TUNING digest 1202

Terry Truman wrote:

>.Greetings,
> If you had your choices, what would be required in a tuning
>machine that would suit your needs? A very wide open question, I
>realise.
> I'm in the initial stages of design for a precision,
>multi-temperament machine initially aimed at Pipe Organ enthusiasts,
>which could provide facilities for up to 100 temperaments.
>Being for organs, it is primarly for 12 tone systems, but there is no
>reason why this could not adapted to other uses.
>
> Let me know what you think, or are these machines anathema ?
>Terry.

I used to have a marvelous portable tuner I used to build many
microtonal machines about 15 years ago. I can't remember the
manufacturer or model, but it was a small blue box with 12 tone
choices, and two dials to tune them either ten cents or one cent sharp
and flat (coarse and fine adjustment). It had a set of 12 or so LED's
that would rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise until the note was in
tune. It had another dial to select the octave. It went missing on a
road trip in '81.

What I liked about it was the rugged construction, which allowed me to
use it in the garage where I built instruments without worry over
spilling machine oil, solder, or ashes into the guts of the machine.
Today I use a laptop computer, but I am always worried about damage. I
haven't found a good tuning program for the PC, but it seems like it
should be possible to listen to the microphone input and report
frequency in real time. Today, I build a set of .wav files in CSound
and select from the desired pitch, then tune by sound. I really miss
the rotating LED's.

There are a number of products on the market today that provide
microtonal tuning support. I have looked at the Accutone model 250,
with preprogrammed scales, and a three light strobe for $400; Korg
model MT-1200 wihch can be programmed to temperments of your choice
for $300; Peterson 5000, with 112 customer definable temperment files;
Precision Strobe Tuner PST2, with the rotating LED's that I found
useful before and programmable temperments, for $325. All of these
assume that you are tuning 12 tones to the octave, but let you alter
any of those 12 to any note. With a little fancy temperment switching,
you can tune any number of tones to the octave with little trouble.

Yours,

Prent Rodgers
Boise, ID 83706

Internet: prodgers@us.ibm.com
=


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Subject: Another version of 12-tET
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