Re: Microtuning the orchestra. - here's how to do it.

Charles Lucy wrote...

> I hate to see you are "flogging a dead horse" with this project.

Yeah, I'm just about figuring that it's a dead-end, thanks.

Re, the pitchbend method...

> 1) Channel assignment is required as every note on a specific
> channel gets changed by the instructed amount.

I know that. That's why people use the channel re-assignment. But if you
have a truly monophonic instrument (like an oboe) on a particular channel,
this restriction shouldn't matter, and you should be able to keep the
retuned note on the same channel. If, however, as you say:

> 3) Many applications react slowly to pitchbend instructions.
> (You hear slides, glitches etc.)

That would be rather fatal. Since all of these MIDI drivers are in memory,
running at RAM speeds on a fast processor, timing shouldn't be a problem
as it would have been with MIDI cables running between instruments. There
should be unperceptible delay (nanoseconds?), between getting bytes for the
pitch-end and getting a note-on. It seems like that shouldn't be a
problem.

I can't afford to get a Mac OS X machine and go with Max, etc. I do
actually rather like the environment I'm working with. I Finale and Rhino a
lot, and Rhino has very good tuning support.

The main thing that I haven't found (or been able to cobble up) on
anything aside from Garritan is a good bowed string sound that *sounds*
like orchestral strings. That's the holy grail for me: natural sounding
strings.

I was just hoping that Garritan could be persuaded to do microtuning. If
not now, maybe sometime in the future. Meanwhile, I'll continue to use
Rhino and VAZ Modular 3 for my non-12-tet work.

Rick

Rick,

{you wrote...}
>I do actually rather like the environment I'm working with. I Finale and >Rhino a
>lot, and Rhino has very good tuning support.

Does Finale have any kind of MIDI export function, specifically one that you can export so that each individual line of the score (or individual instrumental parts) can go to a separate MIDI track?

Cheers,
Jon

Jon,

> Does Finale have any kind of MIDI export function, specifically one
> that you can export so that each individual line of the score (or
> individual instrumental parts) can go to a separate MIDI track?

Yes, it does. I never use it, but presumably it works well. I just tried
one; it makes a "format 1" file, each staff to a separate track.

Is there an easy way to munge one of those files into something "tuned
different"?

Rick

Rick,

{you wrote...}
>Yes, it does. I never use it, but presumably it works well. I just tried >one; it makes a "format 1" file, each staff to a separate track.

Aha.

>Is there an easy way to munge one of those files into something "tuned
>different"?

Well, *my* particular solution would be to then import the midi file into Sonar, with each midi track then being routed to an instance of Rhino. Since each of the Rhino instances is easily tuned to whatever tuning you wish, you would have an entire composition, with each 'line' being played in the correct tuning with an instance of Rhino; if you had similar lines (i.e. string parts) they could be routed to a particular patch/preset, and any separate instruments could go to their own Rhino patch. You would then not have any pitch bend problems, and could simply export the audio of the entire piece, after any tweaking or other modifications.

While I looked around recently for someone on the list and came up with the excellent freeware multitrack audio program Kristal, it is possible that there are other free or reasonable solutions to this. There are lighter versions of Cakewalk products that could do this I believe (Herman Miller is using one).

Anyhow, if Finale is where you compose, and you can export multi-track midi, the only missing link to be able to use whatever tuning you wish is a sequencer that will support the use of a VST like Rhino to have each track correctly tuned, and then dump to audio (wav, mp3, etc) from there.

Is this a reasonable solution for you?

Cheers,
Jon

Jon...

Hmm... I guess people aren't clear on what I was asking. I know how to
re-tune Rhino. I send Finale output directly to my VST host, VAZ Modular 3,
with instances of Rhino loaded into each channel. That works great and
I've been using it for years.

The specific questions I have been asking have to do *only* with Garritan
Personal Orchestra. Since GPO is *not* inherently microtunable, I've been
looking for a good way to be able to microtune it via pitchbend.

Rick

Rick,

{you wrote...}
>Hmm... I guess people aren't clear on what I was asking.

Yes, I'm sorry about that. In this instance, I am not sure just *how* you would go about working with Garritan. My bad for not following/remembering the thread correctly. Damn.

Sigh,
Jon

Hey, Jon,

> In this instance, I am not sure just *how* you
> would go about working with Garritan.

No problem. Actually, the MIDI file idea does bring up something that
might even work sort of... but it would be batch-mode instead of
interactive. I could save as a MIDI file, retune the MIDI file with
pitch-bends in place, and save, then play it back through Garritan... Might
be worth a try for meantone and similar tunings.

Rick