source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 14:32:36 -0800 From: "John H. Chalmers" From: mclaren Subject: A window of opportunity for synth manufacturers --- Csound allows users to generate csound timbres in real time from MIDI input. At present, this capability is limited. But as time passes and massively parallel P7 desktop machines become typical, this will change. This means that synthesizer manufacturers have a limited window of opportunity. They can either get off their rear ends and start building *real* synthesizers--instead of digital sample playback boxes full of canned sounds burned into ROM--or they can go the way of the dinosaurs. Within 5-10 years, the average computer user will be able to generate complex and interesting csound timbres in real time via MIDI using a standard desktop computer. This brings up the issue of Csound's support for real-time microtonality. There isn't any. Having mentioned this to John Fitch, and have received no reply, it seems appropriate to bring it to the attention of the rest of the forum subscribers. If you examine the source code for Csound, you'll discover that Csound translates MIDI note input into real-time frequencies by using a 2^N/12 function. Yes, having thrown off the shackles of the piano keyboard and all limitations on scale and tuning, Csound now makes it possible for us to...play in 12 tones per octave via MIDI. Unbelievable. Disgusting. Outlandish. Yet true. Csound is locked into 12-TET for MIDI playback until someone, somewhere changes the source code. Naturally, since this is the prime venue for non-12 computer applications in musical tuning, not a single person on this forum has ventured to deal with the problem. Thus, as always, we head forward into the past at the speed of light! Soon, extraordinary sounds will issue from our desktop computers...sounds locked into 12-TET, thanks to the crippled artifically limited MIDI-to-Csound routines frozen into the current generation of Csound. There's another issue of concern to microtonalists: Has anyone noticed that frequencies in the HETRO output are specified as 16-bit integers? With a frequency range of 20 Khz, this gives a precision of 20000/32768, not adequate to describe the fine frequency shifts that take place within individual partials during the course of real- world musical notes. 2/3 of a cent, for instance, is 4% of a 72-TET scale step. While this kind of tuning accuracy is perfectly acceptable for the overall musical scale-step, it is surely INadequate for specifying the fine frequency shifts that give each changing overtone its "lifelike" sound during resynthesis, especially when the resynthesized timbre plays in a microtonal tuning. Naturally, no one has bothered to mention this and naturally, no one has bothered to correct it. More neglect of microtonality in the very field (computer music) which ought to be most congenial to new tunings & new scales. --mclaren Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 19 Dec 1995 23:36 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id OAA04729; Tue, 19 Dec 1995 14:36:47 -0800 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 14:36:47 -0800 Message-Id: <9512191434.aa18824@cyber.cyber.net> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu