Re: Justonic tuning software

Have any of you tried this software? It claims to tune electronic keyboards
proportionally in just as well as other tunings. Has anyone had any
experience with it?
Email is info@justonic.com
Tel: 604-682-3456 Fax 604-669-3301
103-1650 Alberni St Vancouver BC V6G 1A6 Canada

[ElodiL010@aol.com, TD 248.4]
>Have any of you tried this software? It claims to tune electronic keyboards
>proportionally in just as well as other tunings. Has anyone had any
>experience with it?

I too am interested to hear from anyone who has tried the Justonic software
or even anyone who has looked at its adaptive JI method and thought about
what its shortcomings might be.

They have a website at:
http://www.justonic.com/default2.htm
which has a brief description of the method.

And here is what I assume is their patent with the full details:
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US05501130__

Regards,
-- Dave Keenan
http://dkeenan.com

[ElodiL010@xxx.xxx, TD 248.4:]
> Have any of you tried this software? It claims to tune electronic
> keyboards proportionally in just as well as other tunings. Has anyone
> had any experience with it?

[David C Keenan, TD 250.4:]
> I too am interested to hear from anyone who has tried the Justonic
> software or even anyone who has looked at its adaptive JI method and
> thought about what its shortcomings might be.

I fall into the latter category; I exchanged e-mail with Justonic in
February 1999 and felt I got a fairly good handle on what their
strengths and weaknesses are.

Strengths:

. Does perform on-the-fly retuning as you play.

. Does support user chosen tunings.

. Because it uses tuning-table modification rather than pitch bends,
there are not harsh limitations on the number of simultaneous
voices that can sound (my own software uses pitch bends, which
requires each pitch of each voice to hog a full GM channel).

Weaknesses:

. Because it uses tuning-table modification rather than pitch bends,
the program only supports a few specific synthesizers; from their
web page at http://www.justonic.com/

. Ensoniq MR series
. Kurzweil K2000 and K2500
. Roland GS Series (Sound Canvas, JV 1080, E86, XP10, XP50,
SCC-1 Sound Card)
. Yamaha XG series (MU50, MU80, CSIX, QS300,)

. It does not support gradual retuning of notes continuously
sounding (which, to my ear, is almost essential).

. With most of the supported synths, it does not even support ANY
retuning of notes continuously sounding, because the synth applies
the new tuning table only to new notes.

I'm not clear whether the program considers new tunings solely upon the
basis of the current (new) set of notes, or whether it also considers
which new tunings are closest to the current (based upon the previous
set of notes) tuning. The second option is desirable, but, in my
opinion, difficult to implement intelligently without knowing how long
the current (new) set of notes will be sounding.

Because I also write retuning software, my viewpoint should not be
considered absolutely unbiased.

JdL

[Carl Lumma, TD 251.2:]
> The Pitch Palette does not have any adaptive JI function, to be
> accurate. It does have a database of chords (which the user can edit)
> that it can recognize and tune. I've never really used this function.
> Naturally, problems with uniqueness in 12 will still be problems, and
> it treats all inversions of a chord the same, which can be a big
> drawback (C6 vs. Am7, and so on). If you play more than the bare
> chord, it confuses the thing.

How would you tune C6 differently from Am7?

JdL

> How would you tune C6 differently from Am7?

Not that I'm the one you asked, but wouldn't you tune
a C6 16:20:24:27 and an Am7 10:12:15:18? If you
were to transpose the difference, this would make the
27 in the C6 26.66.. and the 10 in the Am7 10.125.

Dale Scott

Hrm, maybe I'm wrong, and C6 and Am7 should be tuned
the same. 27:20 makes a bad 4th.