Worlds within worlds within worlds

Dear Tuners,

GREAT NEWS!!!!

I am now about $180 New Zealand from purchaseing on "higher purchase" that
AKAI-S2000 sampler, and altho I realize that sampling is a dyeing technlogy,
and that the latest catch phrase/buzz word is "phsyical modeling", but,
nether the less I am itching to get my hands on this item.

I will, over the next months coming try out and conduct experiments with my
superpower temperaments, and related concepts with the n-bocinni series, and
in addition to this, I am working with the creation of a website/diary called:

"DAYS IN THE LIFE OF SARN RICHARD URSELL"

.......this website specifically deals with many, if not all of my mental
wanderings, and inventions.

At the current time of writeing, I have sent infromation about an exercise
machine to HAMMER STRENGTH in America, and gotten a good reply, they are
considering the manufacture of it.

I may be coming into some money from this soon, so, PLEASE, somebody do me a
favour, and if any body can TOUCH and come into contact with Brian McLaren,
tell him that:

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY, NO DANGER OF XENTONALITY, MICROTONALITY OR
ANY SOUCH THING DEALING WITH SONIC ALCHEMY OF A NON-12 EQUAL TEMPERAMENT
NATURE DYEING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like the inventor of Nautilus exercise equiplment, Arthur Jones, who
himself, had dabbeleed in many feilds of interests, will do everything in my
power NOT to let Xentonality die out, and, like I promised many people on
the weight training digest, that which I hope to bring into conection and
blend with the alteranitve tuning digest, one day, I will buy supplements to
aid bodybuilding, -and, of course gifts to those on the altrnative tuning
digest.

Perhaps the greatest gift of all is this gift OF KNWLEDGE, and the fact that
we are alive.

DO NOT WASTE ANY TIME WHATSOEVER.

Also, please, anyone, altho I realize that I have had calculated for me the
temperaments involveing imaginary numbers, I, like an idiot forgot one:

(2^(1/12)) ^ (imaginary*n), and, in fact, most of the others have been
calcualted.

Can anyone calcualte this on fro me???

Also, finally, has anyone got Warren Burt's email adress, as I want togive
him, as a gift, these superpower temperament, and thos interested,,
also........................................................................
............................................................................
..................................... etc.

Sincerely,

Sarn Richard Ursell.

Sarn Richard Ursell and All,

I am builing a new computer based music
studio. I had planned sampling as the
means of playing music.

Now I find out that sampling is a dying technlogy,
and that physical modeling is superior.

I had also read as to the quality of acoustic
sound that sampling offered the best quality.

I had thought that with sampling one also
gains microtonality capablity. Is it so?

Please help me with this issue before i make any
investments.

Vas

On Mon, 1 Jan 2001, Vas Gardiakos wrote:
> I am builing a new computer based music
> studio. I had planned sampling as the
> means of playing music.
>
> Now I find out that sampling is a dying technlogy,
> and that physical modeling is superior.
>
> I had also read as to the quality of acoustic
> sound that sampling offered the best quality.
>
> I had thought that with sampling one also
> gains microtonality capablity. Is it so?
>
> Please help me with this issue before i make any
> investments.

1. At the risk of repeating myself, when you synthesize sound digitally,
the only thing that's more or less set in concrete is the fact that you
are generating samples, typically 16 to 24 bits wide, at a *fixed*
sampling rate, typically 44.1 to 96 K samples per second. In a true
digital musical instrument, such as CSound or MPEG-4 structured audio,
*everything else* is ultimately controlled by the sound designer.

2. Oscillator / filter emulation, samples of real instruments replayed
from tables and so-called physical instrument models are all higher-level
algorithms that can be used to generate these samples. Various compromises
in algorithms are required to trade off realistic re-creation of acoustic
instruments, if that's what you want, with computational cost.

3. There is no evidence that sampling is dying out because of the
"superiority" of physical modeling for re-creation of acoustic
instruments. I personally own a Yamaha VL70-m physical modeling
synthesizer and do not own any commercial sampling synth, mostly because I
was interested in a unit for jazz performance and with some microtonal
capability. I have owned it less than a month. I personally think physical
modeling is going to *eventually* be the technology of choice for General
MIDI emulation of conventional instruments, but it's not there yet.

4. Microtonality and xentonality require above all precise control of
frequency and timbre. Only digital sound generation can do this; analog
synths fall on their butts when asked to deliver this kind of stability.
But *any* digital synth has the *internal* capabilities for microtonality.
The manufacturers of commercial gear, however, must make this
characteristic of digital synthesis available to the user with some kind
of interface, and many have chosen not to do so, for reasons of cost
saving, in instruments intended for the vast market of musicians who play
only in 12 tone equal temperment.

So what would *I* have in a digital studio, given infinite funds?

1. A fast computer with lots of memory, a huge hard drive and a CD burner.
I don't think any of the commercial benchmarks will tell you how fast a
computer is for floating point arithmetic, which is what digital sound
synthesis requires. And the software makes a huge difference in speed as
well. I'd plan on spending $2000 US to get a fully-loaded box.

There are two kinds of computer you can get, Macintosh and Intel. The
others have pretty much died out, and I'd avoid Intel clones like AMD.
Even though Intel dominates the market, there's a lot of good music
software out there that only runs on the Macintosh. If you've got the
money, buy one of each. :-) If not, I'd pick Intel for reason 2.

2. An operating system to control your computer. If you pick Macintosh,
you're pretty much stuck with the Apple OS -- there *are* other operating
systems but they have a miniscule user base. With an Intel, you have a
choice of Windows or Linux. I recommend dual-booting Windows 2000
Professional *and* Linux, or using VMWare to run both at the same time. My
computer is a laptop, and I can only run one (Windows Millenium Edition).
Linux is a lot better for real-time operation than Windows, and there is
more free software for Linux than for Windows. I'm probably going to end
up buying a second machine and running Linux on it.

3. The stuff you're really interested in -- music software. What you get
depends on what you want to do. At a minimum, you'll want CoolEdit 2000
and CSound. CoolEdit is shareware; my recollection is that it's about $60
US. CSound is free from the web. There are quite a few user-friendly
interfaces wrapped around CSound, so don't let the fact that CSound
programming is difficult scare you away. I recommend buying "The CSound
Book" for about $50 US.

In the end, it all comes down to what kind of music you want to make and
how much money you have to spend. As many have pointed out, commercial
gear is highly constrained to the mass 12 tone equal tempered market. Some
synthesizers are more flexible than others, but there is always a cost
tradeoff -- memory devoted to tuning tables can't be used for anything
else, and so forth. Older synths oriented to microtonality do exist, if
you can find one. For the most part, though, you are probably better off
for *studio* music just getting a big fast Intel box and doing everything
with software. But be aware that the tradeoffs are different for music
*performance*.
--
znmeb@teleport.com (M. Edward Borasky)
http://www.teleport.com/~znmeb

If I had 40 billion dollars for every software monopoly that sells an
unwieldy and hazardously complex development environment and is run by
an arrogant college dropout with delusions of grandeur who treats his
employees like serfs while he is acclaimed as a man of compelling
vision, I'd be a wealthy man.

Sarn wrote,

>(2^(1/12)) ^ (imaginary*n)

>Can anyone calcualte this on fro me???

n (2^(1/12)).^(i*n)

0 1
1 0.998332224154001 + 0.0577301499714394i
2 0.99333445956855 + 0.115267738043462i
3 0.985023376545766 + 0.172420844616822i
4 0.973426697132687 + 0.228998832550184i
5 0.958583102652953 + 0.284812983040167i
6 0.940542104683244 + 0.339677125102669i
7 0.919363879904864 + 0.393408256555801i
8 0.895119069381306 + 0.445827154433133i
9 0.867888542931334 + 0.496758972791157i
10 0.837763129383523 + 0.546033825916973i
11 0.804843313612003 + 0.593487354990863i
12 0.769238901363972 + 0.638961276313635i
13 0.731068652996946 + 0.682303909270078i
14 0.69045988734745 + 0.723370682267499i
15 0.647548057052456 + 0.762024614961741i
16 0.602476296740111 + 0.798136775162204i
17 0.555394945596786 + 0.831586708891829i
18 0.506461045902949 + 0.862262842167567i
19 0.455837819210519 + 0.890062853161167i
20 0.403694121908946 + 0.914894013498922i
21 0.350203881995989 + 0.936673497561952i
22 0.295545518931898 + 0.955328658755339i
23 0.23990134851207 + 0.970797271824602i
24 0.183456974743301 + 0.983027740411244i
25 0.126400670752017 + 0.991979269155077i
26 0.0689227507895378 + 0.997621999769253i
27 0.0112149354290452 + 0.999937110634125i
28 -0.0465302879282937 + 0.99891687957773i
29 -0.104120307105004 + 0.994564709633496i
30 -0.161363027615179 + 0.986895117689242i
31 -0.218067513405567 + 0.975933686065356i
32 -0.274044623732644 + 0.961716977183638i
33 -0.329107644051348 + 0.944292411611452i
34 -0.383072908811087 + 0.923718109887975i
35 -0.435760414081683 + 0.900062698660133i
36 -0.486994417965783 + 0.873405081774871i
37 -0.536604026795044 + 0.843834177091295i
38 -0.584423765154796 + 0.811448619890559i
39 -0.630294127835843 + 0.776356433872776i
40 -0.67406211187233 + 0.738674670838397i
41 -0.715581726891051 + 0.698529020255867i
42 -0.754714482069878 + 0.656053390017913i
43 -0.791329848081062 + 0.611389459784844i
44 -0.825305692478551 + 0.564686208404721i
45 -0.856528687077078 + 0.516099416986705i
46 -0.884894685964181 + 0.465791149285122i
47 -0.910309072884276 + 0.413929211127422i
48 -0.932687076836072 + 0.360686590689179i
49 -0.951954054830623 + 0.306240881483082i
50 -0.96804574086688 + 0.250773689986595i
51 -0.980908460294258 + 0.194470029884166i
52 -0.990499308847206 + 0.137517704944513i
53 -0.996786295754608 + 0.0801066825914532i
54 -0.999748450446645 + 0.0224284602577354i
55 -0.999375892503223 - 0.0353245733645444i
56 -0.99566986461062 - 0.0929597800463691i
57 -0.988642728416445 - 0.150284914576572i
58 -0.978317923296719 - 0.207108766005678i
59 -0.96472988817263 - 0.263241795439906i
60 -0.947923946637726 - 0.318496768257949i
61 -0.927956155778729 - 0.372689378641735i
62 -0.904893119194226 - 0.425638864338002i
63 -0.878811764834918 - 0.477168609600147i
64 -0.849799088406467 - 0.527106734299172i
65 -0.817951863190824 - 0.575286667238743i
66 -0.783376317253942 - 0.621547701762022i
67 -0.746187779116574 - 0.665735531797031i
68 -0.706510293070025 - 0.707702766552532i
69 -0.664476205420013 - 0.747309422147627i
70 -0.620225723038721 - 0.784423388535232i
71 -0.573906445697526 - 0.818920870161966i
72 -0.525672873740337 - 0.85068679889462i
73 -0.475685892739706 - 0.879615217835861i
74 -0.424112236854688 - 0.905609634748943i
75 -0.371123932680432 - 0.928583343912548i
76 -0.316897725444584 - 0.948459715332206i
77 -0.261614489464439 - 0.965172450343596i
78 -0.205458624831309 - 0.978665802755173i
79 -0.148617442334488 - 0.98889476479247i
80 -0.0912805386764277 - 0.995825217223857i
81 -0.0336391640631389 - 0.999434043166998i
82 0.0241144157207582 - 0.999709205196414i
83 0.0817875606244963 - 0.996649785494932i
84 0.139187898892009 - 0.990265988915114i
85 0.196123968727866 - 0.980579108940442i
86 0.252405856927993 - 0.967621456659806i
87 0.307845832344973 - 0.951436252992196i
88 0.362258972075 - 0.932077484521091i
89 0.415463778277782 - 0.909609723419418i
90 0.467282783571966 - 0.884107912065736i
91 0.517543142986764 - 0.855657113070055i
92 0.566077210495291 - 0.824352225543105i
93 0.61272309820655 - 0.790297668555441i
94 0.657325216350861 - 0.753607032842246i
95 0.699734792257579 - 0.714402701915553i
96 0.739810366594033 - 0.672815443847718i
97 0.777418265210438 - 0.628983975087755i
98 0.81243304501693 - 0.583054497765448i
99 0.844737912405481 - 0.535180212026594i
100 0.874225112821014 - 0.48552080502599i

Sampling isn't really a dying technology. New samplers have been released recently that are very powerful machines (Kurzweil K2600 and Roland VP 9000). Physical models are not necessarily superior, just different. With a sampler you can put anything you can record in and play it back and processs it in all kinds of different ways. A physical model is a simulation of the sound, and needs to be programmed properly to sound realistic but can also be abused for interesting effects. It is likely that a lot of machines or programs that do phyical modeling are capable of microtonality.

Aaron

>From: "Vas Gardiakos" <vas@albrite.com>
>Reply-To: tuning@egroups.com
>To: tuning@egroups.com
>Subject: [tuning] sampling is a dying technlogy?
>Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2001 10:43:52 -0000
>
>Sarn Richard Ursell and All,
>
>I am builing a new computer based music
>studio. I had planned sampling as the
>means of playing music.
>
>Now I find out that sampling is a dying technlogy,
>and that physical modeling is superior.
>
>I had also read as to the quality of acoustic
>sound that sampling offered the best quality.
>
>I had thought that with sampling one also
>gains microtonality capablity. Is it so?
>
>Please help me with this issue before i make any
>investments.
>
>Vas
>

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Hello Aaaron and ALL,

Thank you for pointing ou the diference
between sampling or physical modeling.

What i need for my PC Midi studio is
a sampling or physical modeling sound card
capable of microtonality at least in 12 tone
or less and a polyphony over 64.

I want to avoid soft samplers and soft synths
as they wiil slow down the computer when
trying to get high polyphony.

Vas