Sysex vs. Pitch Bend

>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?

I've done some work with the Pitch Palette, what would you like to know?
It's a windows program that sends sysex re-tuning messages to compatible
synths, including ones by emu, ensoniq, and roland. It has a ratio-based
scale editor, and a calculator utility for converting between fractions,
cents, and hertz. It has a primitive sequencer that allows you to add scale
and key changes to midi files.

It even has a live performance mode that can make key changes automatically
if you stick to block chords in root position. The Justonic people brag
about this feature, but it's really very limited. Much better is to send
key changes from the lowest octave of your keyboard or from midi foot
pedals, which the Pitch Palette also supports. I haven't done any work with
the live performance mode yet; so far I've used it only for midi sequencing.

My problem was, as seems to be the bugaboo of the tuning-table method, TIME.
The tuning dumps take too long. Unless you're very very careful, and even
if you are, your music will stutter and bark at every key change. At least,
this is the problem I had with the Proteus/2.

To avoid this, I used the roland Virtual Sound Canvas, a software synth that
comes bundled with the Pitch Palette. Because it is "virtual", it can do
sysex retuning much more quickly. It doesn't sound like the proteus, but I
never liked proteus sounds anyway. To sample my work, and for more
information on the Justonic software, you can visit my music page at...

http://users.nni.com/source_of_goodness/ericarl.html

My teacher, Denny Genovese, has written an excellent DOS program called MMT.
It uses the pitch-bend method, cycling thru 8 midi channels for polyphony.
I believe that with 95% of synths, the pitch-bend method is much faster and
more flexible than the sysex method, if at the cost of maximum polyphony.
95% isn't really fair in this context, however, since a large number of
synths don't even support sysex microtuning.

>> 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?

Not in my experience. I have used MMT with two Yamaha TX81Z's, the Proteus,
and a Kawai K5m, and I have yet to hear a "blurp" from any style of playing
whatever. MMT can't play midi files, but it does accept live midi data,
and, if one is bent on playing midi files, a second computer can be used.
Denny is looking to develope MMT further, and would appreciate any input in
that regard.

Before I close this message, I would like to make it clear that I am not an
advocate of the pitch-bend method. Or of the tuning-table method. Any
pitch-bend favoritism detected in this letter may be considered fair defense
against those who seem to pick on it without considering cons of sysex or
the work of artists like Denny and Jules Siegel, who use it to great effect.

What I do believe, quite frankly, is that both of these methods suck. I
don't think that any of us really believe otherwise -- it's all too easy to
let which method is better and why obscure the fact that we're being handing
our hats when it comes to a microtuning solution for midi. Now, I'm told
that the Symbolic Systems Kyma setup is just about as good as can be, but
I've never seen one. Has anyone seen one? Justonic is working on a synth
designed for microtuning called the "Tone Palette". They claim it is
several orders of magnitude quicker and higher-res than anything else.
They've got a prototype, but are having problems getting to production.
Find out more in the bowels of their site at www.justonic.com.

Carl



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