The tunes with Tune Smithy as the author are the fractals - you can vary the parameters to make them into your own tunes. With just a small change the entire tune transforms completely - just as happens with fractal images. No experience of composition is needed for these.
The ones with Robert Walker as the author are my own compositions to show some of its retuning capabilities. The retuning midi player comes with many examples, all set up ready to play.
With the new Bounce Metronome Pro - practice any rhythms - this includes rhythms with swing, dance rhythms with a mixture of note sizes, syncopated rhythms, complex polyrhythms (such as you get in African drumming for instance) and mixed meters or long measures. The innovative gravity bounce visuals help you keep in time. For the OLDER Tune Smithy task see Polyrhythm Metronome- you get both of them when you purchase Tune Smithy Complete or Play.
Play chord progressions - you can copy / paste most chord progressions from other web sites directly into the player and click the play button to hear them straight away. You can also set a rhythm to create a backing track for practice. Play the chords in any tuning you like or in historical temperaments - see Chord Player
Explore the tune generating capabilities of Fractal Tune Smithy - create beautiful fractal music intricate as snowflakes. Compose new tunes just by varying the parameters of the example tunes. This is suitable for complete beginners to music and composition, advanced algo-comp enthusiasts - or as a source to generate new melodic ideas - see Play & Create Tunes as intricate as snowflakes
Send a Tune Smithy musical e-card to a friend - see Musical e-cards
Try out any of the tunings that have been developed world wide - historical baroque tunings, Gamelan tunings, Indian music, tunings based on vertex patterns of 3D shapes, and other special ones invented by modern scale designers- see Microtonal Scales and Tunings
Move the mouse around to play a theremin with many advanced features (the theremin is that instrument that you play just by waving your hands in the air). You can also play the theremin using the PC keyboard to change the speed and direction of the theremin mouse cursor. See Mouse & Joystick Theremin.
Find out about the use of the Lambdoma keyboard in music therapy, and play in
the Lambdoma tone array using your mouse, PC keyboard or Barbara Hero's
hardware Lambdoma keyboard - see
Lambdoma Music Therapy
(click here)
Show Lissajous patterns for the chords you play - see Lissajous Patterns
Transcribe bird song or microtonal solo lines and export the transcription as a MIDI file - see Audio Pitch Tracer
Analyse the sound of a musical instrument or chord to high pitch accuracy - useful for microtonal enthusiasts
who are willing to spend
some time tweaking it to get the best results - see
Sounds Harmonic Analysis
Use the Wave Shape Player to make audio clips of your chords directly as audio files - see Chord Synthesis
Explore the capabilities of CSound with ease - a music synthesis system that has until now had a reputation of being hard to use as it required programming skills. Tune Smithy's innovative automated C-Sound orchestra-builder lets you just choose the C-Sound instruments from a drop-list, much as you would with a normal midi instrument - see CSound.
Use the new inbuilt Wave Shape Player as a source of new
pure harmonic timbre type sounds. It explores some
of the sounds you can make by repeating a short segment of the curve for any
mathematical formulae in various ways, which is an unusual approach in this field, so may give new sounds for composers.
It's other speciality is that it plays frequencies with extreme precision (exact to fifteen decimal places or so). It can be a useful alternative to your sample player or soundcard when you want the notes to be particularly precisely pitched.
The preset instruments can just be selected from a menu. Also you can tweak the parameters - and if you have some basic maths awareness, you can also use it to make new waves yourself - see Wave Shape Player .
Do microtonal calculations with the inbuilt Calculator - just enter any sum, or formula and it will instantly calculate the result. It's strong point is that it is particularly designed for use with scale calculations involving cents, ratios etc. See Calculator
"Even after quite a few hours delving into this Tardis of a utility, I felt there was still lots more to explore, and while this does make Fractal Tune Smithy rather overwhelming at first sight, you're unlikely to get bored with it."
BTW I have done lots of work since the review to make it easier to find your way around the program. His review was for - I think FTS 2.4 or thereabouts.
If you still find 3.0 a little overwhelming at first sight, then keep a look out for the next release which may be ready some time this spring or summer perhaps (not sure yet). I developed many ways of making my programs more user friendly for Bounce Metronome Pro - I have found various ways to make them easy to use for those who want the main features only - yet configurable to your hearts desire for those who need the more advanced and intricate capabilities.
It will still be Tardis like - with a really simple exterior and when you go in again like the Tardis, will seem larger, but there are still many rooms that lead off the main room you first see - but organised so that from the first rooms you come to then you can oversee the whole thing and access all the most important and most needed features. You can get a first idea of what it will be like if you try out Bounce Metronome Pro - although that will be just one of the many tasks of Tune Smithy 3.0.
I will incorporate these ideas into Tune Smithy 3.2 when it is ready. Contact me if you want to be added to the very occasional Tune Smithy newsletter for news about Tune Smithy or Bounce Metronome Pro (often only two or three times a year, sometimes less often) - e-mail support@tunesmithy.co.uk and say you want to be added to the Tune Smithy newsletter. Also do say if you are interested in trying out the beta or release candidates of Tune Smithy 3.2 when ready.
Play chord progressions - you can copy / paste most chord progressions from other web sites directly into the player and click the play button to hear them straight away. You can also set a rhythm to create a backing track for practice. Play the chords in any tuning you like or in historical temperaments - see 