DirectMusic For The Masses

DirectMusic For The Masses

Introduction History DirectMusic's Innards Segments, Tracks and Tools Programming The DMS Loader Output API Basic Playback Layers Composing With Producer How Deep Do You Want To Go Today? The Future

A Smorgasbord of COM objects

DirectMusic consists of 24 distinct COM objects. This lets developers use only the portions they need. For example, if you just want MIDI output, you don't need to incur the overhead of DLS or the learning curve of any interactive music code.

It also means that developers can replace entire sections of the system with ones that meet their needs. The idea is to make an architecture robust enough that third-party vendors of related products and tools will have a much easier time, and won't need to reinvent the wheel in order to support the code they really want to provide. For example, Headspace is making a version of its web-based music player/generator Beatnik that integrates the DirectMusic API.