Re:55-tet improv and experimental retuning midi

Hi Jeff,

Would be nice - one can dream :-)

You never know, give me ten or twenty years and perhaps I
will come up with something like that. Rather hoping someone will
beat me to it somehow!

One of those companies that can afford to employ a large number
of developers working on the project and produce it in quite a short
while. Or, maybe one of the established ones like Sibelius, or the
one I use, Noteworthy Composer - maybe they'd be able to use much
of the same code they have already written.

I suppose microtonal music prob. needs to become more mainstream first as
it would be a lot of work to do it with all the notations, symbols,
etc, but I could imagine that it could become more mainstream in the
not too distant future, as it gradually becomes easier to make microtonal
music - computer programs, microtonal instruments, performers learning to
play microtonal music on traditional instruments too (flute, violin,...)
- all the things we are exploring together.

What I may be able to do in the fairly near future, is to add a save in
text format showing all the cents values and ratios played at each note on / note off,
so that each line of the file shows a chord, as in the text logs in my
tunes page, but with timings added so that it can be played back
in FTS.

I already have this in mind to do at some point, on request from
Gene. (Idea to have a text log was originally one of Mary's ideas).

The one for replaying would show the times, and also show channel
nubmers for ones with several midi in channels in play at once.

One could then edit the ratios in the log, and then replay it
from the edited text - far from being a microtonal sequencer,
but a possible first step on the very long path towards one.

Another option if anyone wanted it would be a guitar fret notation
- so that one would define the frets for each string as
A = scale
B = scale,...
at the beginning of the file.

Then in the text file one could type the guitar chords as
a1b3c5 = frets 1 on string A, 3 on string b and 5 on string c

So file would look something like

a1b3c5
t0.2

a2b4c3
t0.5

where the t0.2, t0.5, are the times in secs, or maybe those could
be shown as beats or something.

Could also maybe have some notation for volumes.

- or something like that - would need to consult with a guitarist
for best way of doing it, and how one tells when notes get switched
off, but I imagine something of that sort could possibly be quite useful
for transcribing guitar / lute tablature into midi.

The text file could include repeat signs and flow direction
as well (maybe even, looking a bit ahead, get the program to
detect repeats when transcribing a midi file into text).

All that sort of thing is relatively easy because one doesn't need
to work on the graphics, which would be quite involved.

Meanwhile, one can still do the thing of using a normal
12-tet one, but retuning the midi notes on playback
so that, e.g., midi notes 60 upwards play successive
notes of the scale, whatever it is
(or midi white notes from 60 upwards)
as I do on my tunes page.

Robert