source file: m1451.txt Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 22:27:43 -0500 Subject: Microtonality in Minneapolis From: Harold Fortuin Here's an update regarding the Clavette Microtonal MIDI Keyboard Controller, and other recent activities of mine in Minneapolis: In March, I completed a 36-minute documentary about it, including introductions to the instrument and tuning principles suitable for the layperson, and original compositions and arrangements in 19 and 31-ET. Earlier this year I also began rehearsing my latest duet Endangered Species with fellow list member Kris Peck, who built a 20-tone JI electric guitar. I presented the premiere of the video and Endangered Species at a lecture-demonstration at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul on March 10, to an audience of local composers and students. So far, the video has been broadcast on Minneapolis public access, and the suburban public access stations of Bloomington and Northwest Communities. I am willing to send free copies of the video to any list member who will promise to sponsor it for public access broadcast in their community, but may withdraw this offer if I get too many requests to handle, so first come, first serve! In addition to the US NTSC standard, I can create copies in other video standards for other countries. In May, I recorded Endangered Species with Kris in the studio of John Dieterich, another local list member, and arranged a 4-camera video recording at the St. Paul public access studios later that month. I will probably use these recordings as is, since the quality of performance and recording was high, but I may tweak the audio in Digital Performer a little. I expect the audio recording will eventually become part of a Clavette CD, and the video should become part of a 20+ minute music-only video of more recent Clavette music.(It's a good thing we recorded it last month--Kris and wife Stephanie became the proud parents of Lydia Peck on June 15!) I've posted short QuickTime video clips of Clavette keyboard and pedal technique on my website at http://www.wavefront.com/~hfortuin/clavett.htm. If you don't have QuickTime, which runs on Windows and Mac OS, there's a link there to download it for free. Thanks to some unusual circumstances on my day job, I had the time to complete a Windows 95 version of my KTune Kurzweil 2000/2500 tuning generator in April. This program generates octave-based equal temperaments and JIs especially for the Keymap editor in these synthesizers (but output could be entered in the Intonation editor). It creates a text file with values to be entered into the synthesizer manually. It can create decimal divisions of the octave, so by following directions in the ReadMe file it can generate non-octave ETs. This freeware program can now be downloaded as a .zip archive from http://www.wavefront.com/~hfortuin/phdcurv.htm (For the programmers amongst us, I created it with Microsoft Foundation Classes in MS Visual C++ 4.0 and 5.0.) I've included a dump of a bank of Programs in various ETs developed with the help of KTune for K2000 System 2.0+. I've pulled the copy of my Curvaceous dissertation software for Mac OS from the site, since for some reason the more recent versions of Performer can't open its Standard MIDI file output; plus, I'm well along the way with a standalone version of this, which should run on any platform, but which I'll only test on Windows 95/98 and Mac OS. (I'm writing this using Java 1.0's Abstract Windowing Toolkit using MS Visual J++ 1.0, and the Sun JDK for the Mac.) I hope to post a version of this in a few months for the xenrhythmicists amongst you. Once again, new to my website: --http://www.wavefront.com/~hfortuin/clavett.htm for video clips of the Clavette --http://www.wavefront.com/~hfortuin/phdcurv.htm for KTune software and K2000 programs in various ETs using various sounds And let me know if you can sponsor broadcast of the video. (If you live in a community in the US with public access, you can sponsor this video without any cost to you.) Have a marvelous microtonal summer, Harold Fortuin