Robert Inventor


Home Music 3D Animations Utilities Code Search Forums About Contact Accessibility
Overview of Tune Smithy
Download your free test drive of Tune Smithy
Time Signature Metronome for Rhythms and Polyrhythms
Chord Progression Player
Play & Create Tunes as intricate as snowflakes
Musical e-cards
Microtonal Explorations
Microtonal Scales and Tunings
Music Keyboard Retuning
Compose Microtonally
Retuning Midi File Player
Mouse & PC keyboard music
Mouse & Joystick Theremin
Lambdoma Music Therapy
Lissajous patterns
Audio Pitch Tracer
Sounds Harmonic Analysis
Chord Synthesis
CSound Automated Orchestra
Wave Shape Player
Calculator

Microtonal features for composers - Links

There are other tuning programs you can use too - each has its own strengths, so you can try them all out and see which you get along with best for your way of working (or use them all...).

Windows - Mac - Multi-platform - Tuning tables - History - What to do next

top

Windows

Manuel Op de Coul's SCALA (check out his chromatic clavier and the triad player :-)), Fred Nachbaur's Midi Tempering Utilities, Intun, and Graham Breed's Microtonal Software (all freeware).

Also - the first beta release of Joe Monzo's ToneScape - currently a free download - especially designed for lattice explorations.

top

Mac

Jeff Scott's L'il Miss' Scale Oven . He has an intimate understanding of scales as a composer, so this must surely be a must-have program for Mac microtonal composers and musicians - wish I could run it on my PC :-). It works with tuning tables. (commercial)

top

Multi-platform

SCALA - for Linux, and Mac as well as Windows.

On-line web page tuning applet: Java Tuner , which uses Java to generate waveform audio.

Mattlab can be used to make waveform audio files.

You can use Excel spreadsheets to generate microtonal midi as David Keenan did with his Tumbling Dekany . (both commercial). This site has an Excel midi tool

You can also apply pitch bends by hand in your sequencer or music notation software. See How the pitch bend method works

Some composers use Csound. For some microtonal mp3s made using C-sound see Prent Roger's mp3.com page.

Csound is open source and multi-platform. You make a plain text file describing your instruments and another for the score using op codes.

There's a graphical interface available for help with working with CSound called Cecilia . There are versions of it for Mac, Linux, and Windows.

If you are using CSound with Windows, you may find the new Tune Smithy features to automatically build your CSound orchestras from individual instruments of interest. See the CSound pages.

top

Tuning tables

Also quite a few synths and soft synths have tuning tables, usually with a number of preset tunings as well. No attempt made to list them here - it is a wide spread feature. If you want to retune your synth, use SCALA for Windows and L'il Miss' Scale Oven for the Mac.

You can use SCALA to update the tuning tables on most synths so I haven't tried to duplicate that functionality in FTS. You can use FTS to update tuning tables on the few synths that support the Midi standard tuning tables (MTS).

Some advanced tuning options can't be achieved via use of a single tuning table, such as changing the tuning as you play in various ways. To do things like that in Midi, you need to use the instant pitch bends method, or software that can update the tuning table as you play (FTS can do that, but only with the MTS sysexes).

top

History

The first DOS retuning program may have been Denny Genovese's "MMT" - available from about 1987, with 1991 as the last release, no longer available.

Jeff Scott was also early in the field with his Nuscale for Atari using pitch bends (first internet release in 1994, and predates that).

top

What to do next

Freeware / Shareware status: This feature is shareware. You need the Midi Relaying (Midi In) unlock key - or if you want to use the Rhythms and Polyrhythms metronome, or work with the fractal tunes you need the Complete level.

To continue reading about Tune Smithy, go on to the Retuning Midi File Player .

To find this feature after you download Tune Smithy:
Look in the Tune Smithy Tasks window for: Composition Retuning

The program comes with a Free Test drive with all the features completely unlocked (start the test drive at any time):

Download Tune Smithy

top

 

Test Midi File Player & Sound card / Synth
Download Tune Smithy
Tune Smithy Manual (or popup)
Search Manual
FAQ & wiki
Forum
What's new
New Features Blog
BUY Tune Smithy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To find this feature:
look in the
Tune Smithy Tasks window for:

Composition Retuning

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Examples of what you can do:

Get Tune Smithy

Disclaimer
Acceptable Use Policy
Special Offers
Contact
Copyright
Privacy
 
Site Designed with advice from Sojo Media (Thanks!)
© Robert Walker 2008
tool tips by overlib
Robert the Inventor's programs
By Robert Walker
support@robertinventor.com

NEW metronome software - Download Bounce Metronome Pro with bounces and conducting patterns to help you stay in time.