TUNING digest 1293 jloffink

In TUNING digest 1293 John Loffink asked
"Do you want octave based tables?
Do you want keyboard based tables? (Remember, these are virtually
impossible to retune note by note on the fly, ala Justonic Pitch Palette,
because of the limited MIDI bandwidth)
How many tables do you need?
Are the tables assigned globally or per MIDI channel?
Do you need to switch between tables or notes in realtime, and if so should
notes be updated immediately or on new notes only?
Is the MIDI Tuning Dump Standard supported?"

I'm sure those that are exploring the non-octave based tunings such as Wendy
Carlos' Alpha and 88CET would prefer at least having an option other than
octave based tables. The fastest and easiest but most proprietary way of
switching tunings is to have multiple "banks" resident in synth memory and
switch them with a simple bank number. Up to 128 "banks" would be nice,
that way you could specify them with a single character in the MIDI stream.

If you are using a tuning with a lot of pitches such as more than 31TET your
range of octaves becomes limited (128 note numbers divided by the number of
pitches) so you would want separate channels to have different tuning
ranges. Global tunings are handy when you have multiple synths and you want
them to be in tune.

We've covered the realtime versus next note on the list before and I think
the consensus was that most people would like to have the option. Perhaps
it should be part of the "bank" specification. Starting note number could
go here also.

Here's an idea. How about having some "banks" predifined as tunings that
are in common use such as 19 and 31 TET Valotti+Young and others specified
as "user".

You should be able to set up a "bank" or "banks" to receive a MIDI Tuning
Standard dump prior to a performance and switch between the "banks" in real
time. I use the term "bank" in quotes because it is a term much used with
slightly different meanings by synth players.

---Fred.


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