TUNING digest 1186

>Topic No. 5
>
>Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 13:33:41 -0400
>From: Carl Lumma
>To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
>Subject: Sysex vs. Pitch Bend
>Message-ID: <19970921173340078.AAA394@NIETZSCHE>



>>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
>

Beware that Pitch Palette does NOT support the MIDI Tuning Dump standard per
se! The standard is too slow for the on-the-fly retuning that their program
does. To retune takes 408 bytes or about 130 ms. which is much too slow. I
asked them about the Ensoniq MR rack which they do support. It retunes via
the MIDI Tuning Dump. Ensoniq in their superior wisdom designed the MR
series with a shortcut mode where you need only send one octave worth of
tuning data, 50 bytes or about 16 ms. Great, for octave repeating tunings.

Even the MIDI Real Time Single-Note Tuning Change takes 8 bytes plus 4 bytes
multiplied by the number of notes to be changed. This might work but the
program would have the added complexity of having to select which notes need
to be retuned first in the context of the music.

I went through all the trouble of looking for a sound card (Turtle Beach
Tropez+) that supports the MIDI Tuning Dump standard only to find that the
standard is flawed for many applications. Or is it MIDI in general that is
flawed for microtonal applications?

---Fred


---------------------------------------------------------
Fred Kohler, #7-240 Burnside Rd E, Victoria, BC, Canada
phone:(250)388-7918 email:Fred_Kohler@bc.sympatico.ca