GRAMophone is partly based on an idea of Jon McCormack’s, who invented the idea of a virtual player (virtual musician). The player in question is associated with a MIDI track, and interprets instructions telling it what to do. Generally, they say play notes (send MIDI messages). GRAMophone’s players together make up an orchestra, which plays a composition. Any number of players can play a composition, but in practice the hardware used might impose an upper limit. In general every player plays an instrument and each has a different set of grammar rules. An individual player is characterised by a set of parameters which are shared by the whole orchestra and/or a personal parameter set.