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User:Mousemambo/Workbench

< User:Mousemambo
Revision as of 05:35, 3 August 2023 by Mousemambo (talk | contribs)

Mousemambo's workbench for ideas and projects. Questions? Please use his Talk page or contact him through XenHarmonic Alliance's Discord server #wiki channel.

Project ideas

  • User:Mousemambo/Tuning file. Add this new page. What are tuning files, what do they do, what are some formats? This will expand on the brief descriptions elsewhere, and link to the Anamark v2 page appropriately. Alternatively, create a User:Mousemambo/Tuning methods page with Tuning Files as one section, within which there might be some complete descriptions and others could have brief ones but links to a separate page with a more complete description. This might be a more future-proof approach. I need to think a little more before beginning. See below "Outline for a Tuning Methods Page" section for a sketch of what this might look like. I will note that there are excellent existing resources, like the Making Microtonal Music is Easier Than You’d Think page archived here from its original source. The problem with these is that they go out of date easily. Therefore, I am proposing a wiki solution that will be available for community maintenance including significant updates as appropriate.
  • Add "See: Tuning file" (or See: Tuning methods) as appropriate in the articles that currently reference them.
  • User:Mousemambo/Indian music. Replace the existing article "Indian" which, by the way, has a strange and dismaying page title (see below). Provide some history and current usage of tuning selections in the various branches of Indian music, and links to outside information.
  • Add some "how to" information for people just beginning their journey, either as additions to existing pages or by creating new ones as appropriate. E.g. How to use tuning files, how to select which ones, how to get your electronic or software instrument to use one. These types of pages live in Category:Guides.
  • Category: Tuning mechanisms. Probably not that category name, but something that would encompass all articles about how electronic instruments are made to adhere to alternative (non-12-EDO) tunings. "Practical tuning" or "Tuning practices" or Tuning methods" or "Tuning technique" (currently in use but deprecated with redirect) or "Tuning practice" perhaps? I note that the current Category:Tuning is about the theoretical side and not at all the practical side. However, it might instead be best to stick everything in there, practical and theoretical, although that's not the direction I currently lean toward.

Practical Tuning for Beginners pages

Below is a list of existing pages (still expanding by search, as of August 2023) relevant to beginners who want to set their electronic instruments to other than 12-EDO tuning. Synth/sampler manuals frequently don't provide enough background information, instead assuming you already know something about tuning files.

It's useful to consider the trajectory of beginners newly arriving at the wiki. The wiki's front page has a section "If you are new to musical tuning" that doesn't get into practical how-to issues, but the page also has a very appropriate and helpful section "Practical xenharmonics" (Useful Tools, List of microtonal software plugins, Microtonal instruments). "Useful tools" simply redirects to the "List of music software" page, which seems sensible if inconsistent.

Related to that visitor's initial likely trajectory, note that the wiki's main sidebar also includes a section "Practice" with links underneath to some essential starting points for people seeking practical tuning guidance, especially "Software" and (of less relevance to this work) "Pedagogy." Also in that sidebar, "Useful Tools" (redirects to List of music software) is listed under "Theory" which is odd unless you know how useful the "practice" tools are for better understanding theory.

Also, there are some not (yet) totally outdated pages out beyond the Xenharmonic wiki that are worth learning from:

Outline for a Tuning Methods page

Last updated 2023-Aug-02. Note that although much of the info will be in the Tuning Methods page itself, some other info might best be split out into its own page (e.g. there is already an Anamark tuning file format page). Also, any how-to Category:Guides pages would be separate, and links could be provided to existing outside how-to instructions that have text or video format (urgh...link maintenance sucks).

I'm inventing a distinction between "Tuning plugins" and "Retuners" even though tuning plugins have been understood as a subset of retuners. People are calling them "tuning plugins" and not using the term returners so this makes sense to me.

  • Intro
    • Why? We need to tell electronic and software musical instruments what tuning system to use when they receive controller input or MIDI data.
    • How? Direct tuning info, or a tuning file sometimes with a mechanism to tell the instrument to use that tuning (and sometimes also how to use it).
  • Direct tuning information. Some instruments have their own input system for tuning information, via dropdown menu selection or custom tuning settings. I don't like the expression "direct tuning" but can't think of something better right now.
    • Kontakt "microtuning" built-in script. Because Kontakt is so important, this needs to be stated explicitly, and a how-to link provided.
    • Other instruments (e.g. <list of example instruments>)
  • Tuning files
    • Intro. What are tuning files?
    • Anamark (.TUN) tuning files
    • Kontakt scripts
    • Scala (.SCL/.KBM) tuning
      • Scala tuning files (.SCL)
      • Scala keyboard mapping files (.KBM)
  • Retuners and tuning plugins
    • Intro. What are retuners and tuning plugins? They take a tuning file as input (or direct tuning info), and appropriately modify the data going to an instrument.
    • Tuning plugins (e.g. VST/AU inserted into a DAW or VST-host plugin chain ahead of a software or hardware-interface instrument)
      • MTS-ESP tuning
      • MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) tuning
      • Pitch bend-based tuning
    • Retuners. Software running standalone (independent from a DAW or plugin host), operating between a controller and software or hardware instrument.
      • alt-tuner
  • Other tuning methods
    • MIDI Tuning Specification (MTS)
    • Other SysEx-based tuning methods?
  • Deprecated and obsolete tuning methods
    • RPN tuning

Indian music

Existing pages addressing microtonality in Indian music:

I note that under Category:Traditions all the cultural traditions (not just Indian) are named with strange and somewhat dismaying names that omit the word "music" that should follow. E.g. Indian, Arabic and Greek should sensibly be Indian music, Arabic music, and Greek music. The words "Indian," "Arabic," and "Greek" by themselves can mean a people, a culture, or (except for Indian) a language. These page names and category names should specify "music" or "microtonality" or something else specific. Otherwise they feel very much like they are exoticizing and generalizing traditional cultural musics, much like how 20th century academic Western music theory tends to treat all music outside those by dead Germans as somehow lesser.

Toolkit

All user sub-pages

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