Topic by 000masa000

  • Avatar
  • 000masa000
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 12-06-2018
  • Posts: 8

Topic: Microtonal support for incoming MTS (real-time MIDI tuning standard)

Dear Pianoteq, I am a composer working with tuning systems and very much appreciate your marvellous and thorough implementation of the Scala .scl and .kbm file standards for tuning when using the Pianotuq software as a playback instrument. I am currently working on implementing microtonal playback features in the music notation software musescore (and also consulting on the development of Dorico), both based on various systems of microtonal notation, in particular my own system of Just Intonation: the goal being to write the tuning and have it play back immediately. The fluidsynth open source soundfontplayer accepts the excellent realtime MIDI Tuning Standard, which is a simple message to retune pitches on the fly. I imagine it would not be difficult for Pianoteq to implement response to MTS and I, for one, would appreciate having a professional grade physical modelling instrument library to work with when I write microtonal scores, which could immediately be played back effortlessly and polyphonically.

I would really appreciate implementation of this feature.
Marc Sabat
www.plainsound.org

Reply by Jake Johnson

  • Avatar
  • Jake Johnson
  • Member
  • Offline
  • From: Atlanta
  • Registered: 04-05-2007
  • Posts: 4,491

Re: Microtonal support for incoming MTS (real-time MIDI tuning standard)

Are you wanting to be able to map Pianoteq to a keyboard with more than 13 chromatic notes per octave?

Last edited by Jake Johnson (15-06-2018 18:25)

Reply by julien

  • Avatar
  • julien
  • Admin
  • Offline
  • Registered: 19-04-2007
  • Posts: 1,000

Re: Microtonal support for incoming MTS (real-time MIDI tuning standard)

Pianoteq should already support real-time tuning messages (you should see them in the midi panel of the options dialog).

julien's Website

Reply by Microtuning-VI

  • Avatar
  • Microtuning-VI
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-08-2017
  • Posts: 20

Re: Microtonal support for incoming MTS (real-time MIDI tuning standard)

I would like to add my voice to Marc Sabat's request for MTS support in Pianoteq.

Julien,

I looked around in the Options/MIDI panel of the Windows x64 plugin version of Pianoteq, but don't see anything there about the real-time tuning messages you mentioned. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Of potential interest, I also did a quick MTS test, by attempting to transmit some MIDI Tuning Standard (single notes dump) SYSEX from the timeline of REAPER to Pianoteq 6 Pro, but it didn't retune the instrument.

It would be good to learn more about the standard that Pianoteq supports for real-time tuning messages, so that I could conduct some deep testing here. I'll try to read up on the topic in the documentation this evening.

Best Regards,

Jacky Ligon
Xen-Arts.net

Reply by julien

  • Avatar
  • julien
  • Admin
  • Offline
  • Registered: 19-04-2007
  • Posts: 1,000

Re: Microtonal support for incoming MTS (real-time MIDI tuning standard)

Pianoteq supports only the "realtime tuning" message: http://www.microtonal-synthesis.com/MIDItuning.html . This is the midi message that is supported: 

F0 7F id 08 02 tt ll [kk xx yy zz]x(ll) F7

The tuning is applied as an alteration of the current tuning in pianoteq so it is better to select either 'Equal temperament' in Pianoteq , or 'Flat temperament' (the difference between those two is that there is no octave stretching on the flat one).

Here is an example of a MIDI file with such messages: http://www.forum-pianoteq.com/uploads.p...ngtest.mid

julien's Website

Reply by Microtuning-VI

  • Avatar
  • Microtuning-VI
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 27-08-2017
  • Posts: 20

Re: Microtonal support for incoming MTS (real-time MIDI tuning standard)

Hi Julien,

Thanks for the information.

It appears that this is strictly limited to real-time 12-note octave tuning. Is that correct?

If this is already implemented, it would seem plausible that full-keyboard microtuning MTS could be added as well, where musicians wouldn't be limited to only 12 tones to the octave, but could retune the instruments to have less, or greater than 12, within any desired period (or repeat interval), which is often a requirement of microtonal music composition.