sysex

>It lets you tune any of the 127 midi notes to any pitch you
>like so completely eliminates the midi retuning one pitch
>per channel problems in Mdi. And actually exists within
>midi itself, part of the midi spec but seldom implemented.

Whoa. . . . .IS this possible on any synth? I think my syth (Roland
XV-5050) can only re-tune the 12 pitch-classes.

Hi Christopher,

> >It lets you tune any of the 127 midi notes to any pitch you
> >like so completely eliminates the midi retuning one pitch
> >per channel problems in Mdi. And actually exists within
> >midi itself, part of the midi spec but seldom implemented.

> Whoa. . . . .IS this possible on any synth? I think my syth (Roland
> XV-5050) can only re-tune the 12 pitch-classes.

Unfortuunately no. A lot of the midi standard is optional - I think a synth
doesn't even need to support pitch bending at all for instance to count as a
midi synth. So this is one of the optional features and it
is one that manufacturers rarely choose to implement.

It is perfectly acceptable for a midi synth to just retune the 12 pitch
classes. Even that would be very useful if one could do the retuning
in a standard way via midi, e.g. make a midi file that could be
played on any synth that supports pitch class retuning - it
would give far more "pitch polyphony",
but unfortunately rather than develop one way of doing it
all the synths have different formats for the sysexes they use
for changing the tuning tables - which is the reason for all
the long list of supported synth types in SCALA.

So a midi file that lets you retune one synth won't work with
others. A program that lets you retune via midi has
to include a long list of supported synths and the user then selects
from the list in order to retune - as SCALA does.
Also as manufacturers make up their own
sysex formats for retuning, you can't just look up and see how
it works in the midi standard because how it works is
up to the manufacturer and they can do it any way
they please since they are using non standard custom
defined sysexes anyway (which of course is also
permitted in the standard).

It would be great if more were to support MTS.

Some hardware synths in the Proteus family support it
apparently, and the FM7 does as do some other soft synths
by Native Instruments. The FM7 certainly works well
as I've used that myself retuning it using FTS
via MTS sysexes, in real time.

Robert

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

> So a midi file that lets you retune one synth won't work with
> others. A program that lets you retune via midi has
> to include a long list of supported synths and the user then selects
> from the list in order to retune - as SCALA does.

Pitch bending is entirely standard, and the MTS tuning dump, though
coming as a SysEx message, is also standardized in the definition of
the MTS standard. The problem is that this official standard MTS
tuning dump message is not often implemented.

> Also as manufacturers make up their own
> sysex formats for retuning, you can't just look up and see how
> it works in the midi standard because how it works is
> up to the manufacturer and they can do it any way
> they please since they are using non standard custom
> defined sysexes anyway (which of course is also
> permitted in the standard).

So they can, but it is also possible for them to simply use the
standard MTS tuning message, as Timidity for instance does. This is
what Scala will put in your midi file if you ask it to.

>> >It lets you tune any of the 127 midi notes to any pitch you
>> >like so completely eliminates the midi retuning one pitch
>> >per channel problems in Mdi. And actually exists within
>> >midi itself, part of the midi spec but seldom implemented.
>
>> Whoa. . . . .IS this possible on any synth? I think my syth
>>(Roland XV-5050) can only re-tune the 12 pitch-classes.
>
>Unfortuunately no.

Is is possible on some synths. The Midi Tuning Standard calls
for it, though there's no logo program for MTS that I know of. :)

-Carl