Yamaha FB-01/TX-81Z

Drew Skyfyre wrote:

> I'm about to get an FB-01 and am looking for information on
> microtuning it.I've looked about on the 'bahn and came up with
> zilch.The TX-81Z seems easier to use for microtuning.

The FB-01 has no tuning tables. All microtuning must be done on the
fly by replacing note-on & note-off messages with sysex messages
indicating the exact pitch to be played. This is very flexible, but
of course requires some software. The tuning resolution is only 64
steps/semitone. The manual isn't too bad in describing how the
microtuning works. A long time ago I wrote some awful QuickBasic
code to do some of this. I suppose MAX or something similar could be
used on the Mac. I once saw Martin Bartlett demonstrating
microtuning on the FB-01 with some Atari software, but I suspect that
was homebrew.
In terms of sound programming, the FB-01 has only 4 sinewave
operators. The TX-81Z has other waveforms as well.
--
Ewan Macpherson
Central Systems Laboratory
Kresge Hearing Research Institute
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~emacpher

> Also, does anyone know of a source for tangless, glued-on frets? These
>would make fret application possible for those of us with no woodworking
>tools.

I know only that, when Tom Stone's "Novatone" went under, Mark Rankin
said that they had a small outstanding debt to the company that custom-made
that wire for them. They were holding the extrusion die they used to form
it hostage, so to speak. I suppose it's fair to guess that Mark ended up
paying the debt to that company and bought the die, but I don't know that
for certain.