of the tonality, b the second and so on. This division makes it easy to apply general algorithms to both symbols and tonalities. Each tonality has an active period called a zone. Zone can be of any length and there can be any number of zones in each instrument.

Metrics

Symbolic Composer describes metrics in terms of length symbols, applied to zones, tempo-zones, lengths (rhythms), durations and grooves. Length symbols follow standard m/n notation with dot, triplet etc modifiers (like 1/16..), and optionally sequencer-style tick-values can be used.

A section is devided in zones, each of which may have its own class properties. Length is a distance between note-on events. Duration defines a duration of each event, allowing notes and chords to overlap when needed. Groove defines how much events will be shifted forward or backward, and suits in creating upbeats or other performance enhancements. Tempo changes usually follow zones, but optional tempo-zones enables more detailed control over tempo changes.

Rest Processing: A flexible rest processing mechanism is provided. A rest may occur in zones, lengths or symbols. A zone rest will cancel the processing of a zone and create a rest that lasts for the whole zone. A length rest will create a rest note. A rest symbol will create a rest note lasting the amount of current length event.

Quantizing: Quantizing is frequently used in sequencers. In Symbolic Composer it has uses, too, allowing to quantize computed values to musically meaningful rhythmic values. Non-quantized values can also be used. A general quantizer can be applied to all metric classes.

Humanizing: When generating MIDI files global expressions values can be applied to instruments. Expressions cover legato, humanize and velocity. Legato allows randomization of durations. Humanize randomizes note-ons and velocity randomizes velocity values. By default expressions are controlled by brownian noise. This simulates performer's finger noise. Optionally other generators can overpass the brownian noise.