9 Dec
2002
9 Dec
'02
6:30 p.m.
On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 09:37:20 +0100, David Olofson wrote:
Yes.
There are so few cases where note numbering is the right thing. The only
example we've come up with so far is non-ET arpegiators. Wow ;)
The differnce is that the VST/MIDI people are used to thinking of that as
the default case. I'm not.
They will as long as you dont try to enforce note numbering in the API.
Complex tunings wont map to note numbering in any useful way anyway.
If you just represent pitch, then I can create a virtual instrument
(connected to a physical one if neccesary) that can create the right
pitches for the scale (or be analogue).
As soon as I have synths that will only accept note numbers I'm screwed,
they wont accept the pitch data I want them to, the best I can hope for is
that a pitch->note converter wont screw it up too much.
I think this is better for unusual tunings, and it doesnt hurt the 12tET
case.
What I'm saying is simply that if *everything* in
a standard, 12tET
net uses 12.0/octave, it doesn't matter whether you say you're taking
or sending note_pitch or linear_pitch - because they look exactly the
same. That way, *no one* pays the price for non-12tET - until you
actually want something to play using a different scale.
Right, but you do have to pay a price if you're not in 12tET, if you use
1.0 then theres never any price.
But the VST
people were allready lumbered with note scale, that
puts them in a different situation.
You're probably right. The main thing they wanted to convince me of
was that you need *both* note pitch and linear pitch - but OTOH, that
was thinking in the terms of the rather primitive MIDI based,
effectively one-way event system of current VST. I don't think that's true. At least in
"real" music, it's really
rather common to mix slightly "alien" scales with 12tET. Many
singers, violinists and other "continous pitch" people *deliberately*
tweak notes to make them fit better - although one might perhaps
think of that as something different from scales; not sure.
Yes, when I do this in synthesis I do it with signals applied to linear
pitch inputs. I guess you could do it by creating a novel tuning just as
well, but is that easier?
AFAIK, there are even musicians that don't have
much use of current
standard synths and applications, simply because they're too
restrictive, and/or way too cumbersome to deal with, when it comes to
scales and pitch control.
Yeah, like me. The answer is not to reenfoce the 12tET system.
Granted there
will be people who want to run half
thier track in 12 and half in 7, but thats hardly a common case,
and we dont prevent it.
We don't? Well, lets hope that all Multichannel synths will do the
right thing when someone wants to play different scales on *the same
instance*. Either way, scale conversions are lossless? When
you're dealing with
*continous* pitch, you'll need either an exact formula, or you'll
have to use an approximation of some kind. We're not talking about
plain LUTs. (Pitch bend needs more than that, and continous pitch is
basically "pitch bend done right".)
OK, yes, I'l give you that. I cant remeber what the relevance was though
:) It does back up my point that pitch->note conversion is not ideal
though.
- Steve