Re: dubious experiment?

>Sorry, I haven't had my coffee yet - please do reveal what you see
>here.

>I've followed the Tritone Paradox research since it was in its early
>stages and, though certainly it deserves to be called a "paradox", I
>never had any doubts as to the integrity of the researchers or their
>interpretation of the data. What is it that bothers you about it?

Well,

"Diana Deutsch and her colleagues have conducted many studies of how
people perceive the 12 tritone pairs. Since this interval is maximally
ambiguous in terms of pitch proximity, one could expect subjects to be
able to hear it both ways. That is, sometimes they could hear it as
ascending, other times as descending. Surprisingly, Dr. Deutsch found
that for some of the tritone pairs, there is very little ambiguity in
how they are heard. A subject will almost always hear them as ascending,
or descending, but not both ways. Other tritone pairs can easily be
perceived both ways."

Okay. But then,

"The pairs with little ambiguity tend to have their first tones in the
pair on opposite sides of the chroma circle. Those that can be heard both
ways are found in between. If you were to envision the 12 chromatic
pitches in series as the numbers on the face of a clock, pairs in which
the first member is in the upper half of the clock will result in more
descending perceptions, and those in the bottom with more ascending
perceptions. Pitch classes at the top or bottom of "the clock" are the
least ambiguous. This can be seen in the figure below which represents the
proportion of times each interval pair is heard as descending for a
hypothetical subject."

? How does the position in the circle of fifths mean anything here?
An absolute pitch effect?? The study claims that these tendencies are
consistent within a geographical area, but differ across geographical
areas. ??

-Carl

>? How does the position in the circle of fifths mean anything here?

They're not talking about the circle of fifths!

>An absolute pitch effect??

Yup, much like the perception of vowels.

>The study claims that these tendencies are
>consistent within a geographical area, but differ across geographical
>areas. ??

Right, possible reflecting linguistic tendencies.

>>An absolute pitch effect??
>
>Yup, much like the perception of vowels.

I thought that vowels depended on relative pitch -- which harmonics
of a voice were reinforced and which weren't. If it's absolute
pitch, how does it work? How could men and women use the same
vowels?

>>The study claims that these tendencies are
>>consistent within a geographical area, but differ across geographical
>>areas. ??
>
>Right, possible reflecting linguistic tendencies.

Whoa.

[Jon Wild wrote...]
>There were lots of arguments about the validity of the geographical
>correlation in the pages of Music Perception, and later studies couldn't
>reproduce the correlation.

I'd be surprised if they could.

-Carl

It looks like one can in fact microtune the VL70-m. I found a place in the
List Book that comes with the synth that claims you can tune each
individual note in the 12-tone chromatic scale by a number (in cents) from
something like -63 to +63. I haven't tried this yet; I don't know if you
can apply this through the front panel or if you have to stuff it in with
MIDI code. As far as I can tell this only applies to the current voice and
can't be stored with a voice.
--
znmeb@teleport.com (M. Edward Borasky) http://www.teleport.com/~znmeb

What is it about

@replace(@string(@log(10000)*@atan(1),9),0,0,@char(112)&@char(105)&@char(61))

that you don't understand?

Carl wrote,

>I thought that vowels depended on relative pitch -- which harmonics
>of a voice were reinforced and which weren't.

Correct.

>If it's absolute
>pitch, how does it work?

It's the absolute pitch of the harmonics that are reinforced which
determines the vowel. Helmholtz knew this (look over your copy again).

>How could men and women use the same
>vowels?

Both mens' and womens' voices have plenty of partials in the ranges where
various vowel sounds reinforce partials. Singers are familiar with the
difficulty of enunciating certain vowels at the extremes of the pitch range.
If you play a recording of one vowel at a different speed, it will sound
like a different vowel.

> It looks like one can in fact microtune the VL70-m. I found a place in the
> List Book that comes with the synth that claims you can tune each
> individual note in the 12-tone chromatic scale by a number (in cents) from
> something like -63 to +63.

Oh yes, thanks for the reminder. I saw a web page about that a while
back, but I'd forgotten
about it. I think it's this one (I can't confirm that easily because
I'm not on-line at the
moment): http://www.kbspace.com/vl70m/utilities/tuningcommands.txt

Thanks for pointing that out, but personally, I find that level of
retunability much too
limiting for my interests. It's pretty difficult to do non-octave
tunings that way, for example.

Gary and Ed,

It is truly sad to see that Yamaha cut corners on the tuning
implementation for this module. What a shame that the very
manufacturer who took the huge step of designing some of the first
commercially available microtonally tunable synths, seems to be
withdrawing from implementing full tuning capabilities on their newer
gear. Seems almost absurd to look at the tuning gap between this and
even the venerable TX81Z, which has infinitely more tuning
flexibility - of course the old beast doesn't have these awesome
sounds either.

I also noticed something that kind of shocked me to about the WX-5
and WX-11. These instruments don't transmit aftertouch!!! Wow -
couldn't believe this! Perhaps they've used BC for this. I need to
read more about it.

Thanks,

Jacky Ligon

--- In tuning@egroups.com, Gary Morrison <MR88CET@T...> wrote:
> > It looks like one can in fact microtune the VL70-m. I found a
place in the
> > List Book that comes with the synth that claims you can tune each
> > individual note in the 12-tone chromatic scale by a number (in
cents) from
> > something like -63 to +63.
>
> Oh yes, thanks for the reminder. I saw a web page about that a
while
> back, but I'd forgotten
> about it. I think it's this one (I can't confirm that easily
because
> I'm not on-line at the
> moment): http://www.kbspace.com/vl70m/utilities/tuningcommands.txt
>
> Thanks for pointing that out, but personally, I find that level of
> retunability much too
> limiting for my interests. It's pretty difficult to do non-octave
> tunings that way, for example.

On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 ligonj@northstate.net wrote:

> Gary and Ed,
>
> It is truly sad to see that Yamaha cut corners on the tuning
> implementation for this module. What a shame that the very
> manufacturer who took the huge step of designing some of the first
> commercially available microtonally tunable synths, seems to be
> withdrawing from implementing full tuning capabilities on their newer
> gear. Seems almost absurd to look at the tuning gap between this and
> even the venerable TX81Z, which has infinitely more tuning
> flexibility - of course the old beast doesn't have these awesome
> sounds either.

It looks to me like, when controlled by a computer or sequencer, the
VL70-m is capable of being tuned to the nearest cent. It should be noted,
however, that the VL70-m is intended to be an outstanding solo voice in a
popular music situation. It is not polyphonic, although if you've got the
bucks for N of them you can configure them to play N notes at a time. It
really isn't intended to be a polyphonic keyboard-driven synthesizer.

> I also noticed something that kind of shocked me to about the WX-5 and
> WX-11. These instruments don't transmit aftertouch!!! Wow -
> couldn't believe this! Perhaps they've used BC for this. I need to
> read more about it.

I'm on a Wind synth list (I'll post the URL tonight when I get home) and
the consensus there seems to be that the stock WX5 / VL70-m combo can be a
very expressive musical instrument. They aren't necessarily
microtonalists, though. The manuals are available on Yamaha's web site in
PDF format, so you can get an idea of the capabilities.

I bought the machine to use not just for microtonal music, but for general
jamming and noodling around as well. As I said on the wind synth list, I'm
an old marching band flute player who drifted into jazz but never learned
to play a single-reed instrument. The WX series is very much oriented
towards saxophone players, but there are enough "training wheels" that I
can play it and make reasonable sound while I'm learning the "expressive"
stuff. The VL70-m brand of physical modeling is also based on single-reed
physics, although the other emulations sound reasonable.

I think the general pattern is that sax players will be disappointed with
its sax emulations but like the other things, flute players like me will
be disappointed with the flute emulations but like the other things, etc.

Now ... suppose some genius (like me :-) were to design a synthesizer for
microtonalists. What would be the *requirements*? What would be the
*niceties*? I can think of a few:

1. Scala interface to the pitch generation scheme
2. A reconfigurable keyboard
3. On-the-fly computation of "goodness" measures like harmonic entropy and
Sethares' dissonance meter

And what would be the business case you would make to, say, Yamaha, when
you had a prototype built and had all the patent searches done and went to
them to try and sell it??

--
znmeb@teleport.com (M. Edward Borasky) http://www.teleport.com/~znmeb

Need a new trombone? Buy now -- don't let it slide.

>>How could men and women use the same
>>vowels?
>
>Both mens' and womens' voices have plenty of partials in the ranges where
>various vowel sounds reinforce partials. Singers are familiar with the
>difficulty of enunciating certain vowels at the extremes of the pitch range.
>If you play a recording of one vowel at a different speed, it will sound
>like a different vowel.

No kidding. I guess I had always thought that it was which harmonics
were reinforced, relative to the given fundamental of the sound, which
made a vowel. Instead, it's which _frequencies_ are reinforced,
regardless of the fundamental. Wild.

-Carl

> It is truly sad to see that Yamaha cut corners on the tuning
> implementation for this module.

Yip, definitely unfortunate.

>
>
> I also noticed something that kind of shocked me to about the WX-5
> and WX-11. These instruments don't transmit aftertouch!!!

The WX-11 generates two controllers (in the general sense of the word) other than of course
the MIDI note:

* How hard you blow, which it sends as breath-control MIDI messages.
* How hard you bite a pseudoreed on the mouthpiece, which it transmits as pitch bend MIDI
messages.

I don't like those choices, personally. I use Logic Audio's "transformers" to convert them to
mod-wheel and monophonic aftertouch, respectively, and then generally use the resulting
mod-wheel events (how hard I blow) to modulate volume, and aftertouch (how hard I bite the
quasireed) to module vibrato depth. I understand that many keyboardists prefer the reverse of
those mappings (i.e., aftertouch to modulate volume and mod wheel for vibrato depth).

I believe the WX-5 also has some sort of modulation wheel built in. I personally would have
preferred that they use how hard you press the keys to modulate something else, and possibly
something different for right and left hands. That of course is tricky in that you don't
always have notes down on either hand, but there are ways around that.

To continue the thread I started earlier, I'd like to get everyone's ideas
on the requirements and the niceties for a microtonal synthesizer. Let me
start the ball rolling with an expanded list from my earlier version:

1. MIDI: A synthesizer that doesn't use General MIDI (GM) standard is
unlikely to succeed. Therefore, all components and modules must conform to
the GM standard.

2. Given that, let's look at controllers. The most common controllers these
days are keyboards, guitar converters, wind controllers and position-sensing
wands like the Buchla "Lightning". Sadly, continuous controllers seem to
have died out. I would say that the controllers of today are probably
adequate for microtonal music ... someone correct me if I'm way off base
here. As I mentioned earlier, a re-configurable two-dimensional keyboard is
probably also a requirement. At least one such (frightfully expensive)
keyboard does exist.

3. Now let's look at the tone generator. The key here is that it has to be
real-time -- whatever complexities of the tone generation, it has to
generate two (stereo) samples of at least 16 bits at a rate of at least
44.1K samples per second, and more bits, more channels and more samples per
second is better. I think you can *almost* do this (track a moderately
polyphonic MIDI stream and generate CD-quality sound) on a fast PowerMac or
Pentium in CSound, although Barry Vercoe, the father of CSound, works with
Analog Devices digital signal processing chips attached by some kind of
interface. For details of Barry Vercoe's setup, see the CD-ROM that comes
with "The CSound Book"; look for "Extended CSound".

Rather than CSound, I would work in SAOL. The main difference, aside from
the better readability of SAOL code over CSound code, is that SAOL
processing is floating point throughout. This means that 32-bit floating
point DSP chips are required.

4. Given that musicians are not always programmers, mathematicians or
physicists, the underlying low-level programming details must be hidden from
composers and performers with a modern graphcial user interface that runs on
Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

5. Finally, the usual statements about ruggedness must not be overlooked. If
this thing is gonna sell, it has to be rugged enough to withstand being
dropped off a truck by a roadie on mind-altering substances and still be
playable by the fabulously famous and wealthy rock star at the concert that
evening. :-)
--
M. Edward Borasky
mailto:znmeb@teleport.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

"There's No Fuel Like an Old Fuel" -- National Coal Institute

--- In tuning@egroups.com, <znmeb@t...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16518

> And what would be the business case you would make to, say, Yamaha,
when you had a prototype built and had all the patent searches done
and went to them to try and sell it??
>

You know... this might have to go the "non profit" route, with some
kind of cultural "subsidy..." Kind of like the days when the
National Endowment paid orchestras a little something if they were
willing to program contemporary music. Because of this... and it was
a rather small stipend, they *DID* program more of it! They felt any
money they lost through attenuated audience figures (their assumption)
would be made up with the governmental "stipend."

Maybe something similar could partner with the synthesizer companies
in some instances... Well... not entirely impossible!

Perhaps some kind of tie in with the idea of "international cultures"
might also be a lure connected with the current zeitgeist... say
certain scales can't be played without some of these added features,
etc...
______ ___ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@egroups.com, Carl Lumma <CLUMMA@N...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16523

> >>How could men and women use the same
> >>vowels?
> >
> >Both mens' and womens' voices have plenty of partials in the
ranges
where various vowel sounds reinforce partials. Singers are familiar
with the difficulty of enunciating certain vowels at the extremes of
the pitch range.
> >If you play a recording of one vowel at a different speed, it will
sound like a different vowel.
>
> No kidding. I guess I had always thought that it was which
harmonics were reinforced, relative to the given fundamental of the
sound, which made a vowel. Instead, it's which _frequencies_ are
reinforced, regardless of the fundamental. Wild.
>
> -Carl

This *IS* really interesting. I would like to HEAR an experiment
showing this....

_____ ___ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "M. Edward Borasky" <znmeb@t...> wrote:
> To continue the thread I started earlier, I'd like to get
everyone's ideas
> on the requirements and the niceties for a microtonal synthesizer.
Let me
> start the ball rolling with an expanded list from my earlier
version:

It's funny that I invited this kind of discussion a while back but no
one seemed interested at the time, but here goes:

There are two things that I would like to see in a fantasy microtonal
instrument, which also speak to the weaknesses of the midi standard.

1. For external synthesizer modules, where we now have "Global Pitch
Bend" which tunes all midi notes on a given channel,
have "Independent Pitch Bends" (or something functionally like it),
to all of the midi notes, allowing real-time tuning transformations
under computer control, or else be able to change tunings by a front
panel or foot pedal control gesture. This would make tuning tables a
thing of the past and would make the important adaptive JI work to be
realized with ease. I think I can somewhat achieve this with sysx
packets now, but is awkward, and I think it could potentially clog
the midi stream under intense real-time retuning.

2. Make the total number of midi notes at least four to eight times
greater than what we have now to accommodate more pitches per octave,
while not sacrificing range.

Thanks,

Jacky Ligon

Jacky Ligon wrote:

> There are two things that I would like to see in a fantasy microtonal
> instrument, which also speak to the weaknesses of the midi standard.
>
> 1. For external synthesizer modules, where we now have "Global Pitch
> Bend" which tunes all midi notes on a given channel,
> have "Independent Pitch Bends" (or something functionally like it),
> to all of the midi notes,

Unfortunately, this conflicts with the MIDI spec, and is thus practically impossible to implement
via MIDI. The closest thing to it that I know of is an obscure feature of certain members of the
Yamaha DX series, which allowed only the highest or the lowest member of a dyad or chord to
respond to pitch bend while the rest did not. That made it possible to fake a pedal steel guitar
and certain blues guitar licks (very badly!). It also made it possible to get just thirds in
first and second inversion triads, even in a 12 EDO overall tuning. Cute but not very practical.

> 2. Make the total number of midi notes at least four to eight times
> greater than what we have now to accommodate more pitches per octave,
> while not sacrificing range.

Do you really need more than 128 distinct tones available at once?! I see your point, though. In
72 EDO, which frequently gets favorable mention in this forum, the entire MIDI range only offers 1
octave and a major 6th! But who wants to look after 72 tones per octave in real time? Makes my
head hurt thinking about it.

--
David J. Finnamore
Nashville, TN, USA
http://personal.bna.bellsouth.net/bna/d/f/dfin/index.html
--

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "David J. Finnamore" <daeron@b...> wrote:
> Jacky Ligon wrote:
>
> > There are two things that I would like to see in a fantasy
microtonal
> > instrument, which also speak to the weaknesses of the midi
standard.
> >
> > 1. For external synthesizer modules, where we now have "Global
Pitch
> > Bend" which tunes all midi notes on a given channel,
> > have "Independent Pitch Bends" (or something functionally like
it),
> > to all of the midi notes,
>
> Unfortunately, this conflicts with the MIDI spec, and is thus
practically impossible to implement
> via MIDI.

David,

Hello!

You are correct! But if I'm allowed to dream - it's going to be big!
Yes, the midi standard barely serves the needs of our contemporary
tuning desires. I'm seeing the whole thing gravitating to the inside
of computers in the future, where all of these absurd limitations to
creativity will make us look at the technology of today, like I
looked at my Grandmother's old organ - yes, you know the one with the
really hip "Fox Trot" and "Waltz" rhythm machine, with a kick drum
reminiscent of the quality of banging on a cardboard box. But Grandma
was "Swinging" baby!!! Boom, Tisss, Boom, Tisss, Boom, Tisss...}: )

> > 2. Make the total number of midi notes at least four to eight
times
> > greater than what we have now to accommodate more pitches per
octave,
> > while not sacrificing range.
>
> Do you really need more than 128 distinct tones available at
once?! I see your point, though. In
> 72 EDO, which frequently gets favorable mention in this forum, the
entire MIDI range only offers 1
> octave and a major 6th! But who wants to look after 72 tones per
octave in real time? Makes my
> head hurt thinking about it.
>

With this I was imaging a module that would be the compliment to the
Microzone controller, or something of this order. My fantasy
continues that I would like to try to have a simple primary ratio
tuning running through the middle of a MicroZone, and have degrees of
augmented and flattened intervals physically above and below this
middle scale. Something such as this would likely accommodate many
variant tunings for each pitch class. Of course I would attempt to
devise systems that would somehow subset large and unwieldy tunings,
to make them more playable.

I like dreamin'!,

Jacky Ligon

On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 12:40:03 -0800 (PST), <znmeb@teleport.com> wrote:

>Now ... suppose some genius (like me :-) were to design a synthesizer for
>microtonalists. What would be the *requirements*? What would be the
>*niceties*? I can think of a few:
>
>1. Scala interface to the pitch generation scheme
>2. A reconfigurable keyboard
>3. On-the-fly computation of "goodness" measures like harmonic entropy and
>Sethares' dissonance meter
>
>And what would be the business case you would make to, say, Yamaha, when
>you had a prototype built and had all the patent searches done and went to
>them to try and sell it??

At the minimum, each note needs to be retunable to any pitch (rather than a
12-note repeating scheme or a limited range of retuning for each note). The
accuracy should be good enough to represent desired scales accurately (at
least 1 cent accuracy). Variations in timbre should be tied to pitch rather
than MIDI note number (scales deviating very far from 12-TET on the DX7II
can have strange timbral effects because it alters the timbre based on MIDI
note number). The ability to quickly change between scales would be handy
(for example, changing the number of sharps and flats in a meantone
tuning). It also needs a MIDI controller that's capable of handling
microtonal needs. Split keys for distinct sharps and flats, or something
like Harry Partch's Old Chromelodeon II keyboard with extra keys above and
below the regular keyboard, or a set of pedals like an orchestral harp has
to raise and lower the pitch of particular notes, or even just a simple
lever as in a chromatic harmonica, would be useful for scales with more
than 12 notes per octave, if it would be more economical than a fully
generalized keyboard. The limitation of the 12-note octave keyboard is
probably the biggest obstacle to easily being able to play microtonal music
on a synthesizer.

--
see my music page ---> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/music/music.html>--
hmiller (Herman Miller) "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" / there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin

> "M. Edward Borasky" wrote:
> >
> > To continue the thread I started earlier, I'd like to get everyone's ideas
> > on the requirements and the niceties for a microtonal synthesizer. Let me
> > start the ball rolling with an expanded list from my earlier version:
>
> You left out the most obvious spec for microtonalists. Ease of tuning.
> After 7 years of working with synths & microtones, here's what I'd
> want:
>
> 1. to be able to tune any note +/- 2400 or more cents.
> 2. to be able to tune any of the 127 notes (instead of only 12).
> 3. one cent or better resolution.
>
> and of course it better sound great and be road worthy.

4. and have multiple user tuning tables, most synths have only one.

* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

"M. Edward Borasky" wrote:
>
> To continue the thread I started earlier, I'd like to get everyone's ideas
> on the requirements and the niceties for a microtonal synthesizer. Let me
> start the ball rolling with an expanded list from my earlier version:

You left out the most obvious spec for microtonalists. Ease of tuning.
After 7 years of working with synths & microtones, here's what I'd
want:

1. to be able to tune any note +/- 2400 or more cents.
2. to be able to tune any of the 127 notes (instead of only 12).
3. one cent or better resolution.

and of course it better sound great and be road worthy.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

I think this is an important thread [ much more practical and linked to
music making than defining just intonation]

These are some of the things that I have been thinking about :

*A generalised keyboard exacly like the microzone except with fewer
vertical ranks. I think a keyboard with between 17 and 24 keys within the
horizontal space of the standard 7 white 5 black kbd seems to be ideal for
representing all recognizable pitch classes [my preference would be for 22]
. Have a look at some of Erv Wilson 22 and 19 tone generalised kbd mappings
for exactly what I mean.

*adaptive JI chords rooted to any of the 22 [or n scale degrees]

*Setharian adaptive timbres that automatically optimise the sonance of the
tuning.

*Setharian adaptive tunings that automatically [real time] match the timbre
[to achieve what Dave Keenan calls that boring beatless effect.]

* A logical catalogue system organising scales and sounds under certain
organising criteria. John Chalmers catalogue of tetrachords could provide a
useful template for some of the scales. See Rex Weylar's and Bill Gannon's
book 'The Story of Harmony' p.136-139. I'll post this section if anybody
is sufficiently interested.

* A one octave small mirror keyboard for transposing the whole kbd into a
new chunk of lattice.

*The advanced sound generating techniques of Kyma or the Reaktor soft
synth. One thing that would definately be cool would be additive synthesis
with the ability to input numerical [cents, hertz, decimal, ratios, lattice
coordinates etc] values for individual partials and then 'mix' that sound
using faders for each partial.

I think this might be a good start and hopefully will get the creative
juices flowing.

On a side note a tuning list petition to manufacturers of electronic
instruments [clearly showing that these people would buy this item if it
was created] is a positive way of influencing the recalcitrant bastards.
Money talks as they say.

Also the justonic tuning people have a prototype of a preety cool machine
that tunes adaptively and has brilliant resolution. Their prototype is
doing nothing as the bank won't lend them any money for it.

But if we sent them moolah in the form of pre-orders they would probably
add all the ideas we had.

Justin White

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> I think this is an important thread [ much more practical and linked to
> music making than defining just intonation]
>
> These are some of the things that I have been thinking about :
>
> *A generalised keyboard exacly like the microzone except with fewer
> vertical ranks. I think a keyboard with between 17 and 24 keys within the
> horizontal space of the standard 7 white 5 black kbd seems to be ideal for
> representing all recognizable pitch classes [my preference would
> be for 22]
> . Have a look at some of Erv Wilson 22 and 19 tone generalised
> kbd mappings
> for exactly what I mean.

What I had in mind was a hexagonally tesselated touchpad, with the cells
reconfigurable to frequencies. A strain gauge in each cell would be ideal.

> *Setharian adaptive timbres that automatically optimise the sonance of the
> tuning.

Yeah, that sounds good. I would actually allow for a generalized
"consonance" or "dissonance" function for those folks who have their own
measures, like the harmonic entropy cabal.

> *Setharian adaptive tunings that automatically [real time] match
> the timbre
> [to achieve what Dave Keenan calls that boring beatless effect.]

Yeah ... I think the Sethares dissonance function is actually overkill;
there is probably a more easily computable approximation.

> * A logical catalogue system organising scales and sounds under certain
> organising criteria. John Chalmers catalogue of tetrachords could
> provide a
> useful template for some of the scales. See Rex Weylar's and Bill Gannon's
> book 'The Story of Harmony' p.136-139. I'll post this section if anybody
> is sufficiently interested.

Actually, I figured I'd just incorporate Scala for scale management. It
seems to be state of the art, although it would probably get a GUI wrapper
using Tcl/Tk for use by musicians and composers.

> *The advanced sound generating techniques of Kyma or the Reaktor soft
> synth. One thing that would definately be cool would be additive synthesis
> with the ability to input numerical [cents, hertz, decimal,
> ratios, lattice
> coordinates etc] values for individual partials and then 'mix' that sound
> using faders for each partial.

I was hoping to have SAOL compatibility at the lowest level. SAOL is the
ultimate "soft synth". A compiler for DSP chips would be required, and the
DSP chips would need to be 32-bit floating point. Again, for musicians there
would need to be a GUI wrapper, but that's pretty easy to do with Tcl/Tk.

> Also the justonic tuning people have a prototype of a preety cool machine
> that tunes adaptively and has brilliant resolution. Their prototype is
> doing nothing as the bank won't lend them any money for it.
>
> But if we sent them moolah in the form of pre-orders they would probably
> add all the ideas we had.

Where can one find information about this "prototype"?
--
M. Edward Borasky
mailto:znmeb@teleport.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

"There's No Fuel Like an Old Fuel" -- National Coal Institute

>Yeah ... I think the Sethares dissonance function is actually overkill;
>there is probably a more easily computable approximation.

Has anyone actually applied the Sethares dissonance function to a set of
real waveforms and dB levels? Last I heard, Bill S. was confused as to how
to actually do this . . . Bill?

>>>>> "MEB" == M Edward Borasky <znmeb@teleport.com> writes:

MEB> Rather than CSound, I would work in SAOL. The main difference, aside from
MEB> the better readability of SAOL code over CSound code, is that SAOL
MEB> processing is floating point throughout. This means that 32-bit floating
MEB> point DSP chips are required.

Pardon? Csound works entirely in floating point. If you request an
integer format output it is converted as it is output.

==John ffitch

On Thu, 21 Dec 2000 J.P.FFITCH@MATHS.BATH.AC.UK wrote:

> >>>>> "MEB" == M Edward Borasky <znmeb@teleport.com> writes:
>
>
> MEB> Rather than CSound, I would work in SAOL. The main difference, aside from
> MEB> the better readability of SAOL code over CSound code, is that SAOL
> MEB> processing is floating point throughout. This means that 32-bit floating
> MEB> point DSP chips are required.
>
> Pardon? Csound works entirely in floating point. If you request an
> integer format output it is converted as it is output.

It does? I thought it used fixed point for speed. I guess I didn't read
the manual carefully.
--
znmeb@teleport.com (M. Edward Borasky) http://www.teleport.com/~znmeb

How do you get an elephant out of a theatre?
You can't; it's in their blood!

I've lurking on this topic, thinking someone else would say the same
thing I'd want to say. But either it hasn't happen or I've missed it.

For the kind of tuning work I do, with lots of tuning adjustments in the
fly, the biggest synth need is one
that would obviate the necessity of splitting each note of each voice
onto a separate channel. OR, it could support lots of ports x 16
channels per port, so that channels don't become a serious bottleneck.

Assuming a single port with 16 channels, or the strangely chosen General
MIDI standard of 15 "real" channels plus a drum channel, what would be
helpful would be a compact MIDI message which specified the tuning for a
particular pitch class (i.e., C, C#, .. B). This could be done as a
sysex (F0 ... F7) or as a meta-event. It could apply to a pitch class
on a single channel, or to a pitch class across all channels; either
would be extremely useful.

JdL