Roland Akai wishlist etc

John Loffink wrote:

>I've been working on such a list for my web site based upon
>information from this forum. I will post it soon and open it up for
>comments. I'm breaking the wish list up into low, medium and high
>end, as some requests are too specialized to be achieved on all
>instruments.

Great! looking forward to seeing this. The low/medium/high breakdown
seems a good idea. If my information is correct and the new
Roland system is a sampler/synth hybrid, it'll be interesting to see
what tuning architecture is implemented -maybe along Kurzweil lines?

Rick Sanford wrote:

>We could frame our request as coming from the WM school, no?

Sorry, what is WM? 'World Music'?

If so, I would personally prefer to present ideas as what they are.
I don't think there would be much to be gained from doing otherwise.
But maybe I misunderstood?

Also, I hadn't really considered (in this instance) doing something
collectively, because (as far as I understood from previous
discussion on the list) only a minority on the list seem interested
in using a sampler for microtonal work (??? maybe just 'cos it's too
time consuming) - however, as I say, the new Roland may be a
hybrid.

John Loffink also wrote:

> This is the argument I have against the
>stance that full keyboard scales are all that is necesary. We've
>waited centuries to get keyboard-based instruments that can modulate
>freely in just intonation, why hamper it now by limited software
>definitions? Until we get a better protocol than MIDI I think a
>mix of keyboard and octave scales is needed.

I think I'm in agreement with this. But, (like Gary?) I'm not
clear about the distinction between 'full keyboard scales' and
'octave scales':

Examples:

(1) 12-pitch-classes each tunable by + or - x cents; (so for example
all C naturals are x sharp, all the C sharps are y flat, etc.)
Eg., ideal for tuning 12-gamut temperaments.

(2) Totally free pitch assignment (ie, any keyboard-key can trigger
any pitch, independently of any other pitch the keyboard will
trigger).

(3) Pitch assignation to a user definable keyboard zone - for example
- select a zone of 34 consecutive keyboard notes, and assign each
keyboard key a pitch value (ET or not) relative to 1/1 in that zone
(normally in an ascending scale, but not necessarily). Then tell the
machine to automatically assign that 34 key tuning scheme into the
next octave either (for example) at the 35th key above or at the 36th
key above and below. (I don't suppose the latter exists yet).

Is (1) an 'octave' scale, (2) 'full keyboard scales' and (3) a mix of
the two? Or does 'full keyboard' mean all (say) 88 notes of the
keyboard are pre-assigned via a table?

D(ave)? Finnamore wrote:

>Sample assignment (in the case of sample-based synthesis) by
>nearest-to- sampled-pitch rather than by note number.

Yes. I posted some stuff on this some time back. I was suggesting
that sampler manufacturers include user-configurable 'macros' to
reduce the time it takes to build patches, by providing a
facility to automatically map samples correctly for standard and
non-standard scales. As you'll see from John Loffink's pages,
Kurzweil have made a start in implementing something along these
lines. Lets hope Roland and Akai will do the same. So far as I
know, EMU have not (?).