Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: Compositional Methods

Hi Carl,

> Can I be on your mailing list?

As it happens I'm just about to move it from listbot, which is
closing down and will prob. make it a FTS yahoo group, so anyone
can post to it too. So, yes, do.

This is where it will be - so you can join straight
away if you like - but I will repost the old messages (about
three or four or somethign) and maybe edit the home page
description before inviting the members from the old listbot list.
/fractaltunesmithy

Actually not much happened in the listbot list as I used it to announce
releases, and there were very few of these. No-one else could
post because I just didn't think of that when setting it up. However
with move to yahoo and letting anyone post, maybe it will become more active,
we'll see.

> Not in my scheme. That would seem to require large pitch shifts
> for keys on the main keyboard (?). In my scheme, choosing F simply
> indicates the pitch at which the sequence of intervals starting at
> 1/1 is centered. The pitch can come from the control keyboard,
> in which case the total accessible tuning is limited to the cross
> set of the two scales, or it can come from the main keyboard, in
> which case the total accessible tuning is infinite. All this
> will be made clear in the spec, which is half-finished as of 2am
> last night. BTW, I do not mean to enforce my ideas with the spec...
> it's just that I need to make my ideas more clear, for myself, and
> if I intend to share them efficiently with others.

Okay fine. I've got first approx of idea, look forward to the spec
whenever you do it.

It will be a little while before I get down to coding this as I'd
like to mull it over first, but shouldn't take long once I do,
the way everything is set up.

> No, we don't want that... large pitch shifts of the main keyboard
> would make it very hard to play, and nothing more than a glorified
> version of a "transposing keyboard"... an idea hundreds of years
> old... though I'm told Irving Berlin could only play in F#, and had
> a transposing keyboard to get around this!

Well, could include tra. keyboard as an option if it requires about two extra
lines even if only maybe three people, or only one, ever uses it.

>Correct -- that's my idea. It's still just multiplication, except
>you're making sure to keep 1/1 on the same physical key on the
>main keyboard (there's a 1/1 in every scale in the tonality diamond,
>remember). The possible pitches of every other physical key are
>then found on the diagonals of the diamond.

Okay fine. That makes sense.

>>However, with tonality diamond, with no note names to want to
>>preserve, I think one would find it easier to navigate if the two
>>keyboards were just the two axes of the diamond, and the note
>>played was the product of the two.

>Well, I'll disagree, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to
>try this method!

I'll prob. include it anyway if it is only going to be a few lines
and a tick box. Could perhaps use it for exploring lattices too e.g.
successive white keys of one keyboard go up 5/4, of another,
3/2, etc. Or whatever,... Just a thought, don't know if that
will be useful to do.

> Yes -- hopefully for you too. Thanks, Robert, for this highly
> productive discussion.

Thanks, Carl, I'm finding it very productive too.

> Why didn't I think of that?

My thought too when idea first came up. With hindsight, I may well
have seen Matts' posts or his web site first; I really can't remember
the sequence now, but if so, it somehow didn't "click" at that point.
He was certainly "in there first".

It was a complete surprise when the idea did came up, apparently as
a new thought: "Why didn't I think of that before!".

I don't know anything about how he makes his midi files; but the
basic idea is clearly identical.

> I knew you used NWC, which I haven't tried in years, but I didn't
> know you used this technique!

> I've always used Breed's Midi Relay, but it has a key repeat
> bug, where notes revert to 12-tET. How does FTS do?

FTS beta uses a least recently used algorithm for the pitch bends
and for most midi relaying (unless it is non octave scale
or something), you have at most one pitch bend
message per channel in the whole piece.

(prev. release used another technique, but the teeny tuned
sequencer was updated to use this technique too).

I've not had any reports of it reverting to 12-tet. If there
are any bugs reported I usually fix them pretty soon. Usually
I'll fix a bug and re-upload it in a day or two unless I happen
to be in the middle of an extensive overhaul of it, which I have
been recently.

Never had any bug reports for midi relaying for the current beta
(the january one).

Beta preview has better midi relaying in a few respects,
+ multiple midi outports and other extra features, plus
better layout of the program.

Did a complete overhaul of sections for the midi relaying.
Had a few bug reports soon after that, and found
some myself, and fixed them all. As far as I know it
is all right now; no recent bug reports, and haven't come
across anything recently of that type myself. But, will
be running it in for a bit more as I have done some
more changes to the midi relaying sections.

> > If non octave scale, may do it so that the non octave repeat is
> >shown as "octaves" on the score.

> Not sure what you mean here... why is octave repeating important?

Just because if one is used to reading the stave for 12-tet one
is used to the notes an octave apart on the stave as "the same",
so might help one to get ones bearings if they are the "same notes"
of the non octave scale; e.g. might choose to have the Cs as
1/1 and multiples of it by the scale repeat, so that C is always
degree 0 of the scale, D degree 1, and so on.

Nothing inherently readable about doing it that way, after all the
octave leap on the stave is actually from a line to a space, and
it would make more sense in a way to do, say, a six note scale as
(line space line space line space) repeat.

One could prob. get used to that pretty easily.

Just habit.

> Well, it just so happens I have a document for that purpose.
> Some of the links may have changed at the Wilson site, since
> Kraig went over to pdfs. See also "Janko keyboard", and the
> patents listed at www.daskin.com. Take some time to look
> into this one... I think you'll be interested. To summarize:

Thanks, will do.

Already downloaded a couple of the pdfs from anaphoria
to puzzle over!

I've also done a web search for "Janko keyboard" in Google.
Basic overview:
http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~pfitz/play/ref/keyboard.htm
which clearly describes what the Janko keyboard does,
and some of its predecessors / antecedents to put
it in context.

Robert

> As it happens I'm just about to move it from listbot, which is
> closing down and will prob. make it a FTS yahoo group, so anyone
> can post to it too. So, yes, do.

No, no... not another Yahoo group! I just want to get e-mails
about updates, beta versions, etc.

>>No, we don't want that... large pitch shifts of the main keyboard
>>would make it very hard to play, and nothing more than a glorified
>>version of a "transposing keyboard"... an idea hundreds of years
>>old... though I'm told Irving Berlin could only play in F#, and
>>had a transposing keyboard to get around this!
>
>Well, could include tra. keyboard as an option if it requires about
>two extra lines even if only maybe three people, or only one, ever
>uses it.

Sure.

>>>However, with tonality diamond, with no note names to want to
>>>preserve, I think one would find it easier to navigate if the two
>>>keyboards were just the two axes of the diamond, and the note
>>>played was the product of the two.
>>
>>Well, I'll disagree, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to
>>try this method!
>
>I'll prob. include it anyway if it is only going to be a few lines
>and a tick box. Could perhaps use it for exploring lattices too e.g.
>successive white keys of one keyboard go up 5/4, of another,
>3/2, etc. Or whatever,... Just a thought, don't know if that
>will be useful to do.

Def.

>> I've always used Breed's Midi Relay, but it has a key repeat
>> bug, where notes revert to 12-tET. How does FTS do?
>
> FTS beta uses a least recently used algorithm for the pitch bends
> and for most midi relaying (unless it is non octave scale
> or something), you have at most one pitch bend message per channel
> in the whole piece.

Maybe Graham just cycles through channels... Graham, what causes
key-repeat bug in Midi Relay?

>Never had any bug reports for midi relaying for the current beta
>(the january one).
>
>Beta preview has better midi relaying in a few respects,
>+ multiple midi outports and other extra features, plus
>better layout of the program.
>
>Did a complete overhaul of sections for the midi relaying.
>Had a few bug reports soon after that, and found
>some myself, and fixed them all. As far as I know it
>is all right now; no recent bug reports, and haven't come
>across anything recently of that type myself. But, will
>be running it in for a bit more as I have done some
>more changes to the midi relaying sections.

I've got 1.09 sitting in my software archive.

>>>If non octave scale, may do it so that the non octave repeat is
>>>shown as "octaves" on the score.
>
>>Not sure what you mean here... why is octave repeating important?
>
>Just because if one is used to reading the stave for 12-tet one
>is used to the notes an octave apart on the stave as "the same",
>so might help one to get ones bearings if they are the "same notes"
>of the non octave scale; e.g. might choose to have the Cs as
>1/1 and multiples of it by the scale repeat, so that C is always
>degree 0 of the scale, D degree 1, and so on.

But this also destroys something else the 12-tet composer is
used to seeing... the chords of the diatonic scale looking the
same anywhere on the staff!!

> Nothing inherently readable about doing it that way, after all the
> octave leap on the stave is actually from a line to a space, and
> it would make more sense in a way to do, say, a six note scale as
> (line space line space line space) repeat.
>
> One could prob. get used to that pretty easily.
>
> Just habit.

Having successive scale notes mapped to successive staff positions
is very important to me as a composer... plenty enough to give up
the location of my octaves.

> Already downloaded a couple of the pdfs from anaphoria
> to puzzle over!

That list was in order... Wilson's stuff is the last stuff you'd
want to read on the topic.

-Carl

Re: Compositional Methods

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗carl@...

🔗Graham Breed <graham@...>

🔗jpehrson@...

🔗carl@...