13 May
2005
13 May
'05
11:36 a.m.
Hi LADs
As you might remember from my recent questions about MIDI tuning and
microtonality, I'm currently designing a music editor unlike any other
(that I've seen.) It will be a graphical music editor, similar to
existing "piano roll" editors on the surface, but with several important
differences. It will be a tool for composing music in Just Intonation.
It will also be free software (that goes without saying :-)
Anyway, I need to make a few key decisions about it and I'd like to have
some feedback and advice from you experienced people!
The most important issue is how to integrate my editor with the greatest
possible number of synths and other existing music sofware/hardware.
Unfortunately my software will need to set the pitch of every single
note independently of the others, so "common" MIDI will not suffice.
Pitch bend will not work either, or rather it will limit the output to
one note per MIDI channel. Not adequate at all for most uses.
In the other thread you kindly provided me with some advice and links,
including mentioning the MIDI Tuning Standard and OSC.
I'm designing my software with extensibility in mind, so adding new
protocols will not be a problem. Nonetheless, the more protocols and
APIs I know of in advance, the more extensible I can make it!
I have heard of several standards in the Linux audio world, thinks like
Jack and ALSA. But I'm quite new to all this, so I don't have a good
idea of what standards is a modern music editor supposed to support.
Could you please mention them to me? I will gladly study the APIs on my
own, but I don't want to waste time studying stuff that has no practical
value for building a graphical music editor. Also, please keep in mind
my special needs about note tuning/microtonality.
I hope this is not considered a repeat of my previous email... I've read
quite a bit of docs in the meantime, but I'm still confused. Is an
editor supposed to do something with Jack? I'm handling the "editing"
part on my own, but how should I embed playback/recording functionality
into my editor? Is there a way to interface it with VST plugins (where
binary compatible) and/or any free alternatives? Should I do all this
on my own, or are there any architectures that I could simply plug into?
Regards,
Toby
14 May
14 May
8:40 p.m.
(I'll answer this as best I can, feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.)
In the other thread you kindly provided me with some
advice and links,
including mentioning the MIDI Tuning Standard and OSC.
This seems like a very hard problem. Since your sequencer is "just
that: a sequencer", you'll also need plugin hosts and/or standalone
synths too, which understand either MIDI tuning or OSC. (One
OSC-driven plugin host, Om, has been mentioned already). The majority
of standalone synths and plugins will probably never be able to play
anything other than a conventional tuning, so that's a problem, unless
you're happy to write a few of your own.
(By the way, re VST, some existing synths and/or plugin hosts can host
VST, but again most VSTs expect MIDI or MIDI-style commands and
implicitly assume a conventional tuning.)
I'd love to see a general-purpose OSC sequencer, and I'm sure others
would too, so keep me informed if you're thinking of taking this
approach, and maybe I can help out in some way.
8:57 p.m.
Considering that I am late to this conversation and have failed to
completely read-up on the entire thread, I may end-up sounding completely
redundant. That being said :-), if you are interested in alternate tuning
using kludge MIDI standard, you can do 2 of the following:
1) Get a synth that supports custom tuning and simply remaps default MIDI
note-on/off messages to different pitches (this is less than optimal as it
is far from an universal solution).
2) Get into some of the solutions written that provide you with MIDI score
where one note is played per channel with some amount of pitch-bend applied
to it. I would suggest looking into Christopher Bailey's LISP web-based
script that generates such MIDI scorefiles. For more info please see:
http://music.columbia.edu/~chris/micromidi/main.html
Hope this helps!
Best wishes,
Ivica Ico Bukvic, composer & multimedia sculptor
http://meowing.ccm.uc.edu/~ico/
-----Original Message-----
From: linux-audio-dev-bounces(a)music.columbia.edu [mailto:linux-audio-dev-
bounces(a)music.columbia.edu] On Behalf Of James McDermott
Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2005 6:41 PM
To: The Linux Audio Developers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Guidelines for developing a music editor
(I'll answer this as best I can, feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.)
In the other thread you kindly provided me with
some advice and links,
including mentioning the MIDI Tuning Standard and OSC.
This seems like a very hard problem. Since your sequencer is "just
that: a sequencer", you'll also need plugin hosts and/or standalone
synths too, which understand either MIDI tuning or OSC. (One
OSC-driven plugin host, Om, has been mentioned already). The majority
of standalone synths and plugins will probably never be able to play
anything other than a conventional tuning, so that's a problem, unless
you're happy to write a few of your own.
(By the way, re VST, some existing synths and/or plugin hosts can host
VST, but again most VSTs expect MIDI or MIDI-style commands and
implicitly assume a conventional tuning.)
I'd love to see a general-purpose OSC sequencer, and I'm sure others
would too, so keep me informed if you're thinking of taking this
approach, and maybe I can help out in some way. 
9:26 p.m.
Mine is extremely non-real-time though.
For live MIDI playing and hearing, I believe that the ultimate in this
kind of thing is SCALA:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/
Another is Fractal Tune Smithy:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robertwalker/index.htm#tunesmithy
There's also Lil' Miss Scale Oven:
http://www.nonoctave.com/tuning/LilMissScaleOven/
C Bailey
On Sat, 14 May 2005, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
Considering that I am late to this conversation and
have failed to
completely read-up on the entire thread, I may end-up sounding completely
redundant. That being said :-), if you are interested in alternate tuning
using kludge MIDI standard, you can do 2 of the following:
1) Get a synth that supports custom tuning and simply remaps default MIDI
note-on/off messages to different pitches (this is less than optimal as it
is far from an universal solution).
2) Get into some of the solutions written that provide you with MIDI score
where one note is played per channel with some amount of pitch-bend applied
to it. I would suggest looking into Christopher Bailey's LISP web-based
script that generates such MIDI scorefiles. For more info please see:
http://music.columbia.edu/~chris/micromidi/main.html
Hope this helps!
Best wishes,
Ivica Ico Bukvic, composer & multimedia sculptor
http://meowing.ccm.uc.edu/~ico/
-----Original Message-----
From: linux-audio-dev-bounces(a)music.columbia.edu [mailto:linux-audio-dev-
bounces(a)music.columbia.edu] On Behalf Of James McDermott
Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2005 6:41 PM
To: The Linux Audio Developers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Guidelines for developing a music editor
(I'll answer this as best I can, feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.)
In the other thread you kindly provided me with
some advice and links,
including mentioning the MIDI Tuning Standard and OSC.
This seems like a very hard problem. Since your sequencer is "just
that: a sequencer", you'll also need plugin hosts and/or standalone
synths too, which understand either MIDI tuning or OSC. (One
OSC-driven plugin host, Om, has been mentioned already). The majority
of standalone synths and plugins will probably never be able to play
anything other than a conventional tuning, so that's a problem, unless
you're happy to write a few of your own.
(By the way, re VST, some existing synths and/or plugin hosts can host
VST, but again most VSTs expect MIDI or MIDI-style commands and
implicitly assume a conventional tuning.)
I'd love to see a general-purpose OSC sequencer, and I'm sure others
would too, so keep me informed if you're thinking of taking this
approach, and maybe I can help out in some way. 
15 May
15 May
2:16 a.m.
I'd love to see a general-purpose OSC sequencer,
and I'm sure others
would too, so keep me informed if you're thinking of taking this
approach, and maybe I can help out in some way.
i believe that i have mentioned before that the ardour project has
every intention of handling OSC more or less simultaneously with
MIDI. clearly, some of the editing facilities will differ, because OSC
has no explicit semantics for almost any message. but since they are
both byte-oriented, non-streaming protocols, it is a natural fit to
add them to ardour at the same time.
--p
19 May
19 May
9:47 a.m.
Toby wrote:
Hi LADs
As you might remember from my recent questions about MIDI tuning and
microtonality, I'm currently designing a music editor unlike any other
(that I've seen.) It will be a graphical music editor, similar to
existing "piano roll" editors on the surface, but with several important
differences. It will be a tool for composing music in Just Intonation.
It will also be free software (that goes without saying :-)
Just so you know, a Rosegarden branch is currrently developing
microtonal functionality (including non-12-tone scales). This should
include MIDI output (via Tuning Standard) in the nearish future.
Best of luck with the sequencer,
Dougie McGilvray
7071
days inactive
7077
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linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org
5 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Christopher Bailey -
Dougie McGilvray -
Ivica Ico Bukvic -
James McDermott -
Paul Davis -
Toby