Need Help Making Gigastudio Microtonal-Friendly

Hi everyone,
I've written pretty traditional-sounding classical music all my life,
but my most recent offering (From The Realm Of The Shadow, Naxos
8.559089-90) does contain one 19-equal piece. My next work will be in
53-equal. I've just bought Gigastudio from TASCAM, and it is a truly
great sampling program except for one thing: it's not microtonal
friendly! It is possible to custom-tune every instrument with every
bowing for every note manually, but I estimate that to do this with
the Garritan Strings program alone would take 300,000 manually-
entered computer commands.
Right now TASCAM engineers are working on Gigastudio version 3.0, and
they are CONSIDERING making the next version microtonal friendly. Not
only for hard-core microtonalists, but also ethnic music tunings,
early music tunings, and even fine-tunings for traditional string
orchestra sounds. As most people know, real string orchestras don't
play pure 12-equal, and sampled string orchestras will sound that
much "sweeter" if they are subtly retuned. All of this great musical
potential can only be realized if they make it possible to set up
custom tuning templates of some kind.
The TASCAM folks have told me that they are more likely to add tuning
macro capability of some kind if enough people ask about it. Even if
you don't have GigaStudio, PLEASE e-mail them soon at
custser@... and ask them if they can handle microtonal or
alternative or ethnic or early music tunings globally (individual
instruments can be tuned, but what about a global tuning macro?). If
they DO add the tuning macro to Gigastudio 3.0, let me tell you it
will be a great new addition to the microtonalist's sound palette.
The instruments sound incredibly natural, and they now have a wide
range of sounds: classical, traditional, pop, ethnic, you name it.
Thanks in advance everyone for any help you can give!
All my best,
Chris Mohr

Chris,

Thanks for posting over here, as I know you originally mentioned this on the main tuning list...

LIST! (I rarely shout like this) I hope that anyone involved in this area of music making ala micro (i.e. not people who only work with acoustic instruments) will consider writing to these people. MANUEL - (again, sorry to shout) - I think it would be great if you could drop them a line and maybe give them some examples of the .scl file format, examples of a couple of tunings, and maybe some figures on how many people you estimate might be using Scala (and/or other microtuning programs).

I'll drop them a line myself, on behalf of the list, as well.

Cheers,
Jon

`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`
Real Life: Orchestral Percussionist
Web Life: "Corporeal Meadows" - about Harry Partch
http://www.corporeal.com/
NOTE:
If your reply bounces, try --> jonszanto@...

Jon,

I've sent them a mail. Can't estimate how many might using
Scala really. There are 15-20 downloads a day, but that aren't
all (new) users.

Manuel

--- In MakeMicroMusic@y..., manuel.op.de.coul@e... wrote:
> Jon,
>
> I've sent them a mail. Can't estimate how many might using
> Scala really. There are 15-20 downloads a day, but that aren't
> all (new) users.
>
> Manuel

Thanks, Manuel! I'll let the whole club know the outcome when I find
out.
Chris Mohr