Cecilia

Robert,
I haven't tried Cecilia yet. I may some time, now that it has been
ported to Windows. I don't have access to a Mac, just Windows
machines. But my use of Csound has been limited to sample based
instruments so far. I have not used Midi and Csound.

I was long ago frustrated by the Midi restriction on legato pitch
bends, channels, and no more than 12 tones at a time. There are some
work-arounds, but they all seemed intractable at some point. About 15
years ago I began writing a Pascal program to exploit the IBM Music
Feature Card (which was a rebadged Yamaha FB-01 on a board), which
allowed a program to set the specific pitch in cents for as many
notes as were needed. The sound was cheesy FM, but it allowed
unlimited microtonality to the nearest cent. After about five years
of experimenting with that, I began to learn Csound, and eventually
ported the FB-01 code over to use Csound orchestras and scores as
output, but still used the same Pascal source code and macro
language. There are no restrictions on number of notes, or vestiges
of 12 tones in the architecture. My program has a maximum of 640k of
memory, from it's DOS heritage, but I have managed to cobble together
very large scores within that limitation.

I have not used FTS yet, but it looks like a much faster way to
experiment with intonation systems than my way.

I use microtonality in Csound by building a list of discrete tones
per octave and loading that list into a function table. Others use
ratios more directly. But Csound can be a steep learning exercise. I
have been at it for about ten years, and only use a very small
subset, primarily sample based instruments.

Give it a try as an output format for FTS!

Prent Rodgers

Robert Walker wrote:
>
Something I'd like to do at some point, at least to study it
a bit to get an idea how it works and think about whether
a direct save of FTS tunes to C-sound
may be useful. I gather you can
covert midi files to C-sound but that
won't take advantage of it's unlimited
pitch polyphony, which FTS would be
able to exploit in a direct save
if I implement it. That would be the big attraction of
C-sound for me.

Hi Prent,

> I use microtonality in Csound by building a list of discrete tones
> per octave and loading that list into a function table. Others use
> ratios more directly. But Csound can be a steep learning exercise. I
> have been at it for about ten years, and only use a very small
> subset, primarily sample based instruments.

> Give it a try as an output format for FTS!

Will do.

What I'll do is to do a file save in FTS before the remapping to
channels. The format of that file will be my starting point for
the project.

Then convert that from the note on / off format to a
note on + note time format. I.e. you can record in real time
with note ons and note offs, and then when you finish the recording,
t can then convert it to the note on / note duration format and so
to a C-sound save.

What would be nicest would be if it could be easily inter-convertible
between the two formats.

I'll give that some thought.

This links in to a couple of other things too actually.
I've been asked to add a save to text format in FTS for
other programs to be able to read. This will provide that.

Also it will be a first step towards making a file format that
can be easily read and modified in a microtonal sequencer.

Once one has got a suitable file format for this, not only
will C-sound conversion begin to seem pretty easy to do,
maybe I may do a first rudimentary true microtonal sequencer
for it too, just the very start of one.

Just started sketching a draft for it. Kind of promising
so far. But the matter of making it inter convertible
between the note on / note off and the note on / note time
formats is a tricky one!!

Anyway if anyone wants to read it I've uploaded a first
sketchy draft.

/makemicromusic/files/Robert_Walker/micro_score_format.txt

Robert

Hi Prent,

New idea today:

Programs using the format can use any subset to output it.

Will have one option to use midi note numbers too for the note ons
as 60.0 where you can have double precision numbers
and e.g. 63.86 ... for the 5/4 etc so easy conversion from
cents to /from the midi notes which will be a useful format for
making scores in cents notations, or indeed supersets of 12-et.

Then it would just be

note_on: 1:60.0 2:63.86
time_incr 1.0
note_off: 1:60.0 2:63.86

for the nearest to a midi file format

Anyway idea would be that to input, would have, in windows,
a dll that one could call to convert any of the formats
into ones chosen format. I can write that, open source,
plain c so easily portable to other platforms.

Would include routines to convert the output to
a midi file or to C-sound.

Conversion to midi file of course will perhaps have
dropped notes for complex scores, unavoidable, but
have option there to do MTS tuning tables instead
and other coders can add in other formats too of
course.

So programs output in whatever format they find
most convenient, and input in their chosen
format too, and use the dll (or whatever its
equivalent is for other platforms) to convert
the output of other programs into their
own format for input. Prob. just have
a single routine there and the program can specify in the
call to the routine which types of notation
they recognise - there some work needed
to find the way to make that easy
- prob. some macros for common formats
e.g. midi_like for the one just mentioned
above, etc.

Forgot to include velocity, that could jst be a v

note_on: 1:60.0v0.5 2:63.86v0.25

range 0 to 1,

or an m
note_on: 1:60.0m64 2:63.86m32

for midi velocity range 0 to 127

Also do so that there are one letter or two letter abreviations
available to reduce file size, specify them each time you add
a new symbol to the system, e.g.

n for note_on
o for note_off
ns for notes

or something.

Where the format can be anything convenient and this is just
a suggestion,

I think the idea of multiple choice for output, and automatic
input conversion to ones own format from any of the others
for input, and open source and a flexible file format
so new things can be added easily (unlike midi where
nothing gets added in normal course of events
apart from new sysexes) are perhaps
the main points.

And of course no limit on number of channels
- well up to say, maximum number expressible
in 32-bit which is in the billions.

If you have too many channels then info can
get lost in conversion to midi - but if you
have no more than i think 1024 of them then
you can convert to midi at least for
use in sound cards by having several
instruments playing in the same midi
channel, so long as they all use the
same effects such as modulation, tremulo
and (unfortunately) pan.

Anyway not to limit the format itself to ensure
that it can be saved as a midi fiile, instead
just have authoring guidelines there.

Robert

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Prent Rodgers <prentrodgers@a...>" <prentrodgers@a...> wrote:

> I use microtonality in Csound by building a list of discrete tones
> per octave and loading that list into a function table. Others use
> ratios more directly. But Csound can be a steep learning exercise.

I don't use Csound, but I do use Midi2cs.exe, which takes a midi file and creates a Csound score. I don't know how to get Csound to use the sco and orc files thus created to make actual sounds, but the sco file I edit into something Maple can read, and then do whatever I like with that and turn it into something Scala can read. Scala then turns it into a midi file, which can be rendered by a rendering program such as Timidity. I'm writing something in the Nonkleismic temperament now using a tune taken from a midi file of Turkish music in 53-et, which Midi2cs turns into a text file in 12-et, with pitch bend information, all of which when fed to a powerful computer algebra package like Maple can be turned into actual cents and then manipulated however you like.

One of these days I'd like to get Csound to actully make a sound, though.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Walker" <robertwalker@n...> wrote:

> I think the idea of multiple choice for output, and automatic
> input conversion to ones own format from any of the others
> for input, and open source and a flexible file format
> so new things can be added easily (unlike midi where
> nothing gets added in normal course of events
> apart from new sysexes) are perhaps
> the main points.

How possible would conversion to Scala seq format be?