Alternate scales plug-in?

[stephenpaulharper]

Hey all,

Could such a thing exist that will allow any VST to play in alternate scales and modes?

I've got a VST call Knagalis that has 100 different scales and modes, and it's way fun to jam with it. The sounds are pretty limited, though. It would be great to do the same thing with say, Sampletank. I assume you'd have to do some sort of midi loop back.

Any ideas?

May the gods of KVR forgive my ignorance.

Stephen

[Canned Heat]

Hey all,

Could such a thing exist that will allow any VST to play in alternate scales and modes?


Any ideas?

Stephen

me too really want to know if such a precious thing exists.However , I designed for myself something like this in FL Studio with it's two excellent features , Fruity Keyboard controller and Layer , which can assign any VST and play monophonic phrases in microtuned scales but it has two limits : 1 - you must spend time and design seperate presets for every scale in Fruity KBD Controller (I made only two but it's not a tiresome action , it's just because I'm lazy 2 - It only work right in monophonic mode since it uses the pitch bend of VST to change notes frequency. If your host is FL and want to have this file , let me know and I'll send it

Cheers

[aMUSEd]

Look in Tobybear's Midibag set - there's a Microtuning midi plugin there that imports scales.

[stephenpaulharper]

CH,

Thanks for the offer, but I use ACID and SONAR. Any possibility it could work in one of those? Yeah, the Knagalis is monophonic as well, but that's not really an issue - your standard finger positions would be all screwy with chords anyway. If you need a chord you just build it like back in the day...

Thanks again,

Stephen

[Canned Heat]

Look in Tobybear's Midibag set - there's a Microtuning midi plugin there that imports scales.

With best wishes

[Canned Heat]

Algodon

with aMused's reply we never need my Fruity file anymore. It's time to have a BIG FUN .Thanks Tobybear , algodon and aMUSED

[stephenpaulharper]

aMUSEd,

Many thanks! CH, this appears to be just what we're looking for. However, I'm not familar with the Scala, Vaz and Anamark files mentioned.

Might someone educate me on these, please?

[selfconstruct]

scala http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/

edit (scala scale files can be found at the bottom of the download page)

[Canned Heat]

Scala tunings are scale files with .scl extension which are created with a program called Scala and are supported by many vst's like albino ,Tera ,Cube and .... They a plenty of scala fies over the net which you can download and use them in your vst's which supprot that. Anamark and Vaz scales are made respectively with their softwares : Anamrak and Vaz

[AnaMark]

Could such a thing exist that will allow any VST to play in alternate scales and modes?

Yes. It exists. It is part of the VST interface standard since version 1.0, but most hosts don't support it, although it would be a very simple task. Ask your host developer to implement it.

Nevertheless, the VSTi developers didn't sleep and invented their own ways to realize micro tuning possibilities, independent of the hosts. The most common ones are:

1. Pitch bending: The detune is translated into a PB message. There are free plugins which generate the right PB messages according to a given scale. Works with each VSTi which supports PB, but is limited to monophonic mode.
2. Scale files: There are several file formats: VAZ, AnaMark and Scala. The VSTi itself loads the scale. Works well, but it is limited to static scales. And you have to load the scale into each VSTi separately. There are tons of scale files for free in the web as well as software to generate them (e.g. Scala).
3. MIDI SysEx: Micro Tuning is also supported by the MIDI standard. You can load full scales and tweak the scale live while notes are playing! But unfortunately, most people have no possibility to generate those MIDI SysEx Messages.

(Each Feature is available in AnaMark, btw)


You see, that none of these items is a perfect solution. A better solution (imo) would be the following:

• Load the base scale into your VSTi (VAZ, AnaMark or Scala file).
• Use the modulation facilities of your VSTi for live tweaking. In AnaMark you may use e.g. key aftertouch (which is supported by most hosts) for that. This works live and polyphonic and (other than MIDI SysEx) is practicable for most users. And if you have a hardware keyboard which supports key aftertouch, you may also play it live.

And last, but not least, if its enough to have just a "dirty pitch" instead of a perfect one, you can use a "pitch randomizer" as that built in AnaMark. (I'm not sure, but it seems that currently there is no other VSTi which supports that).

Are there some other ways to realize microtuning which make sense?


- Mark Henning

[whyterabbyt]

CH,

Thanks for the offer, but I use ACID and SONAR. Any possibility it could work in one of those?

Yes. Use eXT inside Sonar or ACID, routing the Microtuning plug to your VST inside eXT.

[stephenpaulharper]

Thanks so much to everybody. Yeah, a nice fellow over at the Cakewalk forum informed me that I'd have to get eXT for MICROTUNER to work in SONAR or ACID. Time to go to eXT forum to learn how to use it.

Thanks again.

Stephen

[stephenpaulharper]

Ouch...anybody else having a "notes not sounding" problem when going thru MICROTUNER? If you play very, very slow this doesn't happen, but with any kind of fast run, at least every other note doesn't sound. This doesn't happen in eXT when I take MICROTUNER out of the chain, and go directly from Master In to my VST (Sampletank). Something to do with latency maybe? I'm stumped. Works great other than that.