"Quartertones"

>Gary Morrisson said:

> As I think about it more, I'm starting to think that I was wrong in my
>feeling that "quartertone" should be synonymous with an interval 50 cents.
>That as opposed to a something that functions as a quartertone (e.g., the
>whether it's exactly 50 cents or not.

That would make it easier to describe the size of the 11th harmonic in
relation to a "Perfect Fourth" (which is only a couple cents shy of 50) to
someone who had no idea at all.



Best wishes,

Denny Genovese
Director

Southeast Just Intonation Center sejic@afn.org
World Harmony Project Inc.
PO Box 15464 http://www.afn.org/~sejic
Gainesville, FL 32604 USA



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From: Peter.Blasser@oberlin.edu
Subject: Software setup
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>I plan to be doing a term project on a windows-based, super-user-friendly
>ji midi sequencer program and have a question.

That's admirable. Good luck with it.

You might be well-served to see how your "product plans" compare with
Marion McCoskey's "FasTrack" JI MIDI sequencer, or possibly even Justonic's
"Pitch Palette" software. I personally don't know much about the features
of either.



>Which is better: fine/course presets or pitchbends on tempered notes?

First, I presume that by "tempered notes", you actually mean adjusted
notes. That is to say that you're starting with a 12-tone equal-tempered
basis (in a sense inherent in MIDI) and making them UNtempered (JI). (I'm
not trying to nitpick - I just want to make sure I know what you're
asking.)

Assuming that that's what you're asking about, there has been a bit of
discussion about how to use pitch bend for microtonality. The tricky part
clearly is how to synchronize it with note-ons under very legato playing.
Since the either the pitch-bend message must precede the note-on or the
reverse, you're going to have a "blurp" in pitch either at the attack of
the current note or at the release of the previous note.

That is true provided that you play those notes on the same channel of
course. One solution that has been proposed is to use a channel for each
of the nominal 12 notes per octave. That has limitations of course, the
most obvious one being that if you want individual melody lines to be
rendered in a uniform instrumental timbre, then clearly you'll eat up 12 of
your available 16 for a single timbre. You also have to figure out what to
do with the comparatively rare situation where you do a legato note-change
between two different pitches of nominally the same note (since they'll
land on the same channel).

It is also more or less limited to tunings based upon a 12-toned
paradigm, but for many purposes, that's a very agreeable limitation.

But pitch bend has been used successfully, if I recall correctly, by
John Starrett and Denny Genovese. So you could perhaps consult with them.


What do you mean by "fine/coarse presets"?



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Subject: Re: Organ CDs
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Gary Morrison wrote:

> You might be well-served to see how your "product plans" compare with
> Marion McCoskey's "FasTrack" JI MIDI sequencer, or possibly even Justonic's
> "Pitch Palette" software. I personally don't know much about the features
> of either.

Can someone please give more information on these?


There have been some problems raised with pitch bend tuning:

> Assuming that that's what you're asking about, there has been a bit of
> discussion about how to use pitch bend for microtonality. The tricky part
> clearly is how to synchronize it with note-ons under very legato playing.
> Since the either the pitch-bend message must precede the note-on or the
> reverse, you're going to have a "blurp" in pitch either at the attack of
> the current note or at the release of the previous note.

MIDI transmits 3125 instructions per second. A pitch bend is 3
instructions. To send 16 of these takes 3*16/3125*1000=15.36 ms,
or twice as much if you include the note-ons as well. Is this
really a problem?

> i don't like using pitch bend...the pitch bend affects all notes on that
> channel, meaning that you can really only do monophonic stuff. yuck.

That depends on your software, of course. With GM, you're
limited to 15 melodic notes per MIDI stream. It's quite
possible to go beyond this, but I've never wanted to.



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From: gbreed@cix.compulink.co.uk
Subject: Re: missing fundamental
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>> You might be well-served to see how your "product plans" compare with
>> Marion McCoskey's "FasTrack" JI MIDI sequencer, or possibly even Justonic's
>> "Pitch Palette" software. I personally don't know much about the features
>> of either.
>Can someone please give more information on these?

Marion is on the list. Marion?

Justonic Tuning's ph# is (604) 682-3456.




>MIDI transmits 3125 instructions per second. A pitch bend is 3
>instructions. To send 16 of these takes 3*16/3125*1000=15.36 ms,
>or twice as much if you include the note-ons as well. Is this
>really a problem?

Yep, 'fraid so. Try it.



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Subject: Microtonal Concert in Paris
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