- A new computer music technology, MTS-ESP, sets notes completely free. MTS-ESP challenges the dominance of western tuning, giving global cultures tools to compose in traditional local tunings whilst extending the possibilities for all.
- MTS-ESP allows for fresh creative approaches to musical composition, enabling electronic musicians to define and change pitch at any moment even whilst notes are playing.
- Independent developers collaborate to empower musicians to access alternative tunings.
Four years ago we started discussing the current state of tuning in electronic music making with Richard James (Aphex Twin). Support and standards were patchy at best and none allowed anything but a single, fixed tuning table to be used locally per instrument. The only hardware technology that challenged it was the rarely seen MTS (MIDI Tuning Standard) Single Note Change message, but nothing could send it so it couldn’t be utilized. We realized that leveraging it would enable hardware dynamic microtuning - the ability to change the tuning of notes or chords in real time during a composition. However there was no software equivalent, so we made it. We call it MTS-ESP and it allows plug-ins to read from a single, global tuning table, updating in real-time.
Plug-ins that natively support MTS-ESP need no setup, just load them into a session with an MTS-ESP master plug-in, set the tuning and start composing. Grab the free MTS-ESP Mini plug-in to see this in action. The MTS-ESP Suite extends the possibility for dynamic tuning to other plugins and hardware devices too. Hardware devices that support MTS Bulk and Single Note SysEx messages integrate particularly well, as do those that support MPE too. The process of tuning your studio, which may have taken hours before, is now reduced to seconds and with so much more creative potential.
Several intrepid developers already support MTS-ESP and there are more to follow. When used with MTS-ESP, plug-ins listed on this page will automatically be in tune with each other; no more loading TUN or SCL files and discovering everyone has a different implementation! If there's a company you'd like to see support MTS-ESP send them an e-mail and point them to our Dev Page. Integration is simple and typically takes less than half an hour.
ODDSound & Richard James would like to thank the forward-looking companies listed below for making this one of the fastest adoptions of a music technology ever.
- Audio Damage (Continua, Phosphor, Quanta)
- Audiorealism (ReDominator)
- CWITec (TX16Wx)
- DMGAudio (EQuilibrium, PitchFunk)
- Expert Sleepers (Silent Way)
- HY-Plugins (HY-Poly)
- Modartt (Pianoteq)
- Soundyan (Interstellar Waterphone)
- Surge (Surge)
- TAL (TAL-Sampler)
- U-He (Hive 2)
- Xfer Records (Serum)
The ODDSound MTS Mini plugin is available now at oddsound.com for free.
