.TUN tuning

Hi there,

I just had a thought today (during the final stages of programming FTS 3.0) - has anyone explored the idea of sending a .TUN file via midi?

That's the big advantage of the MTS sysexes that you can send them in real time via midi so you don't need to keep loading the new tunings in the destination synth.

That's particularly relevant if the program you are using to play the notes continually changes the tuning as it goes along (as FTS does with many of its features) - e.g. for tonic retuning, or fibonacci tonescapes or whatever. Such features just can't be used with a .tun tuned soft synth.

But though not optimised for size, if the communication is just from one software program to another on the same PC, as it so often is these days with more and more done in software - then even large sysexes are sent almost instantly anyway. So if you figured out a protocol you could easily send a .tun file - just the text for it - in the same way.

One possible protocol might be to just send it as a sysex as ascii characters, and let the initial characters of the sysex up to the first space give the file extension or file signature or whatever is necessary to identify the file type.

E.g. in this case you could start the sysex with:
.tun ......

That way you could send any text data from one software program to another via midi.

If the software already sends or receives sysexes and already saves / opens .tun files then it would be a pretty trivial programming addition to send or receive the .tun file as a sysex.

To get it under way, one could pro tem use one of the sysex numbers for non commercial use (0x70 to 0x7D).

A natural place to put it in the midi spec if it were ever adopted might be as a new sysex in the real time category, which would be used to send any arbitrary text data via midi, the type of the data specified by a white space terminated initial token in the data.

Or - is there any sysex that is already used in this way as a general purpose text sending sysex?

It's just an idea, which maybe might suggest other ideas.

Robert

Sounds interesting. Each synth would have to support it? You might
get more responses on http://kvraudio.com . Btw,
http://12equalboresme.com has a synthedit module that changes keys
with reserved midi notes.

Joe

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Robert walker" <robertwalker@...> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I just had a thought today (during the final stages of programming
FTS 3.0) - has anyone explored the idea of sending a .TUN file via midi?
>
> That's the big advantage of the MTS sysexes that you can send them
in real time via midi so you don't need to keep loading the new
tunings in the destination synth.
>
> That's particularly relevant if the program you are using to play
the notes continually changes the tuning as it goes along (as FTS does
with many of its features) - e.g. for tonic retuning, or fibonacci
tonescapes or whatever. Such features just can't be used with a .tun
tuned soft synth.
>
> But though not optimised for size, if the communication is just from
one software program to another on the same PC, as it so often is
these days with more and more done in software - then even large
sysexes are sent almost instantly anyway. So if you figured out a
protocol you could easily send a .tun file - just the text for it - in
the same way.
>
> One possible protocol might be to just send it as a sysex as ascii
characters, and let the initial characters of the sysex up to the
first space give the file extension or file signature or whatever is
necessary to identify the file type.
>
> E.g. in this case you could start the sysex with:
> .tun ......
>
> That way you could send any text data from one software program to
another via midi.
>
> If the software already sends or receives sysexes and already saves
/ opens .tun files then it would be a pretty trivial programming
addition to send or receive the .tun file as a sysex.
>
> To get it under way, one could pro tem use one of the sysex numbers
for non commercial use (0x70 to 0x7D).
>
> A natural place to put it in the midi spec if it were ever adopted
might be as a new sysex in the real time category, which would be used
to send any arbitrary text data via midi, the type of the data
specified by a white space terminated initial token in the data.
>
> Or - is there any sysex that is already used in this way as a
general purpose text sending sysex?
>
> It's just an idea, which maybe might suggest other ideas.
>
> Robert
>

Hi Joe,

Rightio. Yes indeed. As I was working on the .TUN widnow in FTS today, I've just added it experimentally to Fractal Tune Smithy for the next release (3.0), as a check box, so users can switch it on if they want.

Right now, FTS can only send it to other copies of itself to keep the tuning in sync - but as it would be so easy for soft synths that support .tun to add it in, the idea is that if it is of interest, it could gradually spread as users ask soft synth programmers for the feature - just as the .TUN format itself spread.

Yes had a look at that link - that's the sort of thing I mean't - FTS also does something similar but does it with the pitch bend methods or MTS sysexes. For synths that don't support those methods but can be .TUN tuned then it would let you do the same thing with them too.

I.e. it's particularly useful for exploring the "Paratactical" tunings of the tuning list blurb :-).

I may post to kvraudio after the release. I'm a bit pre-occupied with the programming right now.

Thanks,

Robert

> Sounds interesting. Each synth would have to support it? You might
> get more responses on http://kvraudio.com . Btw,
> http://12equalboresme.com has a synthedit module that changes keys
> with reserved midi notes.