Sound effects patches as accidentals

Hi there,

I've got an option in FTS to use sound effect patches
+ Reverse cymbal as accidentals. You can change the range
of patches for the accidentals too, if you want to use some
other ones, or want more accidentals than are available using them.

I've just been debugging it - it wasn't working before.

http://members.tripod.com/~robertinventor/ftsbeta.htm

I thought it might be relevant with the current discussion
of various ways of doing accidentals in midi etc.

Here is how it goes:

Suppose you have a melody line in nineteen equal.
In FTS you relay it so that the twelve notes of the
score are mapped in some particular way to nineteen
equal, e.g. with all the accidentals as the flats
of the note above. You do it using a mode of nineteen
equal (Arpeggio in FTS), so that FTS knows what the
underlying scale is for the accidentals.

Now suppose you want a D# instead of an Eb somewhere in
your score.

You do that using the Seashore patch like this:

Seashore (drops all notes down by one scale degree)
Eb note on (gets retuned to D#)
Bird tweet (resets to no accidentals).

Then play it through FTS - either relay to FTS e.g. using Midi Yoke
Junction, or else just save it as a midi file (format 0) and then play the
midi file in FTS via Views | retuning midi player.

To use the option you need to select
FTS | In | Options | Configure Midi Kbd | Notation for accidentals
| Accidentals As | Midi patches (dft = sound effects).

It doesn't have to be an equal temperament - the Seashore
patch will drop it down by one scale degree wherever the
note is. E.g. you could use it in a just intonation scale
to drop the 9/8 to a 10/9, and the telephone ring to raise
a 5/4 to a 81/64 and a 4/3 to a 27/20 etc. You could do those
particular ones by using the Modern Indian gamut as
your just intonation twelve tone scale, and using it as
a mode of the Indian Shruti scale

To do a chord you can place the notes in separate midi channels
before retuning it in FTS

Or, do it like this:

C note on
Seashore
Eb note on (gets retuned to D#)
Bird tweet (resets to no accidentals).
C note off
Eb note off
...

That will sound a C, and a D# together.
The C is unaffected by the Seashore patch accidental
which happens after the C note on.

(So these sound effect patch accidentals
don't work in the same way as midi pitch bends, which
affect all notes in play - FTS takes care of the
details to make that possible - by remapping the
notes to other channels depending on the pitch bends
needed).

If your midi sequencer won't let you set midi events in a particular
order with zero delta time, you can save the midi file with
the events in any order, e.g. as:

Seashore
C note on
Eb note on (gets retuned to D#)
Bird tweet (resets to no accidentals).
C note off
Eb note off
...
then edit it in a hex editor to change the order of the
events so that the Seashore patch is in the right place.

It is easy to find the Seashore patch if you use FTS to
make the hex dump as it adds comments
to the code, and so you just need to search the hex dump
for "Seashore", and there it is.

For more details see the help for
FTS | Help | Midi In | Patches as accidentals.

Robert