MusicDevelopments

Jimmy34742 · Post by **Jimmy34742** » Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:40 am

@MusicDevelopments have you ever considered adding a way to do microtonal composition? A microtonal mode would comprise more than just some new features, so I didn't put this under feature requests. Obviously, the app is strongly oriented to tonal music, but user chords already make different kinds of atonal organization convenient. Microtonality would be a godsend, though, as the only microtonal composition helper I know of is Dhalang, but it's a closed system that can't produce microtonal MIDI. Also, it currently won't run on MacOS Catalina although it's great on iPad.

lulukom · Post by **lulukom** » Sun Jul 05, 2020 9:25 am

+++ 1 !!!!!!!!!!

lulukom · Post by **lulukom** » Sun Jul 05, 2020 9:35 am

In my opinion, even virtual instruments are poorly tuned among themselves, of course in the microtonal sense! (This is a separate topic for discussion). But if it were possible to control microtonal settings with presets from the RC, this would be a great advantage of the program!

Jimmy34742 · Post by **Jimmy34742** » Sun Jul 05, 2020 9:41 am

I thought the trick with microtonal MIDI is to combine note on with pitchbend in clever ways. Or maybe this is a MIDI 2 thing? Not being a dev, I really don't know. I also get good microtonal performance from Arturia's Pigments, but that's also not MIDI.

lulukom · Post by **lulukom** » Sun Jul 05, 2020 9:46 am

I agree with you !

musicdevelopments · Post by **musicdevelopments** » Sun Jul 05, 2020 10:12 am

Yes, of course this is planned for some time, and will definitely be added, as I see the demand. However I am not experienced in microtonal music and I don't know if/how it should work with MIDI. Having more than 12 tones in one octave requires another notation, and there is the question how it could be played on a normal MIDI keyboard. So I need to collect some knowledge and thoughts about this.

Thanks,
Attila

lulukom · Post by **lulukom** » Sun Jul 05, 2020 10:46 am

Hi Attila!
I also do not have much experience in this matter, but I also think that in midi this will be connected with certain pitch band settings for each of the 12 notes. And I have repeatedly seen on the Internet tables of microtonal settings for various traditional and exotic tunes.

elvistcb3577 · Post by **elvistcb3577** » Mon Mar 01, 2021 9:27 pm

Supporting microtones from a technical perspective is actually trivial. Just add support for MPE in a track, then give the user ability to adjust intonation to each note/pitch (and then use pitch bend in the MIDI stream). This may be the most basic form of support. But to add this at a larger musical level is could be a challenge. Specifically because RC is 12TET diatonic based (though you could easily implement alt diatonic tunings). The first step would be the above (MPE support). The second would probably be import of Scala files (as tunings or scales of a subset of a tuning). But to support music theory outside of just diatonic intonations/scales is a challenge. e.g. what are the names of chords in 10tet? How do phrases map to arabic or indian tunings for example. That said I think it would be worth developing. Maybe as an add-on module to RC. I am sure there is a group of users that would pay a small premium for this feature.

lulukom · Post by **lulukom** » Mon Mar 01, 2021 9:32 pm

elvistcb3577 · Post by **elvistcb3577** » Tue Mar 02, 2021 4:02 pm

The fact that a consequence of the piano roll being mapped to 12tet (12 keys repeating pattern) and diatonic chromatic (7 white 5 black) is less a technical hurdle than more so a one of convention. I am willing to bet most users of RC don't even use a midi keyboard. So the piano roll in RC seems a side affect of this DAW convention. That said, historical tunings that are more than 12 notes/octave usable scales are a subset within a 12 note range (more recent *synthetic* scales). Most non 12tet scales can be approximated in 12 tet anyway. Even when considering intonation as variation of a category of a interval/note in a scale (the blue 3rd has a practical range of about 275c to about to about neutral 3rd (350c) plus or minus. This note could be mapped to 1 key with an inflection parameter as an example.

Most historical music using non-diatonic tonality is monophonic and/or with a simple drone. Only recently has harmony been considered with here (the neutral 3rd chord).

I guess the point is that the piano roll as a metaphor is a trivial concern here. It would seem that a new category phrase generator would be needed at the very least.

musicdevelopments · Post by **musicdevelopments** » Wed Mar 03, 2021 10:17 am

Many thanks for your input, elvistcb3577!

This area is very exciting for me. I think all this is doable. MPE can be used, though it is more like a hack, but usable. Redesigning the "piano roll" for other than 12 notes/octave is no problem either. We could assign certain colors to certain "keys" to be able to navigate the keyboard. Note naming conventions (e.g. letters A, B, C... or numbers N1, N2, N3) could be set.
At the moment I have my hands full (there are important bug fixes and UI rework under way), but I saved your posts and will get back to this.

Thanks,
Attila

MusicDevelopments

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microtonality?