Sibelius team now at Steinberg

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/02/sibelius-core-team-now-at-steinberg-building-new-notation-tool/

Now is the time to contact them about microtonal features. They seem
interested: "We have a vision for a flexible, powerful music notation
application that is equal to the task of notating today's most
challenging art music..."

Their blog, "Keeping Score", is an obvious place to do it
http://blog.steinberg.net/

-Carl

I think it'd be good to lobby for them to handle at least the
following notational features (they can probably do some of these
right now):

1) Custom accidentals
2) Custom key signatures
3) Custom staff sizes
4) Custom placement of staves with respect to one another

I think Sibelius can already do some of that stuff, but I don't have
the latest version of Sibelius so I can't check.

Then here's tuning-specific stuff:
5) Assignment of an arbitrary periodic scale to a staff, whether by
entering manually in cents or by giving a scala file or something like
that
6) Assignment of cent sizes to accidentals
7) Whatever we want them to do with playback/MIDI (see below)

That covers anything I can think of which most people working in a
"diatonic" notation would want to do, as well as Sagittal, etc. The
only thing left is to figure out how the playback engine will actually
work. Options are

1) Implement some sort of 16-channel MIDI pitch bending algorithm
2) Implement MTS
3) Implement OSC
4) Implement some sort of customizable Scordatura approach so that we
can retune stuff with Scala

What's the way to go here? I think #2 is the easiest sell, and #3 is
probably the second-easiest sell, but something like #4 is probably
necessary to interface with softsynths that anyone cares about, since
MTS support isn't that widespread. There's also the question of
exporting the score to a MID file or something which can be opened in
other programs...

-Mike

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/02/sibelius-core-team-now-at-steinberg-building-new-notation-tool/
>
> Now is the time to contact them about microtonal features. They seem
> interested: "We have a vision for a flexible, powerful music notation
> application that is equal to the task of notating today's most
> challenging art music..."
>
> Their blog, "Keeping Score", is an obvious place to do it
> http://blog.steinberg.net/
>
> -Carl

Don't tell us, tell them!

Mus2 has most of the functionality... just not the full power of
something like Sibelius. We might recommend it to them as a model.

As far as playback... that's the kind of request that can kill a
project. Obviously playback is better than no playback, but it adds
a lot of complexity. If I could assign arbitrary MIDI note offsets
to staff positions and accidentals I would be happy as a pig in shit.
There are loads of synths that'll let you tune MIDI notes
arbitrarily. 128 notes per channel is generally enough... channel
ganging (MIDI split) is perhaps the only other thing I'd ask for.

As you know, every rank 2 system in existence can be notated very
naturally with such functionality -- this was worked out years ago
on the Make Micro Tools list. Yet for some reason, people keep
arguing about pitch bends and custom accidental glyphs and never
come up with a clear recommendation that a commercial project would
consider trying. And as a result, none of the major score editors
support this basic functionality (best I could determine the last
I checked, which was Finale 2006 and Sibelius 4).

-Carl

Mike wrote:
>I think it'd be good to lobby for them to handle at least the
>following notational features (they can probably do some of these
>right now):
>
>1) Custom accidentals
>2) Custom key signatures
>3) Custom staff sizes
>4) Custom placement of staves with respect to one another
>
>I think Sibelius can already do some of that stuff, but I don't have
>the latest version of Sibelius so I can't check.
>
>Then here's tuning-specific stuff:
>5) Assignment of an arbitrary periodic scale to a staff, whether by
>entering manually in cents or by giving a scala file or something like
>that
>6) Assignment of cent sizes to accidentals
>7) Whatever we want them to do with playback/MIDI (see below)
>
>That covers anything I can think of which most people working in a
>"diatonic" notation would want to do, as well as Sagittal, etc. The
>only thing left is to figure out how the playback engine will actually
>work. Options are
>
>1) Implement some sort of 16-channel MIDI pitch bending algorithm
>2) Implement MTS
>3) Implement OSC
>4) Implement some sort of customizable Scordatura approach so that we
>can retune stuff with Scala
>
>What's the way to go here? I think #2 is the easiest sell, and #3 is
>probably the second-easiest sell, but something like #4 is probably
>necessary to interface with softsynths that anyone cares about, since
>MTS support isn't that widespread. There's also the question of
>exporting the score to a MID file or something which can be opened in
>other programs...
>
>-Mike
>

I'll grant that if you want to modulate a rank 2 system, some fancy
key signature mechanism is needed. And I know that you (Mike) are
especially interested in this. I don't have a clear picture of the
best way to design one... maybe you can come up with something.
But still it seems like something that could be left for a second
version. Just the ability to compose diatonically in arbitrary rank 2
systems would be huuuge.

-Carl

I wrote:
>As you know, every rank 2 system in existence can be notated very
>naturally with such functionality -- this was worked out years ago
>on the Make Micro Tools list. Yet for some reason, people keep
>arguing about pitch bends and custom accidental glyphs and never
>come up with a clear recommendation that a commercial project would
>consider trying. And as a result, none of the major score editors
>support this basic functionality (best I could determine the last
>I checked, which was Finale 2006 and Sibelius 4).

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Don't tell us, tell them!
//snip
> As far as playback... that's the kind of request that can kill a
> project.

Yes, well, that's why I'm telling us here first... I thought it might
be nice if we could reach some sort of consensus on a bare minimum of
features to add, and I don't want us to go hog-wild and do anything
that'd put them off from actually doing stuff we need.

> Mus2 has most of the functionality... just not the full power of
> something like Sibelius. We might recommend it to them as a model.

Haven't played with it yet, I should probably check it out...

> As far as playback... that's the kind of request that can kill a
> project. Obviously playback is better than no playback, but it adds
> a lot of complexity. If I could assign arbitrary MIDI note offsets
> to staff positions and accidentals I would be happy as a pig in shit.
> There are loads of synths that'll let you tune MIDI notes
> arbitrarily. 128 notes per channel is generally enough... channel
> ganging (MIDI split) is perhaps the only other thing I'd ask for.

That would also work, but we'd have to have a way for the note offsets
to repeat every period.

Do you think MTS is too much of a chore to ask for? I can't imagine it
being that difficult, being standardized and all.

> As you know, every rank 2 system in existence can be notated very
> naturally with such functionality -- this was worked out years ago
> on the Make Micro Tools list. Yet for some reason, people keep
> arguing about pitch bends and custom accidental glyphs and never
> come up with a clear recommendation that a commercial project would
> consider trying. And as a result, none of the major score editors
> support this basic functionality (best I could determine the last
> I checked, which was Finale 2006 and Sibelius 4).

I don't really care about pitch bends, but I think custom accidentals
would be nice, just because Sagittal has such a cult following.

But doesn't Sibelius already have custom accidentals? How else does
Jacob Barton's "Sagibelius" package work?

The reason I'm posting this is because, as you said, I want to come up
with a clear recommendation. I guess the place to start is to see what
the last version of Sibelius had, so we don't ask them to re-implement
stuff they've already created. That being said, I'd be willing to
throw some of my requests away for the sake of focusing on a core set
of "must-have" features so that we can at least notate arbitrary
rank-2 temperaments. I think that custom accidentals and custom staff
sizes might already be in Sibelius though. I'll grab a hold of
whatever the latest version was and see...

-Mike

Mike Battaglia wrote:

> I thought it
> might be nice if we could reach some sort of consensus on a bare
> minimum of features to add,

Ha! That'll be the day! :)

> > If I could assign arbitrary MIDI note offsets
> > to staff positions and accidentals I would be happy as a pig
> > in shit. There are loads of synths that'll let you tune MIDI
> > notes arbitrarily. 128 notes per channel is generally enough...
>
> That would also work, but we'd have to have a way for the note
> offsets to repeat every period.

Are you imagining the MIDI notes are equally tuned?

I suppose for that matter, with arbitrary MIDI tuning, the stepwise
offsets already produced by most notation packages should be
sufficient... so the requested functionality should go beyond this.

> Do you think MTS is too much of a chore to ask for? I can't
> imagine it being that difficult, being standardized and all.

MTS may be a standard but it's implemented very unevenly. Scala
basically has to fake up support for every synth it supports.
VST3 note expression messages may be better supported, I dunno

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZm8c0kr1Io

At least, their Steinberg overlords would probably approve.

> But doesn't Sibelius already have custom accidentals? How else does
> Jacob Barton's "Sagibelius" package work?

I think he used the Sibelius scripting language to make a plugin.
Those tend to work poorly, and Sibelius upgrades have been known
to break them.

> The reason I'm posting this is because, as you said, I want
> to come up with a clear recommendation.

You'll have to forgive my cynicism... I've basically assumed this
won't happen, or if it does, that it'll be a kitchen-sink type
monstrosity like Sagittal. But more power to you. If anyone can do
it, it'd be you.

> I guess the place to
> start is to see what the last version of Sibelius had, so we
> don't ask them to re-implement stuff they've already created.

Maybe... of course this new product will not be a Sibelius but
rather a Sibelius competitor, written from scratch...

-Carl

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 3:04 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Mike Battaglia wrote:
>
> > I thought it
> > might be nice if we could reach some sort of consensus on a bare
> > minimum of features to add,
>
> Ha! That'll be the day! :)

It could happen!!

I'm going to snip your reply out of order as I've thought about a few
things since you posted it...

> > The reason I'm posting this is because, as you said, I want
> > to come up with a clear recommendation.
>
> You'll have to forgive my cynicism... I've basically assumed this
> won't happen, or if it does, that it'll be a kitchen-sink type
> monstrosity like Sagittal. But more power to you. If anyone can do
> it, it'd be you.

I agree with you that we don't want to overwhelm them with feature
requests from the start. I thought about it tonight and came to the
conclusion that it might be best to throw everything I said away and
think a bit longer-term. I think the best thing that we can do right
now is to just get our foot in the door by making sure they don't
hard-wire 12-EDO into everything; everything else is really just
secondary to that.

I think it might be a pretty huge victory in and of itself if we could
at least ensure, at this critical point in the development life cycle
of the product, that they set their classes up so that the "pitch"
member of their Note class is declared as a float instead of a char or
whatever. If we can at least get that to happen, we can lobby them
with a slow trickle of feature requests for subsequent releases, like
the ability to assign an arbitrary periodic scale to a staff, or Scala
file support, or custom accidentals, or MTS or custom MIDI note
offsets or whatever we want.

I think that we simultaneously increase our chances of success,
decrease the amount of work they'll have to do to make us happy, and
increase the quality of the product from our standpoint by just making
sure they don't screw it up with 12 now, since many of the things we
want will be -far- easier for them to do if they build things from the
ground up with the simple idea that notes are real numbers instead of
integers. As far as microtuning is concerned, it actually makes their
job easier to do it right from the start, and gives us a better
product anyways.

It might be a good idea to lobby for just one or two utterly minimal
features which force them to understand how to best make things not
12-centric, something like MTS support or Scala file support in some
basically constructive way. Just something simple that we can build on
later. In the meantime, we still have Mus2 and the like, but given a
solid foundation now, this program will eventually kick Mus2's ass.

> > That would also work, but we'd have to have a way for the note
> > offsets to repeat every period.
>
> Are you imagining the MIDI notes are equally tuned?
>
> I suppose for that matter, with arbitrary MIDI tuning, the stepwise
> offsets already produced by most notation packages should be
> sufficient... so the requested functionality should go beyond this.

I figured you wanted something like the ability to set the notes of
the staff to MIDI notes being consecutively numbered 5-5-3-5-5-5-3 or
4-3-3-3-3-3-3, rather than 2-2-1-2-2-2-1. So, we'd have to input a
scale as a pattern of step sizes, and then find a way for the scale to
repeat each octave. Of course, with 5-5-3-5-5-5-3, you only get four
total octaves to work with, and god forbid anyone should want to set a
staff up for sensi[8] in 46-EDO. It isn't the worst idea though.

> > Do you think MTS is too much of a chore to ask for? I can't
> > imagine it being that difficult, being standardized and all.
>
> MTS may be a standard but it's implemented very unevenly. Scala
> basically has to fake up support for every synth it supports.
> VST3 note expression messages may be better supported, I dunno
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZm8c0kr1Io
>
> At least, their Steinberg overlords would probably approve.

Ah, very interesting... argh though, the though of having to use
Cubase for something like that is enraging. It's good you bring this
up here though, I'll have to ruminate on it a bit.

What you say about MTS lacking support is true, but I wonder if this
is a vicious circle and if we should perhaps be embracing it and
starting to push for it. After all, nobody else has embraced MTS
because the only people in the world who would ever embrace to begin
with are us here. We haven't embraced it because developers haven't
implemented it, and they haven't implemented it because nobody's
lobbying for it, and the only ones who would ever lobby for it are us.
So maybe we should start a longer-term policy of adopting MTS as a
community and pushing hard for it as a longer-term solution, even
outside of this specific case with Steinberg.

There's one reason I especially think it might be wise for us to adopt
MTS, and that's because we might not need to wait for softsynth
developers to jump on board to make use of it. MTS seems like a nice
sort of grand central station for us to use to convert to all sorts of
other formats: it seems like it'd be a rather straightforward project
to build an MTS -> MIDI pitch bend or MTS -> MIDI note mapping
converter, and a tool like that would go a long way. If you use JUCE
to write it, it'd work on five platforms and can compile to VST, RTAS
and AU, and I know college students who could probably do it in a
month and a half if we threw $300 their way.

If we had a single open-source tool like that, then it would be
extremely simple to lobby all sorts of software manufacturers for
microtuning support: just tell them to add MTS support, and not to
worry about anything else involving pitch bends, or channel swapping,
or MIDI note remappings, or Scala, or any other "hacks." They just
implement MTS, and we already know we have tools and workflow to
handle the rest for other legacy apps.

Anyway, I'm not set on any of this, but these are my ruminations on all of it.

-Mike

Mike wrote:
>> MTS may be a standard but it's implemented very unevenly. Scala
>> basically has to fake up support for every synth it supports.
>> VST3 note expression messages may be better supported, I dunno
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZm8c0kr1Io
>> At least, their Steinberg overlords would probably approve.
>
>Ah, very interesting... argh though, the though of having to use
>Cubase for something like that is enraging.

Cubase (and Steinberg synths like Halion) were only the first to
support the new standard. A score editor just starting life might
simply require a supporting VSTi for its microtonal features.

>What you say about MTS lacking support is true, but I wonder if this
>is a vicious circle and if we should perhaps be embracing it and
>starting to push for it.

"MTS" is actually a wide assortment of MIDI tuning extensions,
almost none of which are supported by anyone. The part that is
sort-of supported (sysex messages for full scale retunings) is
nothing special in the era of softsynths that can directly load
Scala files.

>After all, nobody else has embraced MTS
>because the only people in the world who would ever embrace to begin
>with are us here. We haven't embraced it because developers haven't
>implemented it,

Pretty much all Roland synths (and many others) support it. But
Roland's implementation is, as I understand it, generally not
compatible with others. That's why you have to tell Scala exactly
which synth you have when using MTS.

-C.

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> Do you think MTS is too much of a chore to ask for? I can't imagine it
> being that difficult, being standardized and all.

MTS isn't that difficult. But it wasn't that difficult to
convert Lilypond's pitch bend output into real time MTS for
timidity. That could also be done as a real time relay.
The important thing is that the pitch information is
encoded in the MIDI stream/file. If you want to give them
a simple message, anything consistent will do. Pitch bends
are standardized and useful for melody and we can deal with
them. A nonstandard format that only works with the
bundled synth but that we can parse would probably do as
well. It's best to focus on the capabilities and not worry
about the details.

Arbitrary note offsets are a special case of arbitrary
tunings.

Graham

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Mike wrote:
> >> MTS may be a standard but it's implemented very unevenly. Scala
> >> basically has to fake up support for every synth it supports.
> >> VST3 note expression messages may be better supported, I dunno
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZm8c0kr1Io
> >> At least, their Steinberg overlords would probably approve.
> >
> >Ah, very interesting... argh though, the though of having to use
> >Cubase for something like that is enraging.
>
> Cubase (and Steinberg synths like Halion) were only the first to
> support the new standard. A score editor just starting life might
> simply require a supporting VSTi for its microtonal features.

If you think it's easiest to get our foot in the door with non-12
stuff by getting them to support this sort of thing, then maybe that's
what we should do. I think it's just best to find the simplest way to
get them to not internally store notes as things in 12-EDO.

> >What you say about MTS lacking support is true, but I wonder if this
> >is a vicious circle and if we should perhaps be embracing it and
> >starting to push for it.
>
> "MTS" is actually a wide assortment of MIDI tuning extensions,
> almost none of which are supported by anyone. The part that is
> sort-of supported (sysex messages for full scale retunings) is
> nothing special in the era of softsynths that can directly load
> Scala files.

I only know of two extensions: the tuning dump that you mentioned,
which is basically a glorified way to load a Scala file up in MIDI,
and more importantly the realtime tuning changes, which was the
feature I really cared about as it effectively lets you handle an
unlimited amount of notes per octave without having to worry about
channel swapping, or 16 notes of polyphony, or only getting 3 octaves
of range in 46-EDO, or anything like that. Note On's can simply become
(MTS message) (Note On) and you're good to go.

> >After all, nobody else has embraced MTS
> >because the only people in the world who would ever embrace to begin
> >with are us here. We haven't embraced it because developers haven't
> >implemented it,
>
> Pretty much all Roland synths (and many others) support it. But
> Roland's implementation is, as I understand it, generally not
> compatible with others. That's why you have to tell Scala exactly
> which synth you have when using MTS.

I guess I'll have to do more research. I'm wondering now what the
effective difference is between polyphonic pitch bends and MTS
retuning messages - are they exactly the same? Both seem to persist
until you change them.

-Mike

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> MTS isn't that difficult. But it wasn't that difficult to
> convert Lilypond's pitch bend output into real time MTS for
> timidity. That could also be done as a real time relay.
> The important thing is that the pitch information is
> encoded in the MIDI stream/file. If you want to give them
> a simple message, anything consistent will do. Pitch bends
> are standardized and useful for melody and we can deal with
> them. A nonstandard format that only works with the
> bundled synth but that we can parse would probably do as
> well. It's best to focus on the capabilities and not worry
> about the details.

I agree with that idea, but that's precisely why I suggested using
something like MTS instead of using pitch bends as the base format
which we can write things like Python tools to work with if needed. In
contrast, using pitch bends means we generally get a total of 16
notes, period.

That being said, I'm not at all sold on MTS specifically, and it's
just this random thing I threw out there. But, I think that especially
for something like a score, something using MTS or polyphonic pitch
bends or the VST thing Carl brought up is going to be more useful than
either static MIDI note remappings (which give limited range for
larger tunings) or pitch bends (which give 16 note polyphony).

-Mike

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> I agree with that idea, but that's precisely why I suggested using
> something like MTS instead of using pitch bends as the base format
> which we can write things like Python tools to work with if needed. In
> contrast, using pitch bends means we generally get a total of 16
> notes, period.

Getting pitch bends to work polyphonically is probably too
much trouble. But if there's one in front of every retuned
note-on, it's easy enough to parse.

> That being said, I'm not at all sold on MTS specifically, and it's
> just this random thing I threw out there. But, I think that especially
> for something like a score, something using MTS or polyphonic pitch
> bends or the VST thing Carl brought up is going to be more useful than
> either static MIDI note remappings (which give limited range for
> larger tunings) or pitch bends (which give 16 note polyphony).

You'd still need note remappings to accept MIDI input.
That's very nice to have for a sequencer add-on.

Graham

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> Mike Battaglia battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > I agree with that idea, but that's precisely why I suggested using
> > something like MTS instead of using pitch bends as the base format
> > which we can write things like Python tools to work with if needed. In
> > contrast, using pitch bends means we generally get a total of 16
> > notes, period.
>
> Getting pitch bends to work polyphonically is probably too
> much trouble. But if there's one in front of every retuned
> note-on, it's easy enough to parse.

Using MTS -is- getting pitch bends to work polyphonically; that's
basically what an MTS real-time tuning message

There are two ways I know of to do note-specific pitch bends in MIDI:
1) Using custom NRPN's for polyphonic pitch bending
2) Use MTS real-time tuning messages for polyphonic pitch bending

At least given the two options, the latter is at the very least
standardized. The former is something I'm not even sure that I'm
remembering correctly that people do, but it's an option. A non-MIDI
option is Carl's VST note-specific controller thing, which seems like
MTS (plus a lot of other things) on steroids. I really hope that gets
adopted.

Aren't you using MTS real-time tuning messages for your MIDI pitch
bend to MTS converter? Or are you just counting the total number of
notes plus pitch bend value used in a piece, and then dumping the
entire scale at once via sysex?

> > That being said, I'm not at all sold on MTS specifically, and it's
> > just this random thing I threw out there. But, I think that especially
> > for something like a score, something using MTS or polyphonic pitch
> > bends or the VST thing Carl brought up is going to be more useful than
> > either static MIDI note remappings (which give limited range for
> > larger tunings) or pitch bends (which give 16 note polyphony).
>
> You'd still need note remappings to accept MIDI input.
> That's very nice to have for a sequencer add-on.

When I wrote this, I was thinking about doing something like having
Note On's refer to 12-EDO pitches by default, and then using MTS just
to polyphonically bend them. I do see some ways for that to get
extremely messy, though, but they're also ways that the VST thing
could get messy. Hm...

-Mike

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> Aren't you using MTS real-time tuning messages for your MIDI pitch
> bend to MTS converter? Or are you just counting the total number of
> notes plus pitch bend value used in a piece, and then dumping the
> entire scale at once via sysex?

I use real-time messages like this:

[0xf0, length, 0x7f, device, 0x08, 0x02,
program, changes, key, coarse, fine>>7, fine&0x7f, 0xf7]

They are standardized although the meaning of "device" is
left to the implementation. For Timidity it matches
the channel.

You can see the full code here:

https://bitbucket.org/x31eq/microlily/

Graham

Mike wrote:
>I only know of two extensions: the tuning dump that you mentioned,
>which is basically a glorified way to load a Scala file up in MIDI,
>and more importantly the realtime tuning changes, which was the
>feature I really cared about as it effectively lets you handle an
>unlimited amount of notes per octave without having to worry about
>channel swapping, or 16 notes of polyphony, or only getting
>3 octaves of range in 46-EDO, or anything like that.

Right. It's the bulk dump I've been talking about. The single-
note tuning messages are supported by even fewer synths. Then
there are the Scale/Octave tuning messages (added in 1999) which
are supported by approximately nothing. I say messages because
they come in single- and double-byte versions, as well as realtime
and non-realtime versions

http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php

They're all sysex messages, which puts them apart from the music
content. That may be why synth manufacturers feel such liberty
in choosing whether and how to implement them. Tuning data ought
to be integrated as tightly into musical scores as possible.
With the bulk dump, for instance, if you somehow miss the setup
messages (like you start playing a file in the middle and your
player doesn't send the setup every time) you can get the wrong
tuning.

It's the same problem with pitch bends and other CCs - they're
channel messages not note messages. A parser that guesses which
bends go to which notes can work great... at killing any hope
for developing microtonal features across the industry. It's a
non-basis for such features and if a major notation package puts
it in at 1.0 it'll pretty much guarantee its uselessness for
microtonal work for its entire lifecycle.

I haven't looked at the VST3 note expression messages but the
fact that they're tied to notes is encouraging. Also, VST is a
living standard that synth makers need to support.

>I guess I'll have to do more research. I'm wondering now what the
>effective difference is between polyphonic pitch bends and MTS
>retuning messages - are they exactly the same? Both seem to
>persist until you change them.

What's a polyphonic pitch bend? You mean poly aftertouch?
Those are still channel messages, though at least they target
individual notes. So you can just send duplicates for every
channel you want. They're not terribly widely supported either,
and they just give a pressure value. There's no standardized
way of interpreting it as tuning information. And if there
were, it'd be stomping on the intended purpose of the message,
which is to provide pressure sensitivity for physical controllers.

-Carl

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:41 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Right. It's the bulk dump I've been talking about. The single-
> note tuning messages are supported by even fewer synths. Then
> there are the Scale/Octave tuning messages (added in 1999) which
> are supported by approximately nothing. I say messages because
> they come in single- and double-byte versions, as well as realtime
> and non-realtime versions
>
> http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php

I can't make heads or tails out of this Scale/Octave thing. What the
heck does this mean?

"Scale/Octave Tuning is micro-tuning that is automatically repeated in
every octave by calibrating a single octave of notes in small
fractions of an equal-tempered half-step. The original MIDI tuning
dump message had to define a frequency to each of 128 keys. This
proposal defines an easier micro tuning that sets offsets from an
equal-tempered half-step by the cent."

This can't be right, but it seems like it's saying that it's the same
exact thing as the MTS dump, but it sets offsets in terms of cents
instead of frequencies...? Surely they didn't make two redundant
proposals for the same exact thing, but one where you specify tunings
in log-frequency terms and another where you put it in
linear-frequency terms? And also, scale/octave tuning is exclusively
for 12 note scales repeating at the octave?

> They're all sysex messages, which puts them apart from the music
> content. That may be why synth manufacturers feel such liberty
> in choosing whether and how to implement them. Tuning data ought
> to be integrated as tightly into musical scores as possible.
> With the bulk dump, for instance, if you somehow miss the setup
> messages (like you start playing a file in the middle and your
> player doesn't send the setup every time) you can get the wrong
> tuning.

Yes, though the same happens for bank and patch information, of course.

This is getting a bit aside from the original discussion, but I
wonder, if we were to set out to make some sort of "standard" way to
use existing MIDI features to microtune things, how would we do it if
we actually wanted to do it right? Obviously the solution could be
something like "use OSC," but I'm curious how we'd do it if we
actually wanted to use MIDI. This might be better as a separate
thread, since it might not necessarily be the best thing for us to ask
Steinberg for right now, but I'm curious how it'd actually work.

Would the actual best solution, assuming we could convince the
industry to ever go along with it, be to make the standard "note on"
just be an MTS tuning message plus a regular note on immediately
after? I always thought so, but now I'm thinking that would ruin fast
lines if the release trail is still sounding when the MTS message for
the next note occurs.

Would it be to instead just use the MTS tuning dump to assign a
permanent mapping to the 127 note values, much like we use Scala files
now? The downside to this is, again, that larger scales now have an
extremely limited range: even 31-EDO craps out at four octaves, and so
now we have to lose channels to compensate.

Would it be to assign pitches to note numbers dynamically, so that we
start with MIDI note 0 being dynamically set to the right pitch just
as the first note is played, then setting the next voice to MIDI note
1, creating a "note pool" which we draw from and retune as need be?
This would actually work, but that's a pretty damn drastic departure
from the way MIDI works now.

Would MIDI + MTS even be able to handle our needs at all if we
actually used in its current form? Or is it hopeless? It seems like
the core problem is finding a way to canonically assign arbitrary
pitches to MIDI note numbers, perhaps plus some sort of retuning
information, and I can't figure out how to do it.

> A parser that guesses which
> bends go to which notes can work great... at killing any hope
> for developing microtonal features across the industry. It's a
> non-basis for such features and if a major notation package puts
> it in at 1.0 it'll pretty much guarantee its uselessness for
> microtonal work for its entire lifecycle.

I'm not sure what you mean here, I wasn't suggesting asking Steinberg
for a parser to guess which pitch bends go to which notes...

> I haven't looked at the VST3 note expression messages but the
> fact that they're tied to notes is encouraging. Also, VST is a
> living standard that synth makers need to support.

It's definitely a huge step up, but I still don't understand how the
VST3 note expression messages will solve the problem of assigning
pitches to MIDI note numbers. Would it just be an intelligent
algorithm assigning arbitrary pitches to note numbers + note-specific
pitch bends on the fly? What happens if I play two notes which round
to the same nearest 12-EDO number, like 7/4 and 11/6 in porcupine in
22-EDO, does it just steal from the next note number instead?

> What's a polyphonic pitch bend? You mean poly aftertouch?

Yeah, I screwed up here. I thought that there were some MIDI
instruments supporting a poly pitch bend, but I looked it up and
couldn't find it. The only references to the concept I could find used
MTS to do the poly pitch bending, except for a scheme posted on the
tuning list by Robert Walker a while ago using custom NRPN's. So
scratch that.

-Mike

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 4:02 PM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> Mike Battaglia battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > Aren't you using MTS real-time tuning messages for your MIDI pitch
> > bend to MTS converter? Or are you just counting the total number of
> > notes plus pitch bend value used in a piece, and then dumping the
> > entire scale at once via sysex?
>
> I use real-time messages like this:
>
> [0xf0, length, 0x7f, device, 0x08, 0x02,
> program, changes, key, coarse, fine>>7, fine&0x7f, 0xf7]
>
> They are standardized although the meaning of "device" is
> left to the implementation. For Timidity it matches
> the channel.

I think the "length" between F0 and 7F must be wrong, as F0 7F is the
SysEx header word... other than that, it looks right.

I still don't get it, though: are you sending one of these before each
note on? How come Timidity doesn't send bullets ricocheting off the
walls as note-specific MTS messages fire while release trails for the
same note are still playing? Is it not conforming with the MTS
standard?

> You can see the full code here:
>
> https://bitbucket.org/x31eq/microlily/

Thanks. I'll skim this, though I might continue to ask you some
obvious questions in plain English too...

-Mike

Mike wrote:
>> http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php
>
>I can't make heads or tails out of this Scale/Octave thing. What the
>heck does this mean?

It just lets you send twelve offsets and it populates the tuning
table for you. So you don't have to send 128 frequencies.

>This can't be right, but it seems like it's saying that it's the same
>exact thing as the MTS dump, but it sets offsets in terms of cents
>instead of frequencies...? Surely they didn't make two redundant
>proposals for the same exact thing,

Pfff mahaha

>And also, scale/octave tuning is exclusively
>for 12 note scales repeating at the octave?

Yep.

>This is getting a bit aside from the original discussion, but I
>wonder, if we were to set out to make some sort of "standard" way to
>use existing MIDI features to microtune things, how would we do it if
>we actually wanted to do it right? Obviously the solution could be
>something like "use OSC,"

I don't know if that's obvious. I see little support for music
fundamentals when I look at OSC stuff... it's possible I'm just
missing it, of course. But too much flexibility can be a bad thing.

The ultimate score format would probably specify notes as vectors,
such as monzos or tmonzos. The setup header would specify the
generators (basis).

>Would the actual best solution, assuming we could convince the
>industry to ever go along with it, be to make the standard "note on"
>just be an MTS tuning message plus a regular note on immediately
>after? I always thought so, but now I'm thinking that would ruin fast
>lines if the release trail is still sounding when the MTS message for
>the next note occurs.

This is what the non-realtime single note tuning change messages
are for.

>Would MIDI + MTS even be able to handle our needs at all if we
>actually used in its current form? Or is it hopeless?

Channel ganging should be straightforward. Channels aren't usually
in shortage.

>> A parser that guesses which
>> bends go to which notes can work great... at killing any hope
>> for developing microtonal features across the industry.
>
>I'm not sure what you mean here, I wasn't suggesting asking Steinberg
>for a parser to guess which pitch bends go to which notes...

I think Graham brought it up.

>> I haven't looked at the VST3 note expression messages but the
>> fact that they're tied to notes is encouraging. Also, VST is a
>> living standard that synth makers need to support.
>
>It's definitely a huge step up, but I still don't understand how the
>VST3 note expression messages will solve the problem of assigning
>pitches to MIDI note numbers. Would it just be an intelligent
>algorithm assigning arbitrary pitches to note numbers + note-specific
>pitch bends on the fly? What happens if I play two notes which round
>to the same nearest 12-EDO number, like 7/4 and 11/6 in porcupine in
>22-EDO, does it just steal from the next note number instead?

I don't know much about VST... don't know how the note expression
features are implemented. I googled just now but didn't find
anything.

-Carl

I wrote:
>I don't know much about VST... don't know how the note expression
>features are implemented. I googled just now but didn't find
>anything.

Best I can find is
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=364651

Looks like folks have to sign up as a Steinberg developer and
download the blighting SDK if they want to know more.

-Carl

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:37 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> It just lets you send twelve offsets and it populates the tuning
> table for you. So you don't have to send 128 frequencies.

WTF, so they made an entirely new, crappy standard for manufacturers
who were too lazy to use the existing standard?

> The ultimate score format would probably specify notes as vectors,
> such as monzos or tmonzos. The setup header would specify the
> generators (basis).

Interesting. I note that you can uniquely specify any note in meantone
in a very intuitive fashion by simply saying how that note would
temper down to 7-EDO and 12-EDO. If you pick those two things as your
basis, you get |3 5> being the perfect fourth, for instance; |1 0> is
the diesis and |0 1> is the chromatic semitone.

So tuples of the form (number of diatonic scale steps, number of
chromatic scale steps) uniquely represent all meantone intervals - in
fact, more abstractly, (number of spaces subtended on the staff, MIDI
note #) uniquely represents any meantone interval. Man, I wish the
people at Steinberg would set their notation system up that way! That
would make other rank-2 things so easy to set up... argh.

> >Would the actual best solution, assuming we could convince the
> >industry to ever go along with it, be to make the standard "note on"
> >just be an MTS tuning message plus a regular note on immediately
> >after? I always thought so, but now I'm thinking that would ruin fast
> >lines if the release trail is still sounding when the MTS message for
> >the next note occurs.
>
> This is what the non-realtime single note tuning change messages
> are for.

Ah, beautiful, I missed that. I guess that's one of the extensions.

BTW, do you have any idea what the heck the "number of changes" thing
means? It looks like you can send more than one change at a time to
"assist in maximizing bandwidth," and that the 7th byte of the
real-time tuning change (what they call "ll") is to specify how many
changes you want to make. The only problem is, all of your multiple
per-message changes must be made to the same note at once...?

> >Would MIDI + MTS even be able to handle our needs at all if we
> >actually used in its current form? Or is it hopeless?
>
> Channel ganging should be straightforward. Channels aren't usually
> in shortage.

They definitely end up in shortage in the synths I use. If I'm using
something like EastWest in Kontakt, I definitely have to run more than
one instance to write any large compositions. Also, most existing
softsynths that I know don't have any way of coupling channels
together nicely, so that if you're working with a sampler, you have to
load the instrument's sample bank into RAM once per channel you want
to reserve. Synths are even worse, as filters and monophony and LFOs
and such get woefully screwed up, since it thinks you want two
separate instances of the same patch.

So to implement what you're saying, it seems like we'd need to adopt a
paradigm whereby multiple real MIDI channels are abstracted to one
virtual patch, or something like that, so that in an ideal world
synths would know to not have the above thing happen. Do I understand
your idea correctly?

-Mike

Sorry, this is a long thread that I don't have time to read just this very moment but let me say that immediately when I saw there's a wish list in the comment section here; http://blog.steinberg.net/2013/02/welcome/
I left this short message there:

"Both Finale and Sibelius are extremely awkward for microtonal notation with playback, ie. in situations where non-standard accidentals and tunings are used. Moreover, Sibelius has severe limitations in this area, as custom symbols cannot be assigned Midi CC commands or pitchbend values. Something along the lines of the dedicated microtonal notation application Mus2 would be most welcome in the new application."

But yes, we must send detailed emails about this to the developers!

I'll read this thread later and will comment further.

At present, Finale is much more capable with microtonal notation (with playback) than Sibelius but it's quite cumbersome.
I've written scores in Johnston's notation in Finale with working playback. This is impossible in Sibelius. Johnston notation is a good example of a complicated situation for notation+playback, as the nominals have varying step sizes.

Juhani

Thanks Juhani! I think your letter to them is perfect. -Carl

At 06:50 AM 2013/02/22, you wrote:
>Sorry, this is a long thread that I don't have time to read just this
>very moment but let me say that immediately when I saw there's a wish
>list in the comment section here; http://blog.steinberg.net/2013/02/welcome/
>I left this short message there:
>
>"Both Finale and Sibelius are extremely awkward for microtonal
>notation with playback, ie. in situations where non-standard
>accidentals and tunings are used. Moreover, Sibelius has severe
>limitations in this area, as custom symbols cannot be assigned Midi CC
>commands or pitchbend values. Something along the lines of the
>dedicated microtonal notation application Mus2 would be most welcome
>in the new application."
>
>But yes, we must send detailed emails about this to the developers!
>
>I'll read this thread later and will comment further.
>
>At present, Finale is much more capable with microtonal notation (with
>playback) than Sibelius but it's quite cumbersome.
>I've written scores in Johnston's notation in Finale with working
>playback. This is impossible in Sibelius. Johnston notation is a good
>example of a complicated situation for notation+playback, as the
>nominals have varying step sizes.
>
>Juhani

This may be of interest here.
I recently purchased Cubase 7, not having been a Cubase user for many years. Since version 4 there's been a same kind of 12-note +/- 100 cents retuning feature for the on-board softsynths as in Logic but not quite so severely limited, for unlike Logic, Cubase allows different tunings to be used at the same time, as well as the automated changing of tuning presets in a song.
However, it turned out that in Cubase 7, they have simplified the microtuning plug-in even further and worse, it does not tune any of the new VST instruments that come with Cubase. In fact, it seems it only works for the Halion sampler. The microtuning plug-in is not mentioned on the website any more, and it seems they're discontinuing it, or leaving it as is.
I soon asked Steinberg technical support why I'm not able to get the microtuning plug-in to work with the VSTi's.
They answered:
"Sad news I'm afraid. It turns out that none of the VSTi's in Cubase support the microtuning plug-in. That is why it isn't working. From the info I have received it seems that there are no plans to make them support it either."
I wrote them back:
"But why couldn't you make it work? It can't be that difficult - so many softsynths and DAWs have microtuning these days. If Steinberg really wanted to this well, the instruments would support the flexible MTS midi tuning standard. But even adding microtuning plug-in support to the Steinberg VSTi would do!"
Their answer was that they'd forwarded my feedback.

BUT - Cubase 7 now has Hermod adaptive tuning. That's what they advertise enthusiastically in the videos. I wonder how that's implemented - maybe via VST3? If Steinberg is already doing this, should this (VST3 I mean) be the method to be suggested for the new notation application?

Juhani

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> I think the "length" between F0 and 7F must be wrong, as F0 7F is the
> SysEx header word... other than that, it looks right.

I should have checked it with a standard example. I have a
vague memory of either F0 or F7 being counted but not both.

> I still don't get it, though: are you sending one of these before each
> note on? How come Timidity doesn't send bullets ricocheting off the
> walls as note-specific MTS messages fire while release trails for the
> same note are still playing? Is it not conforming with the MTS
> standard?

Yes, I send one before each note-on. Timidity doesn't
follow the real-time-ness of the standard but it wouldn't
matter much. It's impossible for two notes with the same
pitch number to overlap and that is a limitation of the
method. If it were to retune the release trails, you might
hear it for two notes of the same pitch number but
different pitch, but it would be subtle because one sound
would be masking the other.

It would also be possible to reassign the note numbers
based on 19, or any number of pitches to the octave that
don't overlap and have the required pitch range. Or even
use a more intelligent algorithm that assigns note numbers
to avoid an overlap, or even assigns them in a way
completely unrelated to the approximate pitch. That would
require the synthesizer to not use the note number to
determine the sample, of course.

I found some notes I made on my blog about Timidity, from
when I read the source code:

The Device ID is completely ignored for these two messages (0x01 and 0x02).

The real time tuning change doesn’t seem to be truly real time: it won’t affect notes that are already playing. There’s a flag to enable the standard behaviour, but it’s hard-wired to off.

The revised standard includes a non-real time tuning change for microtonal work. It still can't get two tunings of the same pitch on the same channel, though. The note-on and note-off messages will overlap.

Graham

"nuorvala" <jnylenius@...> wrote:

> BUT - Cubase 7 now has Hermod adaptive tuning. That's what they advertise enthusiastically in the videos. I wonder how that's implemented - maybe via VST3? If Steinberg is already doing this, should this (VST3 I mean) be the method to be suggested for the new notation application?

However they implement Hermode is what they should use for
explicit microtuning. It isn't something we need to worry
about.

Graham

Glad you think so because I sent it before I was aware of your discussion on the subject.
As it happens, some time ago I also asked Steinberg for MTS support but this was for Cubase (see my other post here).

Juhani

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks Juhani! I think your letter to them is perfect. -Carl
>
> At 06:50 AM 2013/02/22, you wrote:
> >Sorry, this is a long thread that I don't have time to read just this
> >very moment but let me say that immediately when I saw there's a wish
> >list in the comment section here; http://blog.steinberg.net/2013/02/welcome/
> >I left this short message there:
> >
> >"Both Finale and Sibelius are extremely awkward for microtonal
> >notation with playback, ie. in situations where non-standard
> >accidentals and tunings are used. Moreover, Sibelius has severe
> >limitations in this area, as custom symbols cannot be assigned Midi CC
> >commands or pitchbend values. Something along the lines of the
> >dedicated microtonal notation application Mus2 would be most welcome
> >in the new application."
> >
> >But yes, we must send detailed emails about this to the developers!
> >
> >I'll read this thread later and will comment further.
> >
> >At present, Finale is much more capable with microtonal notation (with
> >playback) than Sibelius but it's quite cumbersome.
> >I've written scores in Johnston's notation in Finale with working
> >playback. This is impossible in Sibelius. Johnston notation is a good
> >example of a complicated situation for notation+playback, as the
> >nominals have varying step sizes.
> >
> >Juhani
>

Right. But the fact that they do implement it means that a system for flexible real-time 128-note microtuning etc is already there, doesn't it?

J

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> "nuorvala" <jnylenius@...> wrote:
>
> > BUT - Cubase 7 now has Hermod adaptive tuning. That's what they advertise enthusiastically in the videos. I wonder how that's implemented - maybe via VST3? If Steinberg is already doing this, should this (VST3 I mean) be the method to be suggested for the new notation application?
>
> However they implement Hermode is what they should use for
> explicit microtuning. It isn't something we need to worry
> about.
>
>
> Graham
>

I can confirm that the Hermode tuning in Cubase 7 is implemented
with the VST 3.5 note expression messages. The only VSTis supporting
them at the moment are Steinberg's (Halion and I believe one or
two others).

-Carl

Juhani wrote:

>However, it turned out that in Cubase 7, they have simplified the
>microtuning plug-in even further and worse, it does not tune any of
>the new VST instruments that come with Cubase. In fact, it seems it
>only works for the Halion sampler. The microtuning plug-in is not
>mentioned on the website any more, and it seems they're discontinuing
>it, or leaving it as is.
>I soon asked Steinberg technical support why I'm not able to get the
>microtuning plug-in to work with the VSTi's.
>They answered:
>"Sad news I'm afraid. It turns out that none of the VSTi's in Cubase
>support the microtuning plug-in. That is why it isn't working. From
>the info I have received it seems that there are no plans to make them
>support it either."
>I wrote them back:
>"But why couldn't you make it work? It can't be that difficult - so
>many softsynths and DAWs have microtuning these days. If Steinberg
>really wanted to this well, the instruments would support the flexible
>MTS midi tuning standard. But even adding microtuning plug-in support
>to the Steinberg VSTi would do!"
>Their answer was that they'd forwarded my feedback.
>
>BUT - Cubase 7 now has Hermod[e] adaptive tuning. That's what they
>advertise enthusiastically in the videos. I wonder how that's
>implemented - maybe via VST3? If Steinberg is already doing this,
>should this (VST3 I mean) be the method to be suggested for the new
>notation application?

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 11:37 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
> >
> > It just lets you send twelve offsets and it populates the tuning
> > table for you. So you don't have to send 128 frequencies.
>
> WTF, so they made an entirely new, crappy standard for manufacturers
> who were too lazy to use the existing standard?

They are the manufacturers. If they make synthesizers that
only have 12 note tuning tables in RAM, it's better for
there to be a standard way to work with them than no
standard.

It also makes a good deal of sense of real-time tuning.
Say you have a piece of common practice music that you want
to play in meantone. At some point there's a key change so
that Eb becomes D#. You'd never want Eb and D# to play
together, even in different registers, so you send one
retune message and it's all fixed. If it's a non-real-time
change, so that currently playing notes aren't affected by
the changes, and the messages aren't all sent
instantaneously, you can even make it so that you can have
Eb and D# together and it works exactly the same way as the
full keyboard retuning with nearest-pitch note number
assignment, but only a 12 note tuning table.

> BTW, do you have any idea what the heck the "number of changes" thing
> means? It looks like you can send more than one change at a time to
> "assist in maximizing bandwidth," and that the 7th byte of the
> real-time tuning change (what they call "ll") is to specify how many
> changes you want to make. The only problem is, all of your multiple
> per-message changes must be made to the same note at once...?

How many pitches you want to change, isn't it?

> They definitely end up in shortage in the synths I use. If I'm using
> something like EastWest in Kontakt, I definitely have to run more than
> one instance to write any large compositions. Also, most existing
> softsynths that I know don't have any way of coupling channels
> together nicely, so that if you're working with a sampler, you have to
> load the instrument's sample bank into RAM once per channel you want
> to reserve. Synths are even worse, as filters and monophony and LFOs
> and such get woefully screwed up, since it thinks you want two
> separate instances of the same patch.

It depends if it's easier to get multiple channels supported
more cleanly, or explicit tuning features.

Graham

Mike wrote:
>BTW, do you have any idea what the heck the "number of changes" thing
>means? It looks like you can send more than one change at a time to
>"assist in maximizing bandwidth,"

Correct.

>and that the 7th byte of the
>real-time tuning change (what they call "ll") is to specify how many
>changes you want to make. The only problem is, all of your multiple
>per-message changes must be made to the same note at once...?

The changes go to different note numbers. It's a bit confusing
the way they've written it. The block [kk xx yy zz] is repeated,
once for each change. They say the [xx yy zz] block is repeated
but in fact it's the [kk xx yy zz] block that gets repeated
(kk being the note number).

>So to implement what you're saying, it seems like we'd need to adopt a
>paradigm whereby multiple real MIDI channels are abstracted to one
>virtual patch, or something like that, so that in an ideal world
>synths would know to not have the above thing happen. Do I understand
>your idea correctly?

Yeah, that's the idea. Most keyboards have (or used to) the ability
to "split" the physical keys across multiple channels, so it isn't
unprecedented.

-Carl

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> This is getting a bit aside from the original discussion, but I
> wonder, if we were to set out to make some sort of "standard" way to
> use existing MIDI features to microtune things, how would we do it if
> we actually wanted to do it right? Obviously the solution could be
> something like "use OSC," but I'm curious how we'd do it if we
> actually wanted to use MIDI. This might be better as a separate
> thread, since it might not necessarily be the best thing for us to ask
> Steinberg for right now, but I'm curious how it'd actually work.

The optimal format depends on what you want it to do.
Input is different to output. MIDI is almost everything
you could possibly need for keyboard input. Output to a
synth should have a tuning option, and MTS provides that.
The note number has to stay even on output because there are
cases where it's important. The same quartertone might
sound different depending on what pitch you bent it from.
And portamento depends on identifying the currently sounding
note. 7 bits is fine if all you need is a tag to identify
a currently sounding note.

Input devices that aren't keyboards can have very
different requirements, which is why OSC ends up as an
abstract format for tunneling music descriptions rather
than a format for describing music.

The best thing to retrofit the existing MIDI messages would
be to have an omni mode where the channel becomes part of
the note number. Then you have 2048 pitches instead of
128. It would mean assigning a device to each track in
Standard MIDI Files, if that isn't already supported.

There are cases where the channel separation is still
useful, like identifying the strings of a guitar.

Graham

>Right. But the fact that they do implement it means that a system for
>flexible real-time 128-note microtuning etc is already there, doesn't it?
>
>J

Yes. The VST note expressions are quite new, but the MIDI single-note
tuning change messages were added to the MIDI spec in 1992. So it's not
whether a standard exists, but whether synths and score editors etc.
support it.

-Carl

 I think our friend Aaron Hunt already does quite a bit of this. H-Pi <http://h-pi.com/>.  I use microsynth (which is awesome) and tried to capture the midi output from it -he seems to use 16 channels to communicate microtonal scales to Macintosh's synth.

________________________________
From: Graham Breed <gbreed@...>
To: MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2013 2:03 PM
Subject: Re: [MMM] Sibelius team now at Steinberg

 
Mike Battaglia battaglia01@...> wrote:

> This is getting a bit aside from the original discussion, but I
> wonder, if we were to set out to make some sort of "standard" way to
> use existing MIDI features to microtune things, how would we do it if
> we actually wanted to do it right? Obviously the solution could be
> something like "use OSC," but I'm curious how we'd do it if we
> actually wanted to use MIDI. This might be better as a separate
> thread, since it might not necessarily be the best thing for us to ask
> Steinberg for right now, but I'm curious how it'd actually work.

The optimal format depends on what you want it to do.
Input is different to output. MIDI is almost everything
you could possibly need for keyboard input. Output to a
synth should have a tuning option, and MTS provides that.
The note number has to stay even on output because there are
cases where it's important. The same quartertone might
sound different depending on what pitch you bent it from.
And portamento depends on identifying the currently sounding
note. 7 bits is fine if all you need is a tag to identify
a currently sounding note.

Input devices that aren't keyboards can have very
different requirements, which is why OSC ends up as an
abstract format for tunneling music descriptions rather
than a format for describing music.

The best thing to retrofit the existing MIDI messages would
be to have an omni mode where the channel becomes part of
the note number. Then you have 2048 pitches instead of
128. It would mean assigning a device to each track in
Standard MIDI Files, if that isn't already supported.

There are cases where the channel separation is still
useful, like identifying the strings of a guitar.

Graham

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 9:50 AM, nuorvala <jnylenius@...> wrote:
>
> "Both Finale and Sibelius are extremely awkward for microtonal notation
> with playback, ie. in situations where non-standard accidentals and tunings
> are used. Moreover, Sibelius has severe limitations in this area, as custom
> symbols cannot be assigned Midi CC commands or pitchbend values. Something
> along the lines of the dedicated microtonal notation application Mus2 would
> be most welcome in the new application."

Thanks Juhani, this is great! So your feeling is to ask for custom
accidentals that specifically use custom CC's or pitchbends?

> At present, Finale is much more capable with microtonal notation (with
> playback) than Sibelius but it's quite cumbersome.
> I've written scores in Johnston's notation in Finale with working
> playback. This is impossible in Sibelius. Johnston notation is a good
> example of a complicated situation for notation+playback, as the nominals
> have varying step sizes.

How does Finale work playback out?

-Mike

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 2:33 PM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> It would also be possible to reassign the note numbers
> based on 19, or any number of pitches to the octave that
> don't overlap and have the required pitch range. Or even
> use a more intelligent algorithm that assigns note numbers
> to avoid an overlap, or even assigns them in a way
> completely unrelated to the approximate pitch. That would
> require the synthesizer to not use the note number to
> determine the sample, of course.

That's kind of what I was getting at with my idea for "note pooling."

> The real time tuning change doesn’t seem to be truly real time: it won’t
> affect notes that are already playing. There’s a flag to enable the standard
> behaviour, but it’s hard-wired to off.
>
> The revised standard includes a non-real time tuning change for microtonal
> work. It still can't get two tunings of the same pitch on the same channel,
> though. The note-on and note-off messages will overlap.

OK, so Timidity only supports the real-time one, and not the
non-real-time one, but it treats the real-time one the way it's
supposed to treat the non-real-time one?

> It also makes a good deal of sense of real-time tuning.
> Say you have a piece of common practice music that you want
> to play in meantone. At some point there's a key change so
> that Eb becomes D#. You'd never want Eb and D# to play
> together, even in different registers, so you send one
> retune message and it's all fixed. If it's a non-real-time
> change, so that currently playing notes aren't affected by
> the changes, and the messages aren't all sent
> instantaneously, you can even make it so that you can have
> Eb and D# together and it works exactly the same way as the
> full keyboard retuning with nearest-pitch note number
> assignment, but only a 12 note tuning table.

OK, yeah, I get it. It's useful to have some sort of "periodic scale"
thing implemented, I guess, where changing one note changes it all
along the scale, though I wish they hadn't hardwired it to 12, of
course.

> It depends if it's easier to get multiple channels supported
> more cleanly, or explicit tuning features.

Right, both seem like a mess...

-Mike

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> OK, so Timidity only supports the real-time one, and not the
> non-real-time one, but it treats the real-time one the way it's
> supposed to treat the non-real-time one?

Timidity supports the original real-time message in a
non-real-time fashion. It doesn't support either of the
bank-specific messages (last I checked). If you want
real-time behavior, you can compile it that way. You could
presumably add the bank messages if you wanted because the
infrastructure's there.

Graham

Yes, that I knew but I meant that Steinberg/Cubase has already implemented a system for its own VSTi's which enables adaptive tuning and this means that the same system could easily put to the use we want (single-note tuning for 128 or more notes). Correct?
I assume Cubase and the new notation software will work well in tandem; maybe the notation editor in new versions of Cubase will be a reduced version of the notation program; the notation program will have VST3 support etc.

J

> Yes. The VST note expressions are quite new, but the MIDI single-note
> tuning change messages were added to the MIDI spec in 1992. So it's not
> whether a standard exists, but whether synths and score editors etc.
> support it.
>
> -Carl
>

At 01:14 PM 2013/02/22, you wrote:
>Yes, that I knew but I meant that Steinberg/Cubase has already
>implemented a system for its own VSTi's which enables adaptive tuning
>and this means that the same system could easily put to the use we
>want (single-note tuning for 128 or more notes). Correct?

Yup! That's why I brought it up. It's a natural fit for a new
score editor being developed at Steinberg. -C.

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 3:02 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> >and that the 7th byte of the
> >real-time tuning change (what they call "ll") is to specify how many
> >changes you want to make. The only problem is, all of your multiple
> >per-message changes must be made to the same note at once...?
>
> The changes go to different note numbers. It's a bit confusing
> the way they've written it. The block [kk xx yy zz] is repeated,
> once for each change. They say the [xx yy zz] block is repeated
> but in fact it's the [kk xx yy zz] block that gets repeated
> (kk being the note number).

OK, thanks. That makes a lot more sense.

> >So to implement what you're saying, it seems like we'd need to adopt a
> >paradigm whereby multiple real MIDI channels are abstracted to one
> >virtual patch, or something like that, so that in an ideal world
> >synths would know to not have the above thing happen. Do I understand
> >your idea correctly?
>
> Yeah, that's the idea. Most keyboards have (or used to) the ability
> to "split" the physical keys across multiple channels, so it isn't
> unprecedented.

OK, thanks for clearing that up. BTW, are you (and Graham) still
signed up for the microtools group? I'd like to continue the
discussion about MTS there, but I feel like it's distracting from the
main thread here.

-Mike

>OK, thanks for clearing that up. BTW, are you (and Graham) still
>signed up for the microtools group? I'd like to continue the
>discussion about MTS there, but I feel like it's distracting from the
>main thread here.

AFAIK everyone is still signed up and the group is active.
Haven't been over there myself for a long while...

-Carl

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 9:50 AM, nuorvala <jnylenius@...> wrote:
> >
> > "Both Finale and Sibelius are extremely awkward for microtonal notation
> > with playback, ie. in situations where non-standard accidentals and tunings
> > are used. Moreover, Sibelius has severe limitations in this area, as custom
> > symbols cannot be assigned Midi CC commands or pitchbend values. Something
> > along the lines of the dedicated microtonal notation application Mus2 would
> > be most welcome in the new application."
>
> Thanks Juhani, this is great! So your feeling is to ask for custom
> accidentals that specifically use custom CC's or pitchbends?

Well, that would be beat not having them (as in Sibelius where you can't assign playback functions to custom symbols). But it would be much better not to have to deal with those, and simply be able to define the tuning of the default scale (the nominals, ie. the notes without accidentals, preferably not even limited to 7 notes and repeating octaves) and cent values for the (custom) accidentals, the number of which should be unlimited. In fact, this is precisely how Mus2 works. So this would use whatever single-note tuning system Steinberg does for the internal VSTi's. This leaves the question of sending midi out to other software or hardware instruments.

In Finale, the way I get a Johnston-notated score to play back is as follows:

1. A hardware synth or a softsynth is tuned to the 5-limit C-major scale with some other tuning method than pitchbend: the internal system of the synth, .scl, .tun etc.
2.I've made a library of Johnston accidentals as 'Text Expressions' as these are the kinds of symbols in Finale to which you can attach a playback command - a pitch bend value in this case. I also define 5 'black notes' as either C# or Dd, Eb or D etc. (Johnston's # and b = 25/24), so that I can enter these notes from the midi keyboard without having to use the special accidentals. But if the default scale has a C#, I would have to write a Db by inserting a D and manually adding a special 25/24 flat.
3.Accidentals have to put in front of the notes manually with the mouse, although each can have its own key command, and the placement can be somewhat automated. But it does require a lot of manual graphical adjustment.
4. There's a 'pitch bend-to-zero' sign which has to be used after each chromatically altered note. It's visible on the screen but invisible in the printout.
5. Obviously, pitch bend affects the whole channel. Even so, polyphony, and with trickery with some Finale tools, chords, can be written on a single stave because in Finale, each stave can have up to four polyphonic layers, each of which can assigned its own midi channel. But in practice it's pretty awkward. Regardless of note layer, one has to manually assign the playback layer for each symbol. And writing chords is clumsy.
6. Pitch bend commands don't "add up" so it's not possible, for instance, to transpose a note by two syntonic commas by inserting two plus signs in front of it. Rather, one must have a dedicated 'double plus' symbol (++) for that. In a JI notation the number of symbols gets potentially very large as distant moves in the lattice call for big clusters of notation symbols and each combination must have its own text symbol with its own pitch bend value.

(2) (playback commands assigned to custom symbols) and (5) (multiple midi channels on one stave) are not possible in Sibelius, I'm told.

Custom staves (user-definable number of staff lines) were mentioned in this thread. They are possible in Finale and I assume in Sibelius, too. Mus2 has them, as well.

Mus2 is brilliant. For 31EDO, for example, you define the tuning (in cents, although for JI scales, ratios can also be used) for the notes of C major in 31EDO. Then you define your set of accidentals. For 31EDO you don't need any custom symbols, so you just pick #, b, the common quarter tone sharp and 1/4-tone flat signs, double sharps and flat, and possibly also 3/4 flat and sharp signs, and then define these in cents, so your sharp will be 77,419 cents, your "quarter-tone" symbols will be defined to stand for the diesis 38.7097 c, and the double sharp and flat = 4 diesis. The way you insert notes (in the present version) is that you choose the duration and the accidental for the note using key commands first and then insert the note by pressing C, D, E; F, G, A or B from the computer keyboard (no midi step entry yet). Then you use the arrow keys to move the note to the right octave if it wasn't in it.

Juhani

>
> > At present, Finale is much more capable with microtonal notation (with
> > playback) than Sibelius but it's quite cumbersome.
> > I've written scores in Johnston's notation in Finale with working
> > playback. This is impossible in Sibelius. Johnston notation is a good
> > example of a complicated situation for notation+playback, as the nominals
> > have varying step sizes.
>
> How does Finale work playback out?
>
> -Mike
>

My dear colleague, Juhani,

Utku has made his intention known to me to the effect that upcoming versions of Mus2 will soon feature soundfont integration. That is to say, one will be able to load an external soundfont to play non-factory preset sounds as desired.

I tend to imagine that Aaron Andrew Hunt could mayhap assist Utku with his superior knowledge on how to do this via Scordatura (discontinued?) or MicroSynth? Directly porting the Scordatura code into Mus2 perhaps? Just brainstorming here...

I also asked Utku to make it easier to define and notate irregular tunings & temperaments in Mus2. Take for instance my Yarman-24b tuning demonstrated here in the tanbur animation I made:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM

where one currently requires to define all the sharps and flats individually in reference to the natural noteheads for correct intervallic alterations in the Mus2 pitch palette. I wanted Utku to allow the user to specify the value of an accidental in reference to any of all the pre-set naturals, as shown in my graphic representation attempt attached below. The Turkish "tek tek belirt" translates to English as "specify individually (from each natural pitch)" - so that one may engrave a score in an irregular tuning as easily as one would a regular or equal temperament (in like manner to your exemplification for 31-EDO).

If sufficient desire is expressed in this direction, I'm sure Utku will find the time to implement the feature in Mus2, relieving us of the burden of specifying several accidentals bearing the same appearance but different values only to be used precisely vis-a-vis their respective natural noteheads (e.g. Yarman24b_EyGuliBagiEda.mus2 attached). Admittedly, this method of using redundant accidentals becomes cumbersome to follow if a piece is very long and intricately polyphonic.

Cordially,
Oz.

>> -------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> I uploaded to my Youtube Channel an annotated video of a bowed tanbur fret-highlight animation with in-sync audio that I prepared myself. This video with sound shows the Yarman-24 tuning fret positions and notation on my own bowed tanbur diagram. The animation with synchronized audio recording in the background represents both the fifths cycle of 17-tones and the 12-tone Modified Meantone Temperament core cycle, which yield the 22 pitches out of 24 per octave. The remaining blue colored pitches are extra-cyclic. It is meant to replace Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek while depending on the same array of accustomed microtonal accidentals. You can check it out below:
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM
>>
>> Please watch the movie full secreen in the highest quality original format for better discerning of all detail. Another soundless version of this video is accessible here:
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_FZlDGdalQ
>>
>> *
>>
>> Notice, some modifications to my original Yarman-24 tuning, which hereby is named Yarman-24b:
>>
>> 24-tone maqam music tuning with 12-tones tempered in the style of Rameau's modified meantone and 17 tones produced by cycle of super-pyth fifths
>> |
>>
>
> 0: 1/1
> 1: 84.360 cents
> 2: 145.112 cents
> 3: 192.180 cents
> 4: 9/8 perfect 2nd
> 5: 292.180 cents
> 6: 128/105
> 7: 364.735 cents
> 8: 5/4 major 3rd
> 9: 415.677 cents
> 10: 4/3 perfect 4th
> 11: 584.359 cents
> 12: 635.300 cents
> 13: 696.090 cents
> 14: 3/2 perfect 5th
> 15: 788.270 cents
> 16: 854.924 cents
> 17: 888.270 cents
> 18: 27/16
> 19: 16/9 Pythagorean minor 7th
> 20: 64/35
> 21: 1074.547 cents
> 22: 15/8 classic major 7th
> 23: 1125.488 cents
> 24: 2/1 1 octave
>
>>
>> In cents:
>>
>>
>
> 0: 1/1
> 1: 84.360 cents
> 2: 145.112 cents
> 3: 192.180 cents
> 4: 203.910 cents
> 5: 292.180 cents
> 6: 342.905 cents
> 7: 364.735 cents
> 8: 386.314 cents
> 9: 415.677 cents
> 10: 498.045 cents
> 11: 584.359 cents
> 12: 635.300 cents
> 13: 696.090 cents
> 14: 701.955 cents
> 15: 788.270 cents
> 16: 854.924 cents
> 17: 888.270 cents
> 18: 905.865 cents
> 19: 996.090 cents
> 20: 1044.860 cents
> 21: 1074.547 cents
> 22: 1088.269 cents
> 23: 1125.488 cents
> 24: 2/1
>
>> Cycle of 12 tones with cent values:
>>
>> 696.09000
>> 696.09000
>> 696.09000
>> 698.04372
>> 701.95500
>> 696.09000
>> 700.00128
>> 703.91000
>> 703.91000
>> 703.91000
>> 701.95500
>> 701.95500
>>
>> Cycle of 17 tones with cent values:
>>
>> 701.95500
>> 701.95500
>> 701.95500
>> 709.81171
>> 709.81171
>> 709.81171
>> 709.81171
>> 709.81171
>> 709.81171
>> 709.81171
>> 709.81171
>> 700.28100
>> 703.91000
>> 703.91000
>> 703.91000
>> 701.95500
>> 701.95500
>>
>>
>> INTERVAL Perde Notation
>>
>> 1/1 RAST C
>> 84.360 Nim Zengule C#/Db
>> 145.112 Zengule Cᵻ/Dƀ
>> 192.180 Dik Zengule Dd
>> 9/8 DUGAH D
>> 292.180 Kurdi D#/Eb
>> 128/105 Dik Kurdi Dᵻ/Eƀ
>> 364.735 Nerm Segah Ed
>> 5/4 SEGAH E
>> 415.677 Buselik E‡
>> 4/3 CHARGAH F
>> 584.359 Nim Hijaz F#/Gb
>> 635.300 Hijaz/Saba Fᵻ/Gƀ
>> 696.090 Dik Hijaz/Saba Gd
>> 3/2 NEVA G
>> 788.270 Nim Hisar G#/Ab
>> 854.924 Hisar Gᵻ/Aƀ
>> 888.270 Dik Hisar Ad
>> 27/16 HUSEYNI A 440hz
>> 16/9 Ajem A#/Bb
>> 64/35 Dik Ajem Aᵻ/Bƀ
>> 1074.547 Nerm Evdj Bd
>> 15/8 EVDJ B
>> 1125.488 Mahur B‡
>> 2/1 GERDANIYE C
>>
>> A bit more information on this tuning is given on the wikipedia page:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayli_tanbur
>>
>>

✩ ✩ ✩
www.ozanyarman.com

On Feb 23, 2013, at 2:02 AM, nuorvala wrote:

>
>
>
> Well, that would be beat not having them (as in Sibelius where you can't assign playback functions to custom symbols). But it would be much better not to have to deal with those, and simply be able to define the tuning of the default scale (the nominals, ie. the notes without accidentals, preferably not even limited to 7 notes and repeating octaves) and cent values for the (custom) accidentals, the number of which should be unlimited. In fact, this is precisely how Mus2 works. So this would use whatever single-note tuning system Steinberg does for the internal VSTi's. This leaves the question of sending midi out to other software or hardware instruments.
>
> In Finale, the way I get a Johnston-notated score to play back is as follows:
>
> 1. A hardware synth or a softsynth is tuned to the 5-limit C-major scale with some other tuning method than pitchbend: the internal system of the synth, .scl, .tun etc.
> 2.I've made a library of Johnston accidentals as 'Text Expressions' as these are the kinds of symbols in Finale to which you can attach a playback command - a pitch bend value in this case. I also define 5 'black notes' as either C# or Dd, Eb or D etc. (Johnston's # and b = 25/24), so that I can enter these notes from the midi keyboard without having to use the special accidentals. But if the default scale has a C#, I would have to write a Db by inserting a D and manually adding a special 25/24 flat.
> 3.Accidentals have to put in front of the notes manually with the mouse, although each can have its own key command, and the placement can be somewhat automated. But it does require a lot of manual graphical adjustment.
> 4. There's a 'pitch bend-to-zero' sign which has to be used after each chromatically altered note. It's visible on the screen but invisible in the printout.
> 5. Obviously, pitch bend affects the whole channel. Even so, polyphony, and with trickery with some Finale tools, chords, can be written on a single stave because in Finale, each stave can have up to four polyphonic layers, each of which can assigned its own midi channel. But in practice it's pretty awkward. Regardless of note layer, one has to manually assign the playback layer for each symbol. And writing chords is clumsy.
> 6. Pitch bend commands don't "add up" so it's not possible, for instance, to transpose a note by two syntonic commas by inserting two plus signs in front of it. Rather, one must have a dedicated 'double plus' symbol (++) for that. In a JI notation the number of symbols gets potentially very large as distant moves in the lattice call for big clusters of notation symbols and each combination must have its own text symbol with its own pitch bend value.
>
>
> (2) (playback commands assigned to custom symbols) and (5) (multiple midi channels on one stave) are not possible in Sibelius, I'm told.
>
> Custom staves (user-definable number of staff lines) were mentioned in this thread. They are possible in Finale and I assume in Sibelius, too. Mus2 has them, as well.
>
> Mus2 is brilliant. For 31EDO, for example, you define the tuning (in cents, although for JI scales, ratios can also be used) for the notes of C major in 31EDO. Then you define your set of accidentals. For 31EDO you don't need any custom symbols, so you just pick #, b, the common quarter tone sharp and 1/4-tone flat signs, double sharps and flat, and possibly also 3/4 flat and sharp signs, and then define these in cents, so your sharp will be 77,419 cents, your "quarter-tone" symbols will be defined to stand for the diesis 38.7097 c, and the double sharp and flat = 4 diesis. The way you insert notes (in the present version) is that you choose the duration and the accidental for the note using key commands first and then insert the note by pressing C, D, E; F, G, A or B from the computer keyboard (no midi step entry yet). Then you use the arrow keys to move the note to the right octave if it wasn't in it.
>
>
> Juhani

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Dear Oz,

>
> Utku has made his intention known to me to the effect that upcoming versions of Mus2 will soon feature soundfont integration. That is to say, one will be able to load an external soundfont to play non-factory preset sounds as desired.
>
> I tend to imagine that Aaron Andrew Hunt could mayhap assist Utku with his superior knowledge on how to do this via Scordatura (discontinued?) or MicroSynth? Directly porting the Scordatura code into Mus2 perhaps? Just brainstorming here...

Yes, I heard that soundfont support is coming which is excellent. Aaron's microsynth has it, as well as his CSE.

>
> I also asked Utku to make it easier to define and notate irregular tunings & temperaments in Mus2. Take for instance my Yarman-24b tuning demonstrated here in the tanbur animation I made:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM
>
> where one currently requires to define all the sharps and flats individually in reference to the natural noteheads for correct intervallic alterations in the Mus2 pitch palette. I wanted Utku to allow the user to specify the value of an accidental in reference to any of all the pre-set naturals, as shown in my graphic representation attempt attached below. The Turkish "tek tek belirt" translates to English as "specify individually (from each natural pitch)" - so that one may engrave a score in an irregular tuning as easily as one would a regular or equal temperament (in like manner to your exemplification for 31-EDO).

Do you mean that a flat sign, for example, would produce a different alteration in pitch if it's attached to, say, E, instead of G? Interesting.
Another thing that would be useful, and that I have mentioned to Utku, would be the possibility to attach several accidentals to one notehead, so that in playback, the cent values of each of them would be added together. This would be important in JI notation systems where moves on the lattice are shown by adding comma signs to the accidentals. Toby Twining's score for his masterpiece Chrysalid Requiem has accidentals such as 77777#++ etc. (his is an extreme example but the number of signs in JI notation quickly grows).

Juhani

>
> If sufficient desire is expressed in this direction, I'm sure Utku will find the time to implement the feature in Mus2, relieving us of the burden of specifying several accidentals bearing the same appearance but different values only to be used precisely vis-a-vis their respective natural noteheads (e.g. Yarman24b_EyGuliBagiEda.mus2 attached). Admittedly, this method of using redundant accidentals becomes cumbersome to follow if a piece is very long and intricately polyphonic.
>
> Cordially,
> Oz.
>
> >> -------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>
> >> Dear colleagues,
> >>
> >> I uploaded to my Youtube Channel an annotated video of a bowed tanbur fret-highlight animation with in-sync audio that I prepared myself. This video with sound shows the Yarman-24 tuning fret positions and notation on my own bowed tanbur diagram. The animation with synchronized audio recording in the background represents both the fifths cycle of 17-tones and the 12-tone Modified Meantone Temperament core cycle, which yield the 22 pitches out of 24 per octave. The remaining blue colored pitches are extra-cyclic. It is meant to replace Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek while depending on the same array of accustomed microtonal accidentals. You can check it out below:
> >>
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM
> >>
> >> Please watch the movie full secreen in the highest quality original format for better discerning of all detail. Another soundless version of this video is accessible here:
> >>
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_FZlDGdalQ
> >>
> >> *
> >>
> >> Notice, some modifications to my original Yarman-24 tuning, which hereby is named Yarman-24b:
> >>
> >> 24-tone maqam music tuning with 12-tones tempered in the style of Rameau's modified meantone and 17 tones produced by cycle of super-pyth fifths
> >> |
> >>
> >
> > 0: 1/1
> > 1: 84.360 cents
> > 2: 145.112 cents
> > 3: 192.180 cents
> > 4: 9/8 perfect 2nd
> > 5: 292.180 cents
> > 6: 128/105
> > 7: 364.735 cents
> > 8: 5/4 major 3rd
> > 9: 415.677 cents
> > 10: 4/3 perfect 4th
> > 11: 584.359 cents
> > 12: 635.300 cents
> > 13: 696.090 cents
> > 14: 3/2 perfect 5th
> > 15: 788.270 cents
> > 16: 854.924 cents
> > 17: 888.270 cents
> > 18: 27/16
> > 19: 16/9 Pythagorean minor 7th
> > 20: 64/35
> > 21: 1074.547 cents
> > 22: 15/8 classic major 7th
> > 23: 1125.488 cents
> > 24: 2/1 1 octave
> >
> >>
> >> In cents:
> >>
> >>
> >
> > 0: 1/1
> > 1: 84.360 cents
> > 2: 145.112 cents
> > 3: 192.180 cents
> > 4: 203.910 cents
> > 5: 292.180 cents
> > 6: 342.905 cents
> > 7: 364.735 cents
> > 8: 386.314 cents
> > 9: 415.677 cents
> > 10: 498.045 cents
> > 11: 584.359 cents
> > 12: 635.300 cents
> > 13: 696.090 cents
> > 14: 701.955 cents
> > 15: 788.270 cents
> > 16: 854.924 cents
> > 17: 888.270 cents
> > 18: 905.865 cents
> > 19: 996.090 cents
> > 20: 1044.860 cents
> > 21: 1074.547 cents
> > 22: 1088.269 cents
> > 23: 1125.488 cents
> > 24: 2/1
> >
> >> Cycle of 12 tones with cent values:
> >>
> >> 696.09000
> >> 696.09000
> >> 696.09000
> >> 698.04372
> >> 701.95500
> >> 696.09000
> >> 700.00128
> >> 703.91000
> >> 703.91000
> >> 703.91000
> >> 701.95500
> >> 701.95500
> >>
> >> Cycle of 17 tones with cent values:
> >>
> >> 701.95500
> >> 701.95500
> >> 701.95500
> >> 709.81171
> >> 709.81171
> >> 709.81171
> >> 709.81171
> >> 709.81171
> >> 709.81171
> >> 709.81171
> >> 709.81171
> >> 700.28100
> >> 703.91000
> >> 703.91000
> >> 703.91000
> >> 701.95500
> >> 701.95500
> >>
> >>
> >> INTERVAL Perde Notation
> >>
> >> 1/1 RAST C
> >> 84.360 Nim Zengule C#/Db
> >> 145.112 Zengule Cᵻ/Dƀ
> >> 192.180 Dik Zengule Dd
> >> 9/8 DUGAH D
> >> 292.180 Kurdi D#/Eb
> >> 128/105 Dik Kurdi Dᵻ/Eƀ
> >> 364.735 Nerm Segah Ed
> >> 5/4 SEGAH E
> >> 415.677 Buselik E‡
> >> 4/3 CHARGAH F
> >> 584.359 Nim Hijaz F#/Gb
> >> 635.300 Hijaz/Saba Fᵻ/Gƀ
> >> 696.090 Dik Hijaz/Saba Gd
> >> 3/2 NEVA G
> >> 788.270 Nim Hisar G#/Ab
> >> 854.924 Hisar Gᵻ/Aƀ
> >> 888.270 Dik Hisar Ad
> >> 27/16 HUSEYNI A 440hz
> >> 16/9 Ajem A#/Bb
> >> 64/35 Dik Ajem Aᵻ/Bƀ
> >> 1074.547 Nerm Evdj Bd
> >> 15/8 EVDJ B
> >> 1125.488 Mahur B‡
> >> 2/1 GERDANIYE C
> >>
> >> A bit more information on this tuning is given on the wikipedia page:
> >>
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayli_tanbur
> >>
> >>
>
>
> ✩ ✩ ✩
> www.ozanyarman.com
>
> On Feb 23, 2013, at 2:02 AM, nuorvala wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Well, that would be beat not having them (as in Sibelius where you can't assign playback functions to custom symbols). But it would be much better not to have to deal with those, and simply be able to define the tuning of the default scale (the nominals, ie. the notes without accidentals, preferably not even limited to 7 notes and repeating octaves) and cent values for the (custom) accidentals, the number of which should be unlimited. In fact, this is precisely how Mus2 works. So this would use whatever single-note tuning system Steinberg does for the internal VSTi's. This leaves the question of sending midi out to other software or hardware instruments.
> >
> > In Finale, the way I get a Johnston-notated score to play back is as follows:
> >
> > 1. A hardware synth or a softsynth is tuned to the 5-limit C-major scale with some other tuning method than pitchbend: the internal system of the synth, .scl, .tun etc.
> > 2.I've made a library of Johnston accidentals as 'Text Expressions' as these are the kinds of symbols in Finale to which you can attach a playback command - a pitch bend value in this case. I also define 5 'black notes' as either C# or Dd, Eb or D etc. (Johnston's # and b = 25/24), so that I can enter these notes from the midi keyboard without having to use the special accidentals. But if the default scale has a C#, I would have to write a Db by inserting a D and manually adding a special 25/24 flat.
> > 3.Accidentals have to put in front of the notes manually with the mouse, although each can have its own key command, and the placement can be somewhat automated. But it does require a lot of manual graphical adjustment.
> > 4. There's a 'pitch bend-to-zero' sign which has to be used after each chromatically altered note. It's visible on the screen but invisible in the printout.
> > 5. Obviously, pitch bend affects the whole channel. Even so, polyphony, and with trickery with some Finale tools, chords, can be written on a single stave because in Finale, each stave can have up to four polyphonic layers, each of which can assigned its own midi channel. But in practice it's pretty awkward. Regardless of note layer, one has to manually assign the playback layer for each symbol. And writing chords is clumsy.
> > 6. Pitch bend commands don't "add up" so it's not possible, for instance, to transpose a note by two syntonic commas by inserting two plus signs in front of it. Rather, one must have a dedicated 'double plus' symbol (++) for that. In a JI notation the number of symbols gets potentially very large as distant moves in the lattice call for big clusters of notation symbols and each combination must have its own text symbol with its own pitch bend value.
> >
> >
> > (2) (playback commands assigned to custom symbols) and (5) (multiple midi channels on one stave) are not possible in Sibelius, I'm told.
> >
> > Custom staves (user-definable number of staff lines) were mentioned in this thread. They are possible in Finale and I assume in Sibelius, too. Mus2 has them, as well.
> >
> > Mus2 is brilliant. For 31EDO, for example, you define the tuning (in cents, although for JI scales, ratios can also be used) for the notes of C major in 31EDO. Then you define your set of accidentals. For 31EDO you don't need any custom symbols, so you just pick #, b, the common quarter tone sharp and 1/4-tone flat signs, double sharps and flat, and possibly also 3/4 flat and sharp signs, and then define these in cents, so your sharp will be 77,419 cents, your "quarter-tone" symbols will be defined to stand for the diesis 38.7097 c, and the double sharp and flat = 4 diesis. The way you insert notes (in the present version) is that you choose the duration and the accidental for the note using key commands first and then insert the note by pressing C, D, E; F, G, A or B from the computer keyboard (no midi step entry yet). Then you use the arrow keys to move the note to the right octave if it wasn't in it.
> >
> >
> > Juhani
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Juhani,

Yes, I mean exactly just what you said:

> Do you mean that a flat sign, for example, would produce a different alteration in pitch if it's attached to, say, E, instead of G? Interesting.

You can see in the Mus2 file I had previously attached, that (e.g.) 5 "comma flats" which all appear the same, as well as 2 "comma sharps", etc... have but all different cent values - only to be used with indicated natural noteheads. Using a "specify individually" option in the future, one need not define so many same-appearing but different-sounding accidentals. Instead, a single accidental would then alter, say, E differently from G, etc... as defined by the user.

As for your suggestion:

> Another thing that would be useful, and that I have mentioned to Utku, would be the possibility to attach several accidentals to one notehead, so that in playback, the cent values of each of them would be added together. This would be important in JI notation systems where moves on the lattice are shown by adding comma signs to the accidentals. Toby Twining's score for his masterpiece Chrysalid Requiem has accidentals such as 77777#++ etc. (his is an extreme example but the number of signs in JI notation quickly grows).

This would surely work just as good with my 79 MOS 159-tET depending on a mixed sagittal as explained here toward the bottom of the page:

http://www.ozanyarman.com/79toneqanun.html

A Mixed Sagittal notation example is attached to this message.

Cordially,
Oz.

✩ ✩ ✩
www.ozanyarman.com

On Feb 24, 2013, at 1:18 AM, nuorvala wrote:

> Dear Oz,
>
>>
>> Utku has made his intention known to me to the effect that upcoming versions of Mus2 will soon feature soundfont integration. That is to say, one will be able to load an external soundfont to play non-factory preset sounds as desired.
>>
>> I tend to imagine that Aaron Andrew Hunt could mayhap assist Utku with his superior knowledge on how to do this via Scordatura (discontinued?) or MicroSynth? Directly porting the Scordatura code into Mus2 perhaps? Just brainstorming here...
>
>
> Yes, I heard that soundfont support is coming which is excellent. Aaron's microsynth has it, as well as his CSE.
>
>>
>> I also asked Utku to make it easier to define and notate irregular tunings & temperaments in Mus2. Take for instance my Yarman-24b tuning demonstrated here in the tanbur animation I made:
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM
>>
>> where one currently requires to define all the sharps and flats individually in reference to the natural noteheads for correct intervallic alterations in the Mus2 pitch palette. I wanted Utku to allow the user to specify the value of an accidental in reference to any of all the pre-set naturals, as shown in my graphic representation attempt attached below. The Turkish "tek tek belirt" translates to English as "specify individually (from each natural pitch)" - so that one may engrave a score in an irregular tuning as easily as one would a regular or equal temperament (in like manner to your exemplification for 31-EDO).
>
> Do you mean that a flat sign, for example, would produce a different alteration in pitch if it's attached to, say, E, instead of G? Interesting.
> Another thing that would be useful, and that I have mentioned to Utku, would be the possibility to attach several accidentals to one notehead, so that in playback, the cent values of each of them would be added together. This would be important in JI notation systems where moves on the lattice are shown by adding comma signs to the accidentals. Toby Twining's score for his masterpiece Chrysalid Requiem has accidentals such as 77777#++ etc. (his is an extreme example but the number of signs in JI notation quickly grows).
>
> Juhani
>
>
>
>>
>> If sufficient desire is expressed in this direction, I'm sure Utku will find the time to implement the feature in Mus2, relieving us of the burden of specifying several accidentals bearing the same appearance but different values only to be used precisely vis-a-vis their respective natural noteheads (e.g. Yarman24b_EyGuliBagiEda.mus2 attached). Admittedly, this method of using redundant accidentals becomes cumbersome to follow if a piece is very long and intricately polyphonic.
>>
>> Cordially,
>> Oz.
>>
>>>> -------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> I uploaded to my Youtube Channel an annotated video of a bowed tanbur fret-highlight animation with in-sync audio that I prepared myself. This video with sound shows the Yarman-24 tuning fret positions and notation on my own bowed tanbur diagram. The animation with synchronized audio recording in the background represents both the fifths cycle of 17-tones and the 12-tone Modified Meantone Temperament core cycle, which yield the 22 pitches out of 24 per octave. The remaining blue colored pitches are extra-cyclic. It is meant to replace Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek while depending on the same array of accustomed microtonal accidentals. You can check it out below:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM
>>>>
>>>> Please watch the movie full secreen in the highest quality original format for better discerning of all detail. Another soundless version of this video is accessible here:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_FZlDGdalQ
>>>>
>>>> *
>>>>
>>>> Notice, some modifications to my original Yarman-24 tuning, which hereby is named Yarman-24b:
>>>>
>>>> 24-tone maqam music tuning with 12-tones tempered in the style of Rameau's modified meantone and 17 tones produced by cycle of super-pyth fifths
>>>> |
>>>>
>>>
>>> 0: 1/1
>>> 1: 84.360 cents
>>> 2: 145.112 cents
>>> 3: 192.180 cents
>>> 4: 9/8 perfect 2nd
>>> 5: 292.180 cents
>>> 6: 128/105
>>> 7: 364.735 cents
>>> 8: 5/4 major 3rd
>>> 9: 415.677 cents
>>> 10: 4/3 perfect 4th
>>> 11: 584.359 cents
>>> 12: 635.300 cents
>>> 13: 696.090 cents
>>> 14: 3/2 perfect 5th
>>> 15: 788.270 cents
>>> 16: 854.924 cents
>>> 17: 888.270 cents
>>> 18: 27/16
>>> 19: 16/9 Pythagorean minor 7th
>>> 20: 64/35
>>> 21: 1074.547 cents
>>> 22: 15/8 classic major 7th
>>> 23: 1125.488 cents
>>> 24: 2/1 1 octave
>>>
>>>>
>>>> In cents:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> 0: 1/1
>>> 1: 84.360 cents
>>> 2: 145.112 cents
>>> 3: 192.180 cents
>>> 4: 203.910 cents
>>> 5: 292.180 cents
>>> 6: 342.905 cents
>>> 7: 364.735 cents
>>> 8: 386.314 cents
>>> 9: 415.677 cents
>>> 10: 498.045 cents
>>> 11: 584.359 cents
>>> 12: 635.300 cents
>>> 13: 696.090 cents
>>> 14: 701.955 cents
>>> 15: 788.270 cents
>>> 16: 854.924 cents
>>> 17: 888.270 cents
>>> 18: 905.865 cents
>>> 19: 996.090 cents
>>> 20: 1044.860 cents
>>> 21: 1074.547 cents
>>> 22: 1088.269 cents
>>> 23: 1125.488 cents
>>> 24: 2/1
>>>
>>>> Cycle of 12 tones with cent values:
>>>>
>>>> 696.09000
>>>> 696.09000
>>>> 696.09000
>>>> 698.04372
>>>> 701.95500
>>>> 696.09000
>>>> 700.00128
>>>> 703.91000
>>>> 703.91000
>>>> 703.91000
>>>> 701.95500
>>>> 701.95500
>>>>
>>>> Cycle of 17 tones with cent values:
>>>>
>>>> 701.95500
>>>> 701.95500
>>>> 701.95500
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 709.81171
>>>> 700.28100
>>>> 703.91000
>>>> 703.91000
>>>> 703.91000
>>>> 701.95500
>>>> 701.95500
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> INTERVAL Perde Notation
>>>>
>>>> 1/1 RAST C
>>>> 84.360 Nim Zengule C#/Db
>>>> 145.112 Zengule Cáµ»/DÆ€
>>>> 192.180 Dik Zengule Dd
>>>> 9/8 DUGAH D
>>>> 292.180 Kurdi D#/Eb
>>>> 128/105 Dik Kurdi Dáµ»/EÆ€
>>>> 364.735 Nerm Segah Ed
>>>> 5/4 SEGAH E
>>>> 415.677 Buselik E‡
>>>> 4/3 CHARGAH F
>>>> 584.359 Nim Hijaz F#/Gb
>>>> 635.300 Hijaz/Saba Fáµ»/GÆ€
>>>> 696.090 Dik Hijaz/Saba Gd
>>>> 3/2 NEVA G
>>>> 788.270 Nim Hisar G#/Ab
>>>> 854.924 Hisar Gáµ»/AÆ€
>>>> 888.270 Dik Hisar Ad
>>>> 27/16 HUSEYNI A 440hz
>>>> 16/9 Ajem A#/Bb
>>>> 64/35 Dik Ajem Aáµ»/BÆ€
>>>> 1074.547 Nerm Evdj Bd
>>>> 15/8 EVDJ B
>>>> 1125.488 Mahur B‡
>>>> 2/1 GERDANIYE C
>>>>
>>>> A bit more information on this tuning is given on the wikipedia page:
>>>>
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayli_tanbur
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>> ✩ ✩ ✩
>> www.ozanyarman.com
>>
>> On Feb 23, 2013, at 2:02 AM, nuorvala wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, that would be beat not having them (as in Sibelius where you can't assign playback functions to custom symbols). But it would be much better not to have to deal with those, and simply be able to define the tuning of the default scale (the nominals, ie. the notes without accidentals, preferably not even limited to 7 notes and repeating octaves) and cent values for the (custom) accidentals, the number of which should be unlimited. In fact, this is precisely how Mus2 works. So this would use whatever single-note tuning system Steinberg does for the internal VSTi's. This leaves the question of sending midi out to other software or hardware instruments.
>>>
>>> In Finale, the way I get a Johnston-notated score to play back is as follows:
>>>
>>> 1. A hardware synth or a softsynth is tuned to the 5-limit C-major scale with some other tuning method than pitchbend: the internal system of the synth, .scl, .tun etc.
>>> 2.I've made a library of Johnston accidentals as 'Text Expressions' as these are the kinds of symbols in Finale to which you can attach a playback command - a pitch bend value in this case. I also define 5 'black notes' as either C# or Dd, Eb or D etc. (Johnston's # and b = 25/24), so that I can enter these notes from the midi keyboard without having to use the special accidentals. But if the default scale has a C#, I would have to write a Db by inserting a D and manually adding a special 25/24 flat.
>>> 3.Accidentals have to put in front of the notes manually with the mouse, although each can have its own key command, and the placement can be somewhat automated. But it does require a lot of manual graphical adjustment.
>>> 4. There's a 'pitch bend-to-zero' sign which has to be used after each chromatically altered note. It's visible on the screen but invisible in the printout.
>>> 5. Obviously, pitch bend affects the whole channel. Even so, polyphony, and with trickery with some Finale tools, chords, can be written on a single stave because in Finale, each stave can have up to four polyphonic layers, each of which can assigned its own midi channel. But in practice it's pretty awkward. Regardless of note layer, one has to manually assign the playback layer for each symbol. And writing chords is clumsy.
>>> 6. Pitch bend commands don't "add up" so it's not possible, for instance, to transpose a note by two syntonic commas by inserting two plus signs in front of it. Rather, one must have a dedicated 'double plus' symbol (++) for that. In a JI notation the number of symbols gets potentially very large as distant moves in the lattice call for big clusters of notation symbols and each combination must have its own text symbol with its own pitch bend value.
>>>
>>>
>>> (2) (playback commands assigned to custom symbols) and (5) (multiple midi channels on one stave) are not possible in Sibelius, I'm told.
>>>
>>> Custom staves (user-definable number of staff lines) were mentioned in this thread. They are possible in Finale and I assume in Sibelius, too. Mus2 has them, as well.
>>>
>>> Mus2 is brilliant. For 31EDO, for example, you define the tuning (in cents, although for JI scales, ratios can also be used) for the notes of C major in 31EDO. Then you define your set of accidentals. For 31EDO you don't need any custom symbols, so you just pick #, b, the common quarter tone sharp and 1/4-tone flat signs, double sharps and flat, and possibly also 3/4 flat and sharp signs, and then define these in cents, so your sharp will be 77,419 cents, your "quarter-tone" symbols will be defined to stand for the diesis 38.7097 c, and the double sharp and flat = 4 diesis. The way you insert notes (in the present version) is that you choose the duration and the accidental for the note using key commands first and then insert the note by pressing C, D, E; F, G, A or B from the computer keyboard (no midi step entry yet). Then you use the arrow keys to move the note to the right octave if it wasn't in it.
>>>
>>>
>>> Juhani
>>
>>
>> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Can't find the attachments, so I missed the previous mus2 file, too. But I did download the Sagittal 159et file from your page, and yes, precisely, with symbols that "add up", only a small number of accidentals would be necessary in the palette.

Juhani

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@...> wrote:
>
> Juhani,
>
> Yes, I mean exactly just what you said:
>
> > Do you mean that a flat sign, for example, would produce a different alteration in pitch if it's attached to, say, E, instead of G? Interesting.
>
>
> You can see in the Mus2 file I had previously attached, that (e.g.) 5 "comma flats" which all appear the same, as well as 2 "comma sharps", etc... have but all different cent values - only to be used with indicated natural noteheads. Using a "specify individually" option in the future, one need not define so many same-appearing but different-sounding accidentals. Instead, a single accidental would then alter, say, E differently from G, etc... as defined by the user.
>
> As for your suggestion:
>
> > Another thing that would be useful, and that I have mentioned to Utku, would be the possibility to attach several accidentals to one notehead, so that in playback, the cent values of each of them would be added together. This would be important in JI notation systems where moves on the lattice are shown by adding comma signs to the accidentals. Toby Twining's score for his masterpiece Chrysalid Requiem has accidentals such as 77777#++ etc. (his is an extreme example but the number of signs in JI notation quickly grows).
>
>
> This would surely work just as good with my 79 MOS 159-tET depending on a mixed sagittal as explained here toward the bottom of the page:
>
> http://www.ozanyarman.com/79toneqanun.html
>
> A Mixed Sagittal notation example is attached to this message.
>
> Cordially,
> Oz.
>
> ✩ ✩ ✩
> www.ozanyarman.com
>
> On Feb 24, 2013, at 1:18 AM, nuorvala wrote:
>
> > Dear Oz,
> >
> >>
> >> Utku has made his intention known to me to the effect that upcoming versions of Mus2 will soon feature soundfont integration. That is to say, one will be able to load an external soundfont to play non-factory preset sounds as desired.
> >>
> >> I tend to imagine that Aaron Andrew Hunt could mayhap assist Utku with his superior knowledge on how to do this via Scordatura (discontinued?) or MicroSynth? Directly porting the Scordatura code into Mus2 perhaps? Just brainstorming here...
> >
> >
> > Yes, I heard that soundfont support is coming which is excellent. Aaron's microsynth has it, as well as his CSE.
> >
> >>
> >> I also asked Utku to make it easier to define and notate irregular tunings & temperaments in Mus2. Take for instance my Yarman-24b tuning demonstrated here in the tanbur animation I made:
> >>
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM
> >>
> >> where one currently requires to define all the sharps and flats individually in reference to the natural noteheads for correct intervallic alterations in the Mus2 pitch palette. I wanted Utku to allow the user to specify the value of an accidental in reference to any of all the pre-set naturals, as shown in my graphic representation attempt attached below. The Turkish "tek tek belirt" translates to English as "specify individually (from each natural pitch)" - so that one may engrave a score in an irregular tuning as easily as one would a regular or equal temperament (in like manner to your exemplification for 31-EDO).
> >
> > Do you mean that a flat sign, for example, would produce a different alteration in pitch if it's attached to, say, E, instead of G? Interesting.
> > Another thing that would be useful, and that I have mentioned to Utku, would be the possibility to attach several accidentals to one notehead, so that in playback, the cent values of each of them would be added together. This would be important in JI notation systems where moves on the lattice are shown by adding comma signs to the accidentals. Toby Twining's score for his masterpiece Chrysalid Requiem has accidentals such as 77777#++ etc. (his is an extreme example but the number of signs in JI notation quickly grows).
> >
> > Juhani
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >> If sufficient desire is expressed in this direction, I'm sure Utku will find the time to implement the feature in Mus2, relieving us of the burden of specifying several accidentals bearing the same appearance but different values only to be used precisely vis-a-vis their respective natural noteheads (e.g. Yarman24b_EyGuliBagiEda.mus2 attached). Admittedly, this method of using redundant accidentals becomes cumbersome to follow if a piece is very long and intricately polyphonic.
> >>
> >> Cordially,
> >> Oz.
> >>
> >>>> -------------------------------------------
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Dear colleagues,
> >>>>
> >>>> I uploaded to my Youtube Channel an annotated video of a bowed tanbur fret-highlight animation with in-sync audio that I prepared myself. This video with sound shows the Yarman-24 tuning fret positions and notation on my own bowed tanbur diagram. The animation with synchronized audio recording in the background represents both the fifths cycle of 17-tones and the 12-tone Modified Meantone Temperament core cycle, which yield the 22 pitches out of 24 per octave. The remaining blue colored pitches are extra-cyclic. It is meant to replace Arel-Ezgi-Uzdilek while depending on the same array of accustomed microtonal accidentals. You can check it out below:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1elrsk5QM
> >>>>
> >>>> Please watch the movie full secreen in the highest quality original format for better discerning of all detail. Another soundless version of this video is accessible here:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_FZlDGdalQ
> >>>>
> >>>> *
> >>>>
> >>>> Notice, some modifications to my original Yarman-24 tuning, which hereby is named Yarman-24b:
> >>>>
> >>>> 24-tone maqam music tuning with 12-tones tempered in the style of Rameau's modified meantone and 17 tones produced by cycle of super-pyth fifths
> >>>> |
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> 0: 1/1
> >>> 1: 84.360 cents
> >>> 2: 145.112 cents
> >>> 3: 192.180 cents
> >>> 4: 9/8 perfect 2nd
> >>> 5: 292.180 cents
> >>> 6: 128/105
> >>> 7: 364.735 cents
> >>> 8: 5/4 major 3rd
> >>> 9: 415.677 cents
> >>> 10: 4/3 perfect 4th
> >>> 11: 584.359 cents
> >>> 12: 635.300 cents
> >>> 13: 696.090 cents
> >>> 14: 3/2 perfect 5th
> >>> 15: 788.270 cents
> >>> 16: 854.924 cents
> >>> 17: 888.270 cents
> >>> 18: 27/16
> >>> 19: 16/9 Pythagorean minor 7th
> >>> 20: 64/35
> >>> 21: 1074.547 cents
> >>> 22: 15/8 classic major 7th
> >>> 23: 1125.488 cents
> >>> 24: 2/1 1 octave
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> In cents:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> 0: 1/1
> >>> 1: 84.360 cents
> >>> 2: 145.112 cents
> >>> 3: 192.180 cents
> >>> 4: 203.910 cents
> >>> 5: 292.180 cents
> >>> 6: 342.905 cents
> >>> 7: 364.735 cents
> >>> 8: 386.314 cents
> >>> 9: 415.677 cents
> >>> 10: 498.045 cents
> >>> 11: 584.359 cents
> >>> 12: 635.300 cents
> >>> 13: 696.090 cents
> >>> 14: 701.955 cents
> >>> 15: 788.270 cents
> >>> 16: 854.924 cents
> >>> 17: 888.270 cents
> >>> 18: 905.865 cents
> >>> 19: 996.090 cents
> >>> 20: 1044.860 cents
> >>> 21: 1074.547 cents
> >>> 22: 1088.269 cents
> >>> 23: 1125.488 cents
> >>> 24: 2/1
> >>>
> >>>> Cycle of 12 tones with cent values:
> >>>>
> >>>> 696.09000
> >>>> 696.09000
> >>>> 696.09000
> >>>> 698.04372
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>> 696.09000
> >>>> 700.00128
> >>>> 703.91000
> >>>> 703.91000
> >>>> 703.91000
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>>
> >>>> Cycle of 17 tones with cent values:
> >>>>
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 709.81171
> >>>> 700.28100
> >>>> 703.91000
> >>>> 703.91000
> >>>> 703.91000
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>> 701.95500
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> INTERVAL Perde Notation
> >>>>
> >>>> 1/1 RAST C
> >>>> 84.360 Nim Zengule C#/Db
> >>>> 145.112 Zengule Cáµ»/DÆ€
> >>>> 192.180 Dik Zengule Dd
> >>>> 9/8 DUGAH D
> >>>> 292.180 Kurdi D#/Eb
> >>>> 128/105 Dik Kurdi Dáµ»/EÆ€
> >>>> 364.735 Nerm Segah Ed
> >>>> 5/4 SEGAH E
> >>>> 415.677 Buselik E‡
> >>>> 4/3 CHARGAH F
> >>>> 584.359 Nim Hijaz F#/Gb
> >>>> 635.300 Hijaz/Saba Fáµ»/GÆ€
> >>>> 696.090 Dik Hijaz/Saba Gd
> >>>> 3/2 NEVA G
> >>>> 788.270 Nim Hisar G#/Ab
> >>>> 854.924 Hisar Gáµ»/AÆ€
> >>>> 888.270 Dik Hisar Ad
> >>>> 27/16 HUSEYNI A 440hz
> >>>> 16/9 Ajem A#/Bb
> >>>> 64/35 Dik Ajem Aáµ»/BÆ€
> >>>> 1074.547 Nerm Evdj Bd
> >>>> 15/8 EVDJ B
> >>>> 1125.488 Mahur B‡
> >>>> 2/1 GERDANIYE C
> >>>>
> >>>> A bit more information on this tuning is given on the wikipedia page:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayli_tanbur
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>
> >>
> >> âÅ"© âÅ"© âÅ"©
> >> www.ozanyarman.com
> >>
> >> On Feb 23, 2013, at 2:02 AM, nuorvala wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Well, that would be beat not having them (as in Sibelius where you can't assign playback functions to custom symbols). But it would be much better not to have to deal with those, and simply be able to define the tuning of the default scale (the nominals, ie. the notes without accidentals, preferably not even limited to 7 notes and repeating octaves) and cent values for the (custom) accidentals, the number of which should be unlimited. In fact, this is precisely how Mus2 works. So this would use whatever single-note tuning system Steinberg does for the internal VSTi's. This leaves the question of sending midi out to other software or hardware instruments.
> >>>
> >>> In Finale, the way I get a Johnston-notated score to play back is as follows:
> >>>
> >>> 1. A hardware synth or a softsynth is tuned to the 5-limit C-major scale with some other tuning method than pitchbend: the internal system of the synth, .scl, .tun etc.
> >>> 2.I've made a library of Johnston accidentals as 'Text Expressions' as these are the kinds of symbols in Finale to which you can attach a playback command - a pitch bend value in this case. I also define 5 'black notes' as either C# or Dd, Eb or D etc. (Johnston's # and b = 25/24), so that I can enter these notes from the midi keyboard without having to use the special accidentals. But if the default scale has a C#, I would have to write a Db by inserting a D and manually adding a special 25/24 flat.
> >>> 3.Accidentals have to put in front of the notes manually with the mouse, although each can have its own key command, and the placement can be somewhat automated. But it does require a lot of manual graphical adjustment.
> >>> 4. There's a 'pitch bend-to-zero' sign which has to be used after each chromatically altered note. It's visible on the screen but invisible in the printout.
> >>> 5. Obviously, pitch bend affects the whole channel. Even so, polyphony, and with trickery with some Finale tools, chords, can be written on a single stave because in Finale, each stave can have up to four polyphonic layers, each of which can assigned its own midi channel. But in practice it's pretty awkward. Regardless of note layer, one has to manually assign the playback layer for each symbol. And writing chords is clumsy.
> >>> 6. Pitch bend commands don't "add up" so it's not possible, for instance, to transpose a note by two syntonic commas by inserting two plus signs in front of it. Rather, one must have a dedicated 'double plus' symbol (++) for that. In a JI notation the number of symbols gets potentially very large as distant moves in the lattice call for big clusters of notation symbols and each combination must have its own text symbol with its own pitch bend value.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> (2) (playback commands assigned to custom symbols) and (5) (multiple midi channels on one stave) are not possible in Sibelius, I'm told.
> >>>
> >>> Custom staves (user-definable number of staff lines) were mentioned in this thread. They are possible in Finale and I assume in Sibelius, too. Mus2 has them, as well.
> >>>
> >>> Mus2 is brilliant. For 31EDO, for example, you define the tuning (in cents, although for JI scales, ratios can also be used) for the notes of C major in 31EDO. Then you define your set of accidentals. For 31EDO you don't need any custom symbols, so you just pick #, b, the common quarter tone sharp and 1/4-tone flat signs, double sharps and flat, and possibly also 3/4 flat and sharp signs, and then define these in cents, so your sharp will be 77,419 cents, your "quarter-tone" symbols will be defined to stand for the diesis 38.7097 c, and the double sharp and flat = 4 diesis. The way you insert notes (in the present version) is that you choose the duration and the accidental for the note using key commands first and then insert the note by pressing C, D, E; F, G, A or B from the computer keyboard (no midi step entry yet). Then you use the arrow keys to move the note to the right octave if it wasn't in it.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Juhani
> >>
> >>
> >> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
> You'll have to forgive my cynicism... I've basically assumed this
> won't happen, or if it does, that it'll be a kitchen-sink type
> monstrosity like Sagittal.

I realise this is an old thread. But I'm afraid I can't let this opinion of Sagittal go without a response.

I'm the first to agree that the full set of Sagittal accidentals, which is capable of consistently notating any conceivable set of pitches (everything and the kitchen sink), is quite daunting. If it is monstrous, that is only because some people want to notate tunings which are "monstrous" (have large numbers of pitches or pitches very close together). Show me another notation (apart from cent or ratio annotations) that can do this at all.

However it is not necessary to implement the full Sagittal system. Most of what anyone needs to notate can be done with the subset called "Spartan". That's all Jacob Barton used with his "Sagibelius" scripts.

We named it so, because we felt it partook of the qualities of the ancient Spartans. As it says in various dictionaries:
"sternly disciplined and rigorously simple, frugal, or austere".

Of its 9 symbols, the 5 larger ones are obvious compositions of 3 of the smaller ones. So only the meanings of four shapes need to be learned.

With the Spartan symbol set you can notate 5-limit ratios with factors ranging from 5^-4 to 5^4, the 9 limit diamond, and the first 16 harmonics and subharmonics. You can notate 60 EDOs including 51 of the most popular below and including 72-EDO. And consequently you can notate all of the "Middle Path" temperaments that approximate these ratios and are represented in these EDOs. All without needing to use more than one sagittal symbol per notehead.

The Spartan subset has been called "elegant" by those who have used it. After all, Helen of Troy, "the face that launched a thousand ships" was really Helen of Sparta. :-)

Regards,
-- Dave Keenan
http://sagittal.org

It is great work you and George accomplished with Sagittal?
I am sure what ever direction microtonality notation takes, this work
will have at least a lasting strong impact on it.

On 8/04/13 11:46 AM, dkeenanuqnetau wrote:
>
> I realise this is an old thread. But I'm afraid I can't let this
> opinion of Sagittal go without a response.

--
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/^_,',',',_ //^/Kraig Grady_^_,',',',_
Mesotonal Music from:
_'''''''_ ^North/Western Hemisphere:
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_'''''''_^South/Eastern Hemisphere:
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',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

a momentary antenna as i turn to water
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