source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 15:40:51 -0800 Subject: Greetings & a project proposal From: Ben Denckla Greetings to everyone on the list. I've been out of the tuning loop (and off the tuning list!) for some time now, but I've decided to get back into it with a new project (for my Master's thesis at MIT's Media Lab). I thought I'd briefly present the project here to see if anyone had any comments (notably, to see if anyone has done any similar work that I could learn from before I start). My idea is to render tonal keyboard music (on synthesizers) using dynamic just intonation. By dynamic just intonation, I mean intonation that changes according to the key center of the piece. At first I plan to do this using MIDI files, but eventually the idea would be to have a system with a score follower, allowing for dynamic just intonation in live performance. I would like to try to use the pitch bend technique of tuning, where each channel is initially given a pitch bend and then all notes with that offset from ET are played on that channel (i.e. all C's on chan 1, all C#'s on chan 2, etc.). At least that is a scheme I remember someone proposed somewhere. This seems to me quite a general technique that doesn't tie me to one machine. Also, pitch bend messages sent during dynamic retuning will not cause glitches whereas I'm not sure which (if any) of the explicitly tunable synths out there can be retuned without glitches, since this is usually conceived of as an editing, rather than performance operation. It is important to have a synth with good pitch bend resolution (perhaps one that uses all 14 bits of pitch bend, if such a thing exists). Any suggestions? A significant problem with the idea of dynamic just intonation is how to deal with accidentals and/or transitional periods during modulation. In a way, I think this problem is where the "meat" of the matter lies, and would probably be the crux of the investigation. Any comments? Attacks are especially appreciated :-) Ben Denckla Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 5 Nov 1996 00:57 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA00670; Tue, 5 Nov 1996 00:58:44 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA00668 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id PAA05312; Mon, 4 Nov 1996 15:58:41 -0800 Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 15:58:41 -0800 Message-Id: <199611042357.SAA01999@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