Pete Walton Sibelius plug in

Since there have been various questions about Pete Walton's
microtonal plug-ins for Sibelius, I've decided to post the
two "Readme" text files which come with the plug in. And, you can
always e-mail Pete Walton. He's quite responsive, if you can just
wait a week or so sometimes:

TEMPERAMENTS PLUG-IN
by Peter Walton
pete"AT"pswalton.freeserve.co.uk [you know what to do]
Copyright PeterWalton 2002.

INSTALLATION
--------------------

1. Exit from Sibelius.

2. Copy the file "Temperaments.plg" to the relevant Plugins
folder.

3. Restart Sibelius.

Sib versions:

The plugin was originally written on Sib 1.4
It has been revised slightly on version 2.
The version 2 plugin will not work on 1.4

Temperaments plugin samples.sib
This shows what notation I have used for each of the
scales/temperaments in the plugin.

GENERAL NOTES
----------------------

You run this plugin at your own risk.
You accept full responsibility for the results of running the plugin.

My motivation for writing the plugin was:
a) to use in my own compositions
b) to use for the playback of folk music from around the world.
I find this often sounds
dull in 12noteET, but comes to life once you alter the tuning.

USING THE PLUG-IN
--------------------------

The obvious bits:

1. Save your score - you cannot Undo the actions of a plugin.
2. Select a passage.
3. Select a temperament from the selection box.
4. Click on OK.

In more detail....

1. Temperaments

The scales and temperaments are stored as tables of pitchclasses
along with deviations in cents from 12noteET. The plugin compares the
notenames in the selection with those in the table, and, where they
match, adds the relevant Midi pitchbend command.

2. Monody

If you have any simultaneous notes in any staff in the selected
passage, the plugin will mark them [X]NB the plugin does not
recognise where there are two or more voices on a staff.
You should separate voices and chords before you run the plugin.

3. Channels

Since pitchbend commands apply to a Midi channel, you should make
sure that all parts that you apply temperaments to are on separate
channels.

4. Non Scale notes

The plugin will mark any notes that are not defined in the table for
the scale as [NS]

5. restoring 12note Equal Temperament

At the beginning of the bar after the end of the selection, the
plugin adds a midi command ~B 0,64
This should restore 'normal' tuning.

6. multiple temperaments

If you really want to, you could have different instruments playing
in different temperaments,or even have the same instrument changing
temperament during the course of your piece.

7. Midi standards

The Midi commands for the pitchbend are what works on my PC using a
Soundblaster soundcard. They assume that the range for the bend is
200 cents.(If you should need to change it , it is the field
PitchBendRange in the Method ConvertCentstoMIDIText).

If your Midi equipment follows a different standard, you may need to
amend the plugin.I am not a Midi expert, so I cannot advise what
changes you would have to make.

8. Results

The plugin only adds Midi pitchbend commands to a score. The actual
resulting sounds depends on your equipment.

If the results are not what you expect this could be for a variety
of reasons which are nothing to do with the plugin eg the soundcard,
the soundcard drivers, the soundfont (the samples may not be in tune
with each other or may contain
lots of vibrato) etc..

NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS FOR MICROTONAL MUSIC
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----

This is probably the most contentious issue re this plugin.
I welcome your comments on this issue.

The books and articles I have read use many different forms of
notation for microtonal music including a variety of signs, arrows,
symbols, ratios etc.. As far as I am aware, there is no single
convention for the notation of microtonal music, or to be more
accurate, there are several conventions in existence.

The notation I have used is a compromise which is necessary due to
the current limitations of the Manuscript language. The range of
accidentals consists therefore of those accidentals which are easily
recognisable by Manuscript: double-flat, 3/4tone-flat, flat, 1/4tone-
flat, natural,1/4tone-sharp, sharp,3/4tone-sharp,double-sharp.

The practice I have followed has generally been as follows (though
there are probably a few exceptions):

no of notes in scale signs
comments

1-12 natural # b only
enharmonic equivalents have same tuning

13 - 21 natural # b only
enharmonic equivalents may be tuned differently

21+ all

Where enharmonic equivalents are tuned differently, sharps are
treated as higher than flats ie:
D# is higher that Eb
Dx is higher than E
Ebb is lower than D

However, when I got to very large scales (eg the 63note scale) I
abandoned the last point, and used the order Cbb, C3/4flat, Cb,
C1/4flat, C, C1/4sharp, C#, C3/4sharp, Cx then the same for D,E...etc

So far, I have started all scales on C. Making the scales
transposable is on the list (below) of possible future developments.

For now, if you want them to start on another pitch, you will have to
edit the Method for the particular scale you want to change.

If you want to create your own convention, read the section on
editing your own scales (below).

EDITING / CREATING YOUR OWN SCALES AND TEMPERAMENTS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------

I'll supply details later.

POSSIBLE FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
-------------------------------------------------

There is plenty of scope for expanding the capability of the plugin.
Whether I ever have the time or inclination to write them is another
matter.

In the immediate future, apart from bug fixes, I will probably not do
much more coding .
I want to spend some time actually using different temperaments in
compositions.

Possible developments include:

a) Addition of more scales and temperaments;

In Sibelius 2 it is easy.
If you do create more scales, please send me a copy.

In Sib 1.4, make a copy of the whole plugin and change the Scale...
method.

b) Making the scales transposable

I wrote the plugin on Sib 1.4 which did not provide support for
arrays.(OK they were theoretically possible but it was very awkward)
Since Sib 2 now makes arrays possible it should be possible to make
the most of the scales transposable.

c) Recognition of Symbols

At the moment the Manuscript language can not recognise and interpret
symbols attached to notes. Hopefully a later version of Manuscript
will be able to do this.

d) Parsing text files

On a couple of occasions I have asked Sib to add to the Manuscript
language the ability to parse text files. Their response was that it
is something they intend to add in a future version of Manuscript
(though they didn't give any clue as to when that would be).

This will have lots of advantages eg I occasionally do algorithmic
composition in java, but to get the results into Sib I have to save
them as a Midi file (Yuk), then read it into Sib. With a text file I
could pass lots more note information - dynamics, accentuation etc...

Similarly for microtonal usage it should be possible to adapt or
rewrite the plugin to read and interpret Scala files, which would
increase its capacity very greatly !

OTHER MICROTONAL PLUGINS
------------------------------------------

I have several other plugins. Read 'Microtonal Plugins.txt'.

CONTACT ME
-------------------

Please email me to let me know how you get on with the plugin.

pete"AT"pswalton.freeserve.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
-----------------------------

I studied composition with Robert Saxton and Jonathan Harvey.
I work as a freelance IT consultant in London.

MICROTONAL PLUG-INS
by Peter Walton
pete@pswalton.freeserve.co.uk

MICROTONAL PLUGINS
---------------------------------

I have several microtonal plugins. At the time of writing (March
2002) they include:

Temperaments
TempAbsolute
TempArabic
TempAsia
TempDetune
TempEqual
TempGamelan
TempNon8ve
TempRatio
RandomDetune
AdhocTemperament
MicroOrnament

Temperaments
-----------------

a sampler plugin containing 3 scales

TempAbsolute
-----------------

This plugin basically allows you to set up temperaments which are
defined by pitch class and 8ve rather than just pitchclass. Thus you
can set up eg a different cents-deviation for C4 and C5 .

TempArabic
--------------

several scales taken from an article by AJ Ellis and from Scala

TempAsia
------------
a few tunings from Burma, China, Japan, Thailand and India

TempDetune
---------------

Detune uses the standard chromatic scale but sets all notes slightly
out of tune.

Folk1-5 : you should edit these to play eg folk or blues where you
only want to alter the tuning of a couple of pitches. For example you
may want to slightly alter Eb and Bb to get a neutral 3rd or natural
7th.

Since for the 'Folk' scales only a couple of notes are being retuned,
they do not mark non-scales notes as [NS]

TempEqual
-------------

19noteET
63noteET

TempGamelan
-----------------

Two pelog and two slendro tunings

TempNon8ve
-----------------

25th root of 5/1
15th root of 3/1
16th root of 3/1
9th root of 3/2

TempRatio
-------------

Partch 43-note
Just
Werckmeister 3
Pythagorean
Fibonacci

RandomDetune
-----------------

You are prompted to enter a maximum deviation in cents (up to 100).
The plugin will detune each note separately in the selection by a
random number of cents. The detune will be different for each note
and will be between 0 cents and +/- the maximum deviation you entered.
This differs from theTempDetune inasmuch as, in this plugin repeated
notes will be tuned differently from each other, whereas in
TempDetune all notes of a given pitchclass will have the same
pitchbend.

It is useful for where you have the same melody played by two
instruments and want one of them to play slightly out of tune with
the other. For this use a max deviation of ca 10 cents.

If you want your piece to sound like it is being played by someone
with absolutely no sense of intonation you could set the deviation
high (eg to about 50). I tried that once with a Bach fugue....

AdhocTemperament
------------------------

Use this if you want to try out a one-off temperament.
You are prompted to enter a deviation for each pitch-class.

MicroOrnament
--------------------

This one is still in development.
It creates multiple pitchbend commands for a single note, in order to
produce microtonal fluctuations of various kinds.