source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 28 Dec 1996 21:34:26 -0800 Subject: Re: Pitch bend From: Matt Nathan > > > [Lionel Dotson] > > > Attached,find 2(two) midi files. One(annie.mid) is pitchbend tuned,the > > > other(annieun.mid) is untuned. > > [Matt Nathan] > > Great, thanks! Could you send them again and attach them as files rather than as > > coded text please? > > Hey Matt,here they come directly to you. The tuning list converts them > to text,so if you have netscape they should arrive in midi format. Cool. Thank you very much. I can get these to play now. I like it, especially the tuned 7ths. There are some things I hear that I want to get in and see if I can try something else with, but I'm now not sure how to edit the midi file. I'm using my new PC compatible and don't have any midi editing software for it. All my midi stuff is on the Amiga, which is still packed away in a box from moving. I notice some of the voicings have slow beats in them, which is probably due to the poor resolution of pitch bend on the Soundblaster card I have. I'm not sure what the specifications are on this thing but I can hear that it's not perfect. > I have an AVM Summit tone generator with a > purported accuracy of 1/2 cent...but the vibrato(tremor) in the > steadiest instruments(trumpet and reed organ) causes beats in doubled > notes which are annoying. I haven't heard of that--would like to hear it and learn more about all the possible instruments or tools out there which are available. > Does the DX-7 have steady(unmodulated)tones? Sure. You can program your own voices starting with a pure sine wave and expanding from there using frequency modulation of sine wave by sine waves, stacked. When I'm tuning the DX7-II, I use a patch I made which is completely steady and has a brightness parameter that I can adjust manually using the modulation wheel (the modulation wheel doesn't have to produce actual modulation, or wobbling, it's a generic controller). I turn up the brightness to hear the upper partials, which makes it easier to tune pitches relative to one another by listening to the beats. The higher partials beat faster with small tuning deviations than the lower ones, so provide a better cue for fine tuning. Before I had the DX7-II or the Amiga, I wrote a bunch of software for the Commodore 64 for my own use. It has a SID (Sound Interface Device I think) chip which can play 3 notes at the same time, each tunable to an exact partial in an humongous harmonic partial series (overtone, not undertone like the frequency-divider type chips) from partial 1 to partial 65535. The frequency of the 1st partial was very low, like around .5 Hz or something. This thing could produce completely steady tones and play them in perfectly synced just intervals which would never beat in a million years. One of the software things I wrote was an ear training program. I wanted to be sure I was one who could, as you wrote, DO it and not just talk about it. It quizzed me with simple just ratios and as I got better increased the complexity of the intervals. It also had a routine that would quiz me on random intervals (technically, they were just ratios because that's all the SID chip could play, but the resolution was fine enough that they can be considered approximations of any interval) for which it expected a value in cents to be answered. It would keep track of my errors in guessing and show me my average performance. On good days, I could identify random intervals with an average of 5 cents error. Matt Nathan Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 29 Dec 1996 18:20 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA04562; Sun, 29 Dec 1996 18:23:36 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA04557 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id JAA08455; Sun, 29 Dec 1996 09:23:33 -0800 Date: Sun, 29 Dec 1996 09:23:33 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu