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New adaptive tuning options

🔗John A. deLaubenfels <jdl@adaptune.com>

1/11/2001 8:10:54 AM

In http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16102 , I wrote:
>>I've just uploaded first examples of adaptive tuning on multi-voice
>>sequences. They're jazzy standards, and to my ear, great stuff! See if
>>you don't agree it's surprising that separate notes in separate voices
>>could all be crammed into 15 available midi channels (plus the drum
>>channel).

David Finnamore responded, http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16114 :
>I think the horns, winds, and bass sound great retuned. If I were
>you, I'd leave the piano and vibes in 12 EDO. To me, they too often
>sound "funny" or "wrong" not being fixed pitch, especially the
>piano. It makes me feel ungrounded to have the piano pitches
>floating around. I'm sure that's due to expectations of what a piano
>should be after years of playing and listening to them. But I also
>think that the contrast of tunings between fixed and flexible
>intonation instruments is part of the style.

Though my own ears are largely, though not completely, accepting of
retuning in piano and other keyed voices, I've just added an option that
allows complete or partial suppression of retuning of keyed voices.
I've uploaded a couple of examples for list members with General MIDI
(GM) capability: go to http://www.egroups.com/files/tuning/, change into
the JMids directory, and download KeyedSeqs.zip. It contains two
multi-voice sequences:

A String of Pearls
I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Included are the original 12-tET, a 7-limit retuning without
restrictions on keyed instruments, and a 7-limit retuning WITH the new
restriction. For keyed instruments, I'm using GM voices 0 internal
(Acoustic Grand Piano) thru 21 internal (Reed Organ) - these map to 1
thru 22 when the instrument numbers are displayed in the range 1 .. 128.

Of the two sequences, sanFran is largely piano, so its tuning is largely
quelled in the restricted version. Pearls just has occasional piano,
so there is less overall change from the unrestricted version.

So far, no one has stated that they prefer 5-limit to 7-limit treatments
of these works. I could do up 5-limit versions if anyone really wants
to hear them.

JdL