source file: m1459.txt
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 07:11:46 -0500

Subject: adaptive tunings

From: sethares@eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu (William Sethares)

The thread between Jeff Lofflink and POL:

******

> I'm open to any ideas on this.  I got the idea from the Justonic
> folks.  I use new note only updates myself.  They were more inclined
> to real-time updates, giving as an example barbershop quartets where
> a pitch swoop wouldn't be out of place.  The MIDI Tuning standard
> also requests real-time updates.  Do we really need both types
> available simultaneously?

Pass.  Is Bill (Sethares) on the list these days? any feelings on
this?  Neither is something I use at all, currently, but the option 
would be hugely advantageous, and I'm sure I would were it 
convenient.  Two major problems are (a) defining the logic (b) 
making that logic configurable. One thought: personally, I think I 
would be more or less content if this could be implemented as a 
convenient 'post-production' technique.  But people who are 
interested in using these machines for live performance would 
presumably want more than this?  

******

I think its fair to say that there's a real "chicken and egg" problem 
with adaptive tunings. It's hard to compose or perform with adaptive 
tunings because there's no nice implementation - and there's no nice 
implementation because no-one is composing/performing that way. 

I went to Ensoniq and gave a presentation about various tuning 
issues, with a heavy emphasis on adaptive tunings, and they thought 
it was all very interesting, and thank you for coming. Given that their 
tuning expert (Steve Curtain) has moved on to other places, I don't 
they're a likely source for something like this at the current time 
(though I'd love to be proven wrong). 

All of my adative tuning work has been "off-line". I make a standard 
MIDI file, read it into my adaptive algorithm, wait a while, and then 
check out how it did. This is a very awkward way to work, and is 
essentially a kind of 'post-production' method as you describe. I 
think adaptive tunings will only be really useful when you can sit 
down and play as if it were a musical instrument. Such 'post-
production' methods are fine for demonstrating the concepts, but not 
for exploring the technique fully. 

I'm currently attempting a 'real-time' version using Max, though its 
unclear at the present time how many simplifications are going to be 
needed before it will actually run in real time. Of course, this is for 
MIDI instruments only. A far more interesting thought is the idea of 
operating on acoustic sounds...

Bill Sethares

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End of TUNING Digest 1459
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