source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 07:54:49 -0700 From: "John H. Chalmers" From: mclaren Subject: xenharmonic notation in Finale --- The estimable Paul Rapoport has created a microtonal music font for use with Finale. This was a significant advance, hampered by Finale's generally 12-centric mode of operation. Well, times have changed. The latest version of Finale--rev 3.5--just arrived, and it has features to delight the heart of the most hardened microtonalist. Most notably, the NONSTANDARD KEY SIGNATURE DIALOGUE BOX now contains an enhanced KEY STEP MAP DIALOG BOX. What, pray tell, does this signify? Buckle up, chromedomes--time for a trip into the bowel of Finale's infinite set of dialog boxes... First, click on the KEY SIGNATURE TOOL. (It's easy to tell; this is the icon that looks like a rodent having sex with a VCR. As opposed to the icon that looks like a cyclotron swallowing a squid-- that's the Speedy Note Entry tool.) When the Key Signature dialog box appears, choose NONSTANDARD from the dop-down menu. Click NEXT twice, then click the KeyMap icon. Okay. Now you're into a dialog box which allows you to define a microtonal key signature. First, you need to decide whether you want what Finale mystifyingly calls a "Linear Key Format" or "Nonlinear Key Signature." At this point permit me to quote from the Finale Reference (Vol. 3, ver. 3.0, which also applies to Finale ver. 3.5): "In this dialog box, you specify how many notes will constitute an "octave" (it's twelve notes in the traditional system). You also sepcify how many of these are "diatonic" (seven in the traditional system), and where the "chromatic" steps occur in the scale. (In the traditional system, the chromatic steps occur between every pair of diatonic steps except steps 3 and 4 and steps 7 and 8. "If you're creating a linear key format, note that your work in the Key Step Map dialog box must follow certain rules in order to meep the definition of a lienar key format. The total diatonic steps, for example, must be an odd number. Furthermore, the bottom and top halves of the scale must contain the identical arrangement of diatonic and chromatic steps. These principles ensure that there is a progression of keys, although it may not be a circle of fifths as there is in traditional key structures. (Finale will correctly interpret, transcribe, and play back music in a format that hasn't been constructed accordin go these rules. Theformat, however, won't be technically and musically correct; you may get unexpected results when you transpose--or add chord symbols to--music in such a key system). "You may wonder what the relationship is between your MIDI keyboard and the unusual key maps you can construct in this dialog box. The principle is simple: each key on your keyboard *always* corresponds to a note in your key map. If you've established a quarter-tone key system, for example, you'd have to drastically alter your playing style in order to input a simple C scale, because Finale now thinks that the first four notes on your keyboard are C, C-quarter-sharp, C-sharp, and C-three-quarter-sharp. You'd have to play C, E and G# "keys" on your keyboard to *notate* the C, D and E on the screen." Well, there it is, kiddies. Just what we've needed lo these many years. With this upgrade, Finale appears to support most of what's required for notating rationally a wild microtonal piece performed on the MIDI keyboard. The dialog box labelled KEY STEP MAP is fairly straightforward. It includes a control for TOTAL STEPS (the total number of steps in the scale) and DIATONIC STEPS. The remainder left over by subtracting diatonic steps from total steps is, obviously enough, the number of chromatic steps. This begs the question of what to do in a JI scale when faced with, say, the 11/9, or the 11/8...are these diatonic or chromatic steps? The question doesn't appear to have much meaning to me, but those of you who've delved into Finale for the purposes of notating high-limit JI may have a different opinion. Be interested to hear from those of you who've done this! By creating a nonlinear key signature you can generate a notation for a tuning with no circle of fifths, and no sequence of keys. This is useful both for equal temperaments with no fifths (6,8,9,11,13,16,18,23 equal tones per octave) and for non-just non-equal-tempered scales like the free-free metal bar scale, scales formed from ratios of infinite continued fractions, etc. The ticket to getting Paul Rapoport's nonstandard accidentals to appear next to the correct notes is the ATTRIBUTE dialog box. To quote the Finale manual again (Volume 3, page 300): "For any such key system you create, you can specify a number of special attributes, such as the symbols you want to use in the key signature (instead of the b and # symbols). *Harmonic Reference. This number identifies the note that all other dialog boxes in Finale's key system will consider to be the C, or fundamental root tone. Enter zero for C, 1 for D, 2 for E, and so on. There's little ever to change the default setting in this box (zero, or C.). [Note: Unless you're notating Harry Partch's music, with his 1/1 of G!] *Middle Key Number. This number specific the MIDI key number that corresponds to the Harmonic Reference Number. (..) You can use this parameter to good advantage if you want to transform your synthesizer into a transposing synthesizer (as far as Finale is concerned). For example, if you set the middle Key Number to 48 (C below middlel C), Finale will interpret every note you play as a note an octave higher (...) *Symbol Font. This number corresonds to the font from which the symbols you want to use for accidentals are drawn. To choose a new font, click Symbol Font; Finale displays' the Font dialog box, form which you can choose the new font. *Symbol List ID. This number identifies a symbol list you've created--an array of accidental AMounts (where one sharp has an Amount of 1, one flat has an Amount of -1, and so on) and corresonding chracters you want to appear in the key signature to represent them. To create a symbol list, click Symbol List ID; the Symbol List gialog box appears, in which you can define the character you want to appear in place of the usual sharp, flat, double-sharp, or other standard symbol. (See SYMBOL LIST DIALOG BOX). *Go to Key Unit. Enter a number in this text box to specify the number of scale steps Finale should consider to be between each pair of keys on your MIDI keyboard. In other words, if you've specified a quarter-tone scale, tell Finale that the Key Unit is 2-- there are two scale tones, not one, between one synthesizer key and the next. (If your synthesizer *can* produce quarter tones, however, leave the key unit at 1, so that Finale will correctly play back your quarter-tone score. "If you've specified the correct Key Unit value, Finale will transcribe and play any music perofrmed in the usual way correctly. If you created quarter-tone scale without changing the Key Unit, by contrast, you'd have to drastically modify your playing sytle, because Finale would treat your keyboard as show here." [Note--the diagram in the manual shows a quarter-tone keyboard replete with microtonal accidentals]" Hot rats, boys! This is a real breakthrough. It's what we've needed for years. It's what Lippold Haken's LIME *should* have included, but didn't. One final point: for those you whose wee widdle hearts go pit-a-pat at the thought of a musical staff with more than 5 lines, Finale also allows this. You can completely redefine the staff, with as many lines (within practical limits) as you like. Folks like Leo de Vries whose twinline 31-tone notation used more than 5 staff lines will jump for joy at this feature in Finale 3.5 Yes, Finale is still not quite as simple as quantum electrodynamics. Those dialog boxes are not easy to find, or easy to use correctly. But they're there. And for the first time, they make possible transcription of xenharmonic music via computer. --mclaren Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 20:00 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id KAA20043; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 10:59:33 -0700 Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 10:59:33 -0700 Message-Id: <199510231752.NAA26693@freenet5.carleton.ca> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu