source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 11:27:12 -0700 Subject: Re: Guide to non-tempered synthesizers? From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@CompuServe.COM> Here's a forward of an earlier evaluation from Brian McLaren. I suppose it's worth pointing out though, that many people took exception to some of his evaluations. But as I recall, most of those were a result of misunderstanding his premise, which if memory serves, he did in fact clearly state at the beginning. That premise was that he was speaking of 100%, completely, unlimitedly retunable instruments, meaning that each key may be tuned to any pitch whatsoever, without any regard whatsoever to how any other key is tuned. Most of the objections I recall were things like, "that's not true; my ___ allows retunability", but when you look into it more closely, it has a limitation like the tables having to be 12-tone, or have to repeat in octaves. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the few disadvantages of a thread as active as this tuning forum is the fact that many new subscribers are constantly coming on line and asking questions answered in posts 6 or 10 months back. There seems to be continuing confusion about which synths are microtonal & which aren't. Also about which manufacturers support non-12, and to what extent. Here's a recap: ------------------------------------------------- First, the manufacturers. Yamaha, Waldorf, E-Mu (in its line of stand-alone sound modules) and Ensoniq are firmly dedicated to supporting microtonality on their synths. Akai, Peavey , Roland and Kawai, on the other hand, are implacably hostile to microtonality. These companies have never manufactured a synth that can be detuned. They'd be delighted if everyone on this tuning forum died of Ebola virus. These companies are ruthlessly dedicated to preventing anyone, anywhere from breaking out of the twelve-tone equal tempered scale. Oberheim, Kurzweil and Korg are sitting on the fence. Some of their synths support non-12, some don't. Kurzweil and Korg both build synths that allow all 12 notes per octave to be retuned--but ONLY 12 notes at a time, and ONLY within the octave. ---------------------------------------------------- The companies can be broken down into: GOOD GUYS BAD GUYS FENCE-SITTERS Yamaha Kawai Oberheim Ensoniq Akai Korg Waldorf Peavey Kurzweil E-Mu Alesis Roland This is important to those of you who want to compose non-12 music. If you buy the wrong synth, you're stuck. And I mean *stuck.* There's just no way to get out of 12 without adding a pitch-bend to each and every note--a process of which you will tire very VERY quickly. Pitch bends also destroy the attack of percussive timbres. This is *not* subtle. A piece composed by a member of this forum using pitch-bends for retuning has prompted the question from everyone who's heard it: "What's wrong with the weird sliding attacks on those notes?" Plus pich-bends clog MIDI's datastream, especially in fast music. If you're thinking of composing in non-12, best to pick up a synth by Yamaha, Ensoniq, Waldorf, Oberheim or E-Mu. Avoid synths by Peavey, Akai, Kawai, Alesis, Roland or Korg. ----------------------------------------------------- Second: A lot of people are confused about what "retunable" means. By retunable, I mean that any key on the synth can be tuned to any pitch desired. So middle C can sound A0, 27.5 Hz, or it can sound A8. The keyboard can be turned upside-down, tuned to a just scale, an equal-tempered scale, a non-just non-equal-tempered scale, a non-octave scale, or anything at all. Any other synth is *not* retunable. It may allow you to tweak a few notes, or mess with pitch-bend, but sooner or later you'll get frustrated. Sooner or later a synth without full keyboard retuning will *PREVENT* you from producing the pitches you want to hear. Only a few synths are retunable. They have what are called pitch tables. A pitch table is a set of 128 memory locations that contain the note number and a pitch. By setting each of the 128 internal memory locations to any pitch, you can get any tuning desired. Tuning accuracy is usually not nearly as important as full- keyboard retunability. Very few people will notice the difference between a tuning resolution of 768 parts per octave and a resolution of 1024 parts per octave... But everyone with ears instantly hears the difference between a synth which only allows 12 notes of 19 and a synth that allows ALL 19 NOTES of 19. A few synths even allow more than 1 tuning table. The advantage of these is that they permit just intonation composers to modulate quickly and easily between different just arrays. If you're a JI composer, this is no trivial matter! In fact it may well prove the most important decision you make when choosing a synth to compose with. So JI fans, pay special attention to the section marked MULTIPLE TUNING TABLES below. ------------------------------------------------ Here in detail are the models (by manufacturer) : ENSONIQ Mirage - Full keyboard, 256 parts per octave or 4096/octave by entering all 60 notes Requires Dick Lord's UPWARD CONCEPTS alternative operating system disk or Buzz Kimball's alternative OS disk. ESQ-1, ESQ-M, SQ-80 - Only retunable within 12 notes per octave. Details published in a 1986 KEYBOARD magazine article. VFX, VFX- SQ, TS-10 - Full keyboard, 768 parts per octave. EPS, EPS-16+, ASR-10 - Full keyboard, 768 parts per octave. Tuning is stored on disk along with the sound sample. SQ-1, SQ-1R - NOT RETUNABLE! Also, none of Ensoniq's dedicated piano modules are retunable. KURZWEIL Only one of their modules or synths built before the company was sold to Young Chang is retunable. K-150, K-1000 - Only within 12 notes per octave. K-2000, K-2000S - Only within 12 notes per octave ROLAND None of this company's synths can be retuned in any way, shape or form ALESIS Quadrasynth - NOT RETUNABLE! YAMAHA FB-01 - Retunable ONLY by sending each note-on as a sys-ex message. Only Larry Polansky's HMSL currently supports retuning on this synth. The advantage, however, is that (unlike any other synth on this list) you get a FULL 10 OCTAVES of notes in any scale you want, 768/oct resolution. TX81Z, DX11 - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. DX7 with E! - Full keyboard retuning, 1024/oct. TX7 - NOT RETUNABLE! TX816 - NOT RETUNABLE! DX7II, TX802 - Full keyboard retuning, 1024 /oct SY-22, TG-55 - NOT RETUNABLE! TG-77, SY-77, SY-99 - Full keyboard retuning, 1024/oct. >>>>> IMPORTANT! No Yamaha sampler can be retuned. <<<<< VL-1, VL-1M - Full keyboard retuning, 1024/oct. OBERHEIM Their latest (1993) rack-mount synth apparently allows + and - 50 cents retunability for each of the 12 notes in the octave. No more than 12 retuned notes per octave are allowed. E-MU Proteus I, Proteus XL - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. Ultraproteus -- full retuning, 768/oct. Proteus II, Proteus IIXL - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. Proteus III World - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. Proteus FX - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct Proteus Classic Keys - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. Morpheus - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct Proformance, Proformance Plus - NOT RETUNABLE! Emax, Emax II, ESi, Emulator II, Emulator III - NOT RETUNABLE! No E-Mu samplers can be retuned without "tricking" the operating system by detuning each note and storing it as a separate sample, etc. (At best the results from detuning E-Mu and Yamaha and Akai and Kawai samplers are poor and it gobbles RAM like you wouldn't believe.) KORG T-1, T-2, T3 - Retunable only within12 notes per octave Wavestation - Retunable only within 12 notes per octave O1/W, O1/W Pro - Retunable only 12 notes per octave X20, X30, X50 - NOT RETUNABLE! X5, i4, i4S - Retunable only within 12 notes per octave KAWAI None of this company's synths can be retuned in any way, shape or form. AKAI None of this company's synths can be retuned in any way, shape or form. WALDORF MicroWave - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. Wave - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. PEAVEY None of this company's synths can be retuned in any way, shape or form. ------------------------------------------ MULTIPLE TUNING TABLES: COMPANY SYNTH # OF TUNING TABLES Yamaha TX802 8 Ensoniq VFX, TS-10 12 Ensoniq EPS, EPS-16+, ASR-10 8 Ensoniq ESQ1, ESQ-M, SQ-80 8 (only within 12 notes per octave) This means that the TX802 can support up to 8 different full-keyboard tunings at once; likewise the VFX & TS-10 can support up to 12 different full-keyboard tunings at once, etc. The ESQ-1, ESQ-M and SQ-80 are special cases. These synths don't have tuning tables; you retune by using the MOD operators in each voice to modulate notes/octave. It works, but it's a godawful kludge. One addendum to the above table: observant readers will have noticed that the info for Ensoniq samplers is not quite accurate. Since a tuning is stored with the layer to which a sample is assigned, and since Ensoniq samplers can use up to 8 different layers within each channel, there is a theoretical maximum of 64 different tuning tables possible on an Ensoniq EPS, EPS-16+, or ASR-10. In practice memory runs out long before the 64-layer limit is reached, however. ------------------------------------- Third (and last): Here's a very quick overview: ONLY 1 COMPANY MAKES A FULL-KEYBOARD RETUNABLE SAMPLER: ENSONIQ If you want to compose or perform using a sampler in non-12, you have ONLY 3 CHOICES: The ASR-10, a used EPS-16+ or a used EPS. NO OTHER SAMPLER ON THE PLANET HAS A TUNING TABLE! >>>>>> IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! <<<<<<< The only synths recommended for those who want to compose or perform in non-12 are: Yamaha DX7 w/E!, DX7II, TX802, TG-77, TX81Z, FB-01, SY-77, SY-99, VL-1, VL-1M Ensoniq VFX, VFX-SQ, TS-10 Waldorf MicroWave, Wave E-MU Proteus I, Proteus II, Proteus III, Morpheus, Classic Keys, Proteus FX, Ultraproteus Time and time again, I've seen people buy a synth *not* on this list. Time and time again, they get interested in microtonality... and discover their synth is *locked into 12*, or locked into only 12 notes out 19, or 12 notes out of 31, or 12 harmonic series pitches, or 12 notes out of Harry Partch's 43... The frustration and rage and hair-pulling frenzy this produces cannot be adequately described. It's unbelievably maddening to discover that your shiny new $3000 synth *CANNOT* produce the pitches you want to hear. So those interested in composition or performance in non-12 would do well to choose wisely (as the knight in "Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Holy Grail" put it) and pick one of the synths on the RECOMMENDED list. Otherwise, dollars to doughnuts, you are going to let yourself in for a whole *world* of frustration. IMPORTANT: IF YOU LIKE A PARTICULAR SYNTH BUT ARE BUGGED THAT THE MANUFACTURER DOESN'T OFFER RETUNABILITY, WRITE A LETTER TO THE MANUFACTURER. ENOUGH LETTERS AND THEY WILL GET THE MESSAGE! --mclaren Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 5 Oct 1996 21:15 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA14890; Sat, 5 Oct 1996 20:16:51 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA14850 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id MAA17469; Sat, 5 Oct 1996 12:16:49 -0700 Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 12:16:49 -0700 Message-Id: <199610051514_MC1-A0F-5034@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu