Cantor?

Has anyone tried "Cantor"? A singing synthesizer, which supposedly
supports Scala-based microtuning.

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/984.html

The info page there claims it supports Scala. (BTW, the price is way too
high for me, but if it works, could be nice for some people...)

http://www.virsyn.de/en/E_Products/E_CANTOR/e_cantor.html

Rick

If you're into synthesized voices, the Virtual Singer plug-in ($20) for Harmony Assistant ($79) is just as good, can do tunings, albeit not directly from Scala formats. (Actually, at the Harmony Assistant webpage, the developers have left a question about what exactly a Scala-file based script should do in HI, so the topic is an active one). http://www.myriad-online.com/en/index.htm

A sweet little feature of Virtual Singer is that when one is making an ensemble of voices, the individual voices can be located spatially via moving figures on a stage. I did this in a mock-up of several scenes from my puppet opera which helped with the staging and balance.

Daniel Wolf

Rick McGowan wrote:

> Has anyone tried "Cantor"? A singing synthesizer, which supposedly > supports Scala-based microtuning.
>
> http://www.kvraudio.com/get/984.html
>
> The info page there claims it supports Scala. (BTW, the price is way too > high for me, but if it works, could be nice for some people...)
>
> http://www.virsyn.de/en/E_Products/E_CANTOR/e_cantor.html
>
> Rick

Daniel,

{you wrote...}
>If you're into synthesized voices, the Virtual Singer plug-in ($20)...

I think I remember playing with this a while back. Interesting, though of no real use to me. However:

>Rick McGowan wrote:
>
> > Has anyone tried "Cantor"? A singing synthesizer, which supposedly
> > supports Scala-based microtuning.

I dunno, it is pretty much just for robotic, 'vocoder'-type voices. Even while you can write in phonemes, it isn't all that intelligible. Though, if one were to exploit it for its non-naturalness, you might come up with some interesting oddities.

Cheers,
Jon

Greetings,

Does anyone know how to make Finale alter a pitch by a quarter tone for
playback?

(Finale 2002 Mac OS 9.1, Quicktime (un)musical instruments -- lame, I know,
I know!!)

All help greatly appreciated.

BTW Telling me I should throw the computer against the wall and listen
carefully to Finale's playback will not work. I've tried it:)

All best wishes,
Gordon Rumson
Pianist, composer, author and storyteller
Music Director and Organist, St. Matthew's United Church

³The neutral is not the purist thing, it is the emptiest thing.² Vladislav
Kovalsky

Jonathan M. Szanto wrote:

>I dunno, it is pretty much just for robotic, 'vocoder'-type voices. Even >while you can write in phonemes, it isn't all that intelligible. Though, if >one were to exploit it for its non-naturalness, you might come up with some >interesting oddities.
>
>Cheers,
>Jon >
>
> >

Exactly -- I think programs like this are not useful for simulating voices (which they do only poorly) but rather for making sounds with vocal characteristics. In particular, I think that there is an interesting space for electronic sounds which confuse the vocal-instrumental divide.

DJW

Gordon Rumson wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> Does anyone know how to make Finale alter a pitch by a quarter tone for
> playback?
>
> (Finale 2002 Mac OS 9.1, Quicktime (un)musical instruments -- lame, I > know,
> I know!!)
>
> All help greatly appreciated.
>
> BTW Telling me I should throw the computer against the wall and listen
> carefully to Finale's playback will not work. I've tried it:)
>
Gordon --

Your problem is with Quicktime, not Finale. If I may offer an opinion, if you want micrtonal midi, get away from Quicktime. The midi implementation either doesn't do pitch bends or does them inconsistantly. In my opinion, the obiquity of Quicktime is the single greatest obstacle to placing microtonal midi files on the web.

With Finale, you can do quartertones via (a) pitchbends or (b) by setting up a non-traditional key signature and doing a full keyboard tuning external to Finale. I assume that you prefer the former (if you want the latter, let me know & I'll describe how it's done).

Finale does pitchbends either via note-attached expressions or directly through the midi tool. Note expressions can be graphic or not. The handy reference card that came with Finale will show the font set coding; the Maestro font that came with Finale has two useable sets of quartertone accidentals built-in. Take your pick. Click on a note with the expression menu open. Expression > create > select your symbol, then playback > type: Pitchwheel ; set value: set a number between -8192 and 8191. A value of "0" will be the 12tet value without pitchbend. Most synths nowadays will take a value of 4096 to be a 12tet semitone upward, so that a quartertone sharp will be 2048 and a quartertone flat will be -2048, but you may well have to experiment with this.

The midi tool has a graphic interface and is more useful when you want to do continuous events, like portamenti, or wish to assign a single pitchbend value to an entire region. Even better is to get the "TG Tools" set of add-ons, which makes portamenti a snap. Advanced tools > midi > continuous data > pitchwheel .

When using pitchbends, remember two things: (1) each channel accepts only one pitchbend at a time (which is a good reason to consider the non-traditional key signatures option, and (2) a pitchbend sticks to the channel until the channel is sent a new pitchbend value.

Good luck,

Daniel Wolf

Greetings,

THANK YOU!! I really appreciate your taking the time to answer in such
clear detail. This is very helpful.

Thanks also for the comment on Quicktime. I will begin to look into
alternatives.

This evening I will sneak some time and try it out.

All best wishes,
Gordon Rumson
Pianist, composer, author and storyteller
Music Director and Organist, St. Matthew's United Church

"This world is actually Hell mislabeled. Someone got the bar codes wrong."
G.R.

>
> Your problem is with Quicktime, not Finale. If I may offer an opinion,
> if you want micrtonal midi, get away from Quicktime. The midi
> implementation either doesn't do pitch bends or does them
> inconsistantly. In my opinion, the obiquity of Quicktime is the single
> greatest obstacle to placing microtonal midi files on the web.
>

snip

Daniel wrote,

>If you're into synthesized voices, the Virtual Singer plug-in ($20)

Hey, wow... Not bad! Maybe less robotic than Cantor? Some of the VS people
on the Myriad forum seem to think so.

If Virtual Singer was VSTi and microtunable, I'd pay a lot more than $100
for it! The "Real Singer" extension seems like it has some promise.

They do support some tuning as in modifications from 12-tet, so it might
be worth checking out. They also support a number of languages, not just
English (e.g., Italian, French, Japanese).

I've always wanted a way to pre-audition vocal works; especially
microtonal stuff. If only this could be integrated with my other VST
stuff!!

The world is getting closer...

Rick

> Greetings,
>
> Does anyone know how to make Finale alter a pitch by a quarter tone for
> playback?

Yay, I get to help someone else out! :)

You need to insert MIDI pitch-bend info. I guess you could do it per
note, but that would be really tedious.

The only thing I have found it useful for is if you have two
instruments with offset pitch, a la Ives pianos. In either case,
select the notes you want to alter with the MIDI tool, select
"Continuous Data" in the "MIDI Tool" menu, click the "Pitch Wheel"
button and hit OK, then go back to the MIDI Tool menu and hit "Set
To," and put in the alteration. Let me know if that's unclear :)

Much better for quarter-tones is Lilypond, although it's tough to
learn bcause it's text-based. There's a graphical front-end called
Denemo, but I haven't tried it.

Let me know what luck you have!

-Chris Bryan