[LAU] preset piano scale tunings [was Re: The Psychology of Music]

[Patrick Shirkey]

On Thu, February 21, 2013 3:02 pm, Rustom Mody wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Patrick Shirkey
> <pshirkey at boosthardware.com
>> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Thu, February 21, 2013 2:10 pm, Rustom Mody wrote:
>>
>> > Personally I can say that after I got my keyboards with a handful of
>> > tunings a new world has opened to me.  If only I could have done some
>> of
>> > that with timidity/fluidsynth...
>> >
>>
>> Do you mean you would like to have a keyboard app that has preset
>> sample/tuning for various different scales?
>>
>> It's certainly possible to create your own now but I haven;t come across
>> an app that takes on that functionality yet.
>>
>> It might be a nice addition to CMKeyboard if someone else hasn't already
>> started/finished.
>>
>>
> One of my major uses is to teach a class singing with a score software
> like
> nted or musescore. [Or else I am at the piano]
>
> My attempts are more than a few years old so my memory is foggy...
> timidity has some tuning support poorly documented.
> It has some 3 ways of re-tuning -- pitch-bend, and 2 'batch-modes's -- the
> details I forget
> The pitch bend sounded horrible and different on linux and windows.
> The two 'batch-modes' -- the sysex option (if thats what its called) I
> could not figure out at all.  The 'load-a-scala-file' seemed to work
> somewhat but I could not figure out some parameters.
>
> Fluidsynth I could not make any sense of.
> My problem is that I was brought up on an (old) steinway. So when a
> software is built analogically to some hardware that is assumed to be
> familiar to all, I dont know where to start...
>

There is also linuxsampler as an option for the sample engine. But it is
viable to offer support for all three as they each have different
strengths/weaknesses.

IIUC the issue is that you were not able to find an ootb solution for this
problem.

I would be happy to add some support to CMKeyboard for this purpose if we
can define what it is that needs to be done either per scale or a generic
method for handling the different scales and the best way to enable the
controls in the UI.

Of course if someone has already done it and we just don't know about it
then we should look at that option first before starting on a new project.


> [I am off tomorrow to a camp where I am musician/music teacher. So I may
> reply after 10 days. Hope thats ok]
>
> Rusi
>
> --
> http://www.the-magus.in
> http://blog.languager.org
>


--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd