Tuning RPNs: Difference between revisions

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<h2>IMPORTED REVISION FROM WIKISPACES</h2>

This is an imported revision from Wikispaces. The revision metadata is included below for reference:

: This revision was by author [[User:TallKite|TallKite]] and made on <tt>2013-09-22 08:24:26 UTC</tt>.

: This revision was by author [[User:TallKite|TallKite]] and made on <tt>2013-09-22 16:57:53 UTC</tt>.

: The original revision id was <tt>~~453093570~~</tt>.

: The original revision id was <tt>453184460</tt>.

: The revision comment was: <tt></tt>

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As we're all painfully aware, the midi spec isn't very microtonal-friendly. The powers that be decided that pitch bend would affect the whole channel, not individual notes, so retuning most synths requires dividing the midi stream among multiple channels. That increases setup time for the user and reduces polyphony, and generally just makes things complicated and difficult. The powers that be threw us a crumb in the form of MTS sysexes, [[@http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php]], which haven't been widely adopted.

The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They ~~use checksums, they~~ use tuning banks~~, they use channel bitmaps~~, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, ~~etc~~. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.

The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They use tuning banks and programs, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, and the application of different tunings to different channels is not obvious. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.

So it would be great if there was a simpler, non-sysex way of tuning individual notes. A few of us have cooked up a daring plan. The powers that be will probably never give us what we want, so we'll just __take__ it! We can commandeer an obscure and underused part of the midi spec and use it for our own microtonal purposes. We can simply create a new unofficial microtuning method. By "we" I mean the authors of midi tuning software, aka "retuners". If we all include this new method in alt-tuner, Fractal Tune Smithy, Custom Scale Editor, Scala, LMSO, etc. we will have a more enticing sales pitch for synth developers and designers: Add this simple easy method of retuning and you will sell more synths to microtonalists.

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As we're all painfully aware, the midi spec isn't very microtonal-friendly. The powers that be decided that pitch bend would affect the whole channel, not individual notes, so retuning most synths requires dividing the midi stream among multiple channels. That increases setup time for the user and reduces polyphony, and generally just makes things complicated and difficult. The powers that be threw us a crumb in the form of MTS sysexes, <a class="wiki_link_ext" href="http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php</a>, which haven't been widely adopted.

The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They ~~use checksums, they~~ use tuning banks~~, they use channel bitmaps~~, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, ~~etc~~. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.

The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They use tuning banks and programs, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, and the application of different tunings to different channels is not obvious. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.

So it would be great if there was a simpler, non-sysex way of tuning individual notes. A few of us have cooked up a daring plan. The powers that be will probably never give us what we want, so we'll just take it! We can commandeer an obscure and underused part of the midi spec and use it for our own microtonal purposes. We can simply create a new unofficial microtuning method. By &quot;we&quot; I mean the authors of midi tuning software, aka &quot;retuners&quot;. If we all include this new method in alt-tuner, Fractal Tune Smithy, Custom Scale Editor, Scala, LMSO, etc. we will have a more enticing sales pitch for synth developers and designers: Add this simple easy method of retuning and you will sell more synths to microtonalists.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 <h2>IMPORTED REVISION FROM WIKISPACES</h2>
 This is an imported revision from Wikispaces. The revision metadata is included below for reference:<br>
-: This revision was by author [[User:TallKite|TallKite]] and made on <tt>2013-09-22 08:24:26 UTC</tt>.<br>
+: This revision was by author [[User:TallKite|TallKite]] and made on <tt>2013-09-22 16:57:53 UTC</tt>.<br>
-: The original revision id was <tt>453093570</tt>.<br>
+: The original revision id was <tt>453184460</tt>.<br>
 : The revision comment was: <tt></tt><br>
 The revision contents are below, presented both in the original Wikispaces Wikitext format, and in HTML exactly as Wikispaces rendered it.<br>
@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
 As we're all painfully aware, the midi spec isn't very microtonal-friendly. The powers that be decided that pitch bend would affect the whole channel, not individual notes, so retuning most synths requires dividing the midi stream among multiple channels. That increases setup time for the user and reduces polyphony, and generally just makes things complicated and difficult. The powers that be threw us a crumb in the form of MTS sysexes, [[@http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php]], which haven't been widely adopted.
-The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They use checksums, they use tuning banks, they use channel bitmaps, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, etc. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.
+The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They use tuning banks and programs, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, and the application of different tunings to different channels is not obvious. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.
 So it would be great if there was a simpler, non-sysex way of tuning individual notes. A few of us have cooked up a daring plan. The powers that be will probably never give us what we want, so we'll just __take__ it! We can commandeer an obscure and underused part of the midi spec and use it for our own microtonal purposes. We can simply create a new unofficial microtuning method. By "we" I mean the authors of midi tuning software, aka "retuners". If we all include this new method in alt-tuner, Fractal Tune Smithy, Custom Scale Editor, Scala, LMSO, etc. we will have a more enticing sales pitch for synth developers and designers: Add this simple easy method of retuning and you will sell more synths to microtonalists.
@@ Line 140: / Line 140: @@
 As we're all painfully aware, the midi spec isn't very microtonal-friendly. The powers that be decided that pitch bend would affect the whole channel, not individual notes, so retuning most synths requires dividing the midi stream among multiple channels. That increases setup time for the user and reduces polyphony, and generally just makes things complicated and difficult. The powers that be threw us a crumb in the form of MTS sysexes, &lt;a class="wiki_link_ext" href="http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"&gt;http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midituning.php&lt;/a&gt;, which haven't been widely adopted.&lt;br /&gt;
 &lt;br /&gt;
-The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They use checksums, they use tuning banks, they use channel bitmaps, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, etc. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.&lt;br /&gt;
+The problem with MTS lies in convincing the developers of VSTi's and other softsynths, as well as the designers of hardware sound modules and keyboards, who generally have no personal interest in microtonalism, to invest their time and energy in understanding these sysexes and implementing them. And they're hard to understand. They use tuning banks and programs, they use a different format for pitch bends than the usual midi pitch bend command, and the application of different tunings to different channels is not obvious. Plus there are problems with sysex in general. One, Abelton Live and perhaps FL Studio actually filter out sysexes and keep them from reaching any VSTi's they host. Two, a synth developer or designer may have to write additional code to read sysexes, as they are a variable-length message. So sysexes are problematic and there's a real disincentive to work with them.&lt;br /&gt;
 &lt;br /&gt;
 So it would be great if there was a simpler, non-sysex way of tuning individual notes. A few of us have cooked up a daring plan. The powers that be will probably never give us what we want, so we'll just &lt;u&gt;take&lt;/u&gt; it! We can commandeer an obscure and underused part of the midi spec and use it for our own microtonal purposes. We can simply create a new unofficial microtuning method. By &amp;quot;we&amp;quot; I mean the authors of midi tuning software, aka &amp;quot;retuners&amp;quot;. If we all include this new method in alt-tuner, Fractal Tune Smithy, Custom Scale Editor, Scala, LMSO, etc. we will have a more enticing sales pitch for synth developers and designers: Add this simple easy method of retuning and you will sell more synths to microtonalists.&lt;br /&gt;