Re: [tuning] Notation applications

David Cottle wrote:

> Hi,
>
> So do any of you use a notation application? I edit the manual for a package
> developed in Illinois and they spent several months working on microtonal
> notation and playback. They worked with a guy in Canada, and I used Kurt
> Stone's text for the symbols. I'd be curious to see if it comes close to the
> needs of this group.
>

I use Finale (Win2001d, with a lot of plug-ins and added fonts) which has in
recent versions become much more friendly for pitchbend instructions and font
management. I have also test-driven Sibelius and Lime, and find them comparable,
but my Finale output after so many years of tweaking has reached a satisfactory
stage that I'm loathe to give up.

When I want an audible microtonal output from Finale, I work in two ways:
entering individual pitchbends as articulations (this only works when cent
deviations form 12tet are a useful notation to performers), or I use Finale as a
midi sequencer (for which it is not ideal, but good enough for my purposes) and
send the output into a .WAV file rendering program (WAVMaker), which has a bank
of full-rang midi tuning tables to render into exact frequencies. In the later
case, the screen often has little resemblance to the audible result, making it
function somewhat like a Partch-style tablature.

What would be most useful is a plug-in where I could set up a full keyboard
tuning on my input keyboard and then map the individual midi key numbers to
notes with user defined microtonal accidentals other than the built-in
quartertone model. There is so much variability in tuning practice in our
community that anything less would be only of limited usage.

Daniel Wolf

Daniel Wolf <djwolf1@matavnet.hu> wrote...

> the screen often has little resemblance to the audible result, making it
> function somewhat like a Partch-style tablature.

Sounds familiar... I work with Finale 2001d as well... In my 12 years or
so of doing microtonal work with MIDI and computer notation programs, I
mainly use music notation as a kind of "tablature" -- it's familiar to me
so that I can see a note, hit the right key with the right duration. The
written note correponds to a key on the keyboard, not to a frequency; and
the vertical relations are steps of the tuning, not ratios of pitches. I
send the output to TX802s set up with their own full-keybaord tuning tables
that have nothing whatever to do with the "written pitches".

Well, it doesn't make logical sense to work this way, but then I work with
many tunings especally n-tETs from to 19, harmonic scale, Balinese
scales... It's just easier to have ONE notation that fits a fingering
pattern I'm used to and makes sense to my musical eye-hand training; it
would be hard to have umpteen different notations for different tunings and
have to guess about what keyboard button corresponds to what...

> There is so much variability in tuning practice in our
> community that anything less would be only of limited usage.

This is really the limiting factor: too many tunings for one notation. I
don't see the problem of coherent notation as having any real good
solutions that suit the new model of "any possible tuning any time"... at
least, not any coherent notations that humans would find useful for live
performance. And really, that's the only reason for externalizing most
notations: so that people can use them to learn pieces for live
performance, or so people can "follow the score" while listening.

Rick