Re: Microtonal Sequencer

Hi Clemens,

Yes, I have plans to develop such. But it is a lot of work, maybe
some of the big companies will manage it first; surely they will
if there is enough incentive to do so. Really needs a team of
programmers, or one programmer who dedicates a number of years
to it.

My plan is to start with a simple piano roll type layout
with the scale ratios or cents values at the left, and
maybe gradually develop it from there.

However, you can use your sequencer and retune it
in another app such as FTS. Have you given this
way of working a try? It isn't so hard.

Just install a loopback such as Midi Yoke,
or for Win 2K / Xp / NT, if you use Giga, better to use
Maple Tools from Marble Sound:
http://www.marblesound.com/

This lets you use all the existing capabilities of your sequencer,
but microtonally. E.g. if it has a piano roll type layout,
well now that can be a microtonal piano roll. Depending on your
settings in your retuning programm e.g. Note 60 say is the 1/1,
note 61 is the scale degree 1, 62 is degree 2 etc.

Or if you use notation software use that. As you enter notes on
the score, you hear them played as you normally do - but now they
are played in your chosen tuning rather than in twelve equal.

The way I usually work is to make a keyboard score. This shows
a normal 12 equal layout, but the notes shown on the score
indicate to the player which keys to use to play the score
from a suitably tuned keyboard, rather than indicating
the pitches used. This is by far the easiest score
for a keyboard player to play from as you have nothing new to
learn by way of hand / eye coordination.

Ideally a microtonal notation program should allow both
- a keyboard player's score and a score with special
symbols and microtonal accidentals for players of
other instruments.

However, I don't have it in mind to develop such, certainly
not straight away. A basic piano roll type sequencer, play through once, no flow control
very simple, not much support for controllers, that is the kind of
thing I have in mind to start with. Have to start somewhere.

To develop a fully featured sequencer would be a matter of a
number of years probably. So basically the reason no-one has
done it is simply the amount of time needed to program it
- and considering that there are work arounds that let one
compose microtonally already, then there isn't really so
great an incentive to do it. After all that time, who knows,
maybe you might get ten people buy it?? So how much would
one charge for it?? Well if it is really excellent maybe
then you will get lots of buyers, but then that needs
even more time, and probably you will get scooped by one of
the big companies too if there really is so much support for
microtonal work by then as they can afford to employ a team
of programmers, who will naturally get the work done
much faster... So one needs to find stepping stones
along the way to a microtonal sequencer - smaller more
limited programs that are easier to develop, also interesting
to develop, and that will generate a few sales to let one continue - or else
you do it out of enthusiasm for it when you have the time
to do soem work on it.

As a result it is something I have a mind to do but as I am
doing this as a business, it is low priority. I plan
to start with a piano roll edit for polyphonic seeds
for the fractal tunes in FTS as that is a simple situation in which
there is a clear need for it, fairly easy to program as one
only needs to program the note ons and offs with no frills,
and will be useful to the algo-comp users of FTS. So that
is my first (next) stepping stone. But I imagine it will
be a fair while before it is anything like as useful as
the method of retuning the output from ones current
sequencing program, or the methods involving retuning
a synth or keyboard and using that.

Robert