Greetings & a project proposal

Greetings to everyone on the list.

I've been out of the tuning loop (and off the tuning list!) for some
time now, but I've decided to get back into it with a new project (for
my Master's thesis at MIT's Media Lab). I thought I'd briefly present
the project here to see if anyone had any comments (notably, to see if
anyone has done any similar work that I could learn from before I
start).

My idea is to render tonal keyboard music (on synthesizers) using
dynamic just intonation. By dynamic just intonation, I mean intonation
that changes according to the key center of the piece. At first I plan
to do this using MIDI files, but eventually the idea would be to have a
system with a score follower, allowing for dynamic just intonation in
live performance.

I would like to try to use the pitch bend technique of tuning, where
each channel is initially given a pitch bend and then all notes with
that offset from ET are played on that channel (i.e. all C's on chan 1,
all C#'s on chan 2, etc.). At least that is a scheme I remember someone
proposed somewhere. This seems to me quite a general technique that
doesn't tie me to one machine. Also, pitch bend messages sent during
dynamic retuning will not cause glitches whereas I'm not sure which (if
any) of the explicitly tunable synths out there can be retuned without
glitches, since this is usually conceived of as an editing, rather than
performance operation. It is important to have a synth with good pitch
bend resolution (perhaps one that uses all 14 bits of pitch bend, if
such a thing exists). Any suggestions?

A significant problem with the idea of dynamic just intonation is how to
deal with accidentals and/or transitional periods during modulation. In
a way, I think this problem is where the "meat" of the matter lies, and
would probably be the crux of the investigation.

Any comments? Attacks are especially appreciated :-)

Ben Denckla

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