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apps that support microtonal tunings
Apps that support non-ET tunings in some way (last updated Dec. 28, 2017):
- Geoshred (preset custom tunings; permits custom user tunings in cents offset from ET)
- Droneo
- Sunrizer (scala)
- Z3ta+ (scala)
- Thumbjam (scala)
- Gestrument (scala)
- World scales
- Dhalang (scala, no midi out for tunings)
- Wilsonic (scala out, no midi)
- Shoom (includes some preset tunings)
- Oriental Strings (permits custom user tunings in cents offset from ET)
- iSymphonic (permits custom user tunings in cents offset from ET)
- FM4 (includes some common preset alternate tunings)
- Ribbons (formerly Ondes) (includes some common preset alternate tunings)
- Audulus (perhaps using a scale mapper?)
- Sunvox (perhaps using scale/keyboard mapper workarounds?)
- PolySynth by DesignByPaul has microtonal tuning
- Wotja can be programmed to alternate tunings by making a different generator for each note.
I have not personally tried all of these. Note that most will limit you to 12-note, one-octave tunings. I don't know of any that support alternate keyboard mapping out of the box. I suspect it may be programmable in a few of them, such as Sunvox an Audulus.
I have been using Geoshred as a midi filter like this:
Any midi keyboard --> Geoshred MPE -- > Model 15 MPE
This gets me my Geoshred custom tuning in Model 15, but playable on a keyboard instead of Geoshred. Of course, playing Model 15 with the Geoshred interface is also good. I think this kind of midi filtering may also be possible using Thumbjam in place of Geoshred, but I have not tried it yet.
Other apps that receive MPE include Thumbjam and Animoog.
Comments
Thanks for this!
good idea with Geoshred as MPE translator. Will try this out with VST instruments on the PC.
Maybe with ScaleGen one can do non-12-note tunings. I admit I haven't explored this app much. It has a MIDI input too, I tried to do something similar as you: playing a keyboard through ScaleGen to retune other synth apps.
Another option is a certain Lemur template, a hexagonal plane that can be set to a desired number of notes per octave. The hexagonal plane remains the same, only the notes change. This works very well with certain VSTi's like Aalto or Kaivo where you can load .tun files.
So that means Geoshred also has only 12-note tunings.
Anyway there is no better way than importing .tun files. Scl works too but .tun files are a bit different and all the mapping is done like you would expect.
The Wilsonic app is great since you can create and export scl. files.
If you then can export that direct into other tools it would be great. I also want (like i mentioned in the Zeeon thread) to save a tuning within a patch.
I like the app Aftertouch on iPhone since you can set custom curves for the aftertouch, velocity etc.
My fav. would be if the Roli5D app had midi out. It´s the most expressive thing for me on a touch screen. Almost good as the Seaboard itself and even better for slide and glide but bad for velocity and velocity release.
Sadly Roli is all about the blocks (even more than their Pro Seaboards)....i hate that since they go the same way as Apple. More consumer than pro.
I still wonder if .tun file support is difficult or is there just no market all on iOS.
I use it very often in a most of the U-he synths and i´m happy that Omnisphere and Keyscape offers it as well.
And i really hate that Apple removed such a great feature from Alchemy. Sadly i can´t get Alchemy 1.55 to run anymore for some reason. But that´s Apple way.
12 notes ascending and 12 descending, for a total of 24. I have not yet tried this and don't know how it would map on midi out. But it looks as if you may be able to have a 24 notes-per-octave scale using Geoshred itself.
Just to demonstrate that it works, here's a quick improv on Raag Jog with Geoshred controlling Model 15 in just intonation. I tried to emphasize the thirds in order to bring out the sound of JI:
Found another one: Oriental Strings. Allows you to detune the 12-note keyboard in cents, and to save as presets. No support for scala or tun files, from what I can tell.
Found one more:
FM4 offers several alternate built-in temperaments, but no way to make or import your own.
In this thread https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/22345/coming-soon-fm-player-pre-release-demo-for-the-ipad-free#latest @marcussatellite the developer of the excellent Wilsonic app is talking about an app which will be able to use the non-traditional scales found in the Wilsonic app and MPE.
I contacted (without success, because I got no answer at all) the scalegen developer because I find it impossible to use it as a midi filter. It works with its internal sounds, but when used as a midi filter it is worse than monophonic: cuts old notes every new note on message, and even after _aftertouch _ messages. Unusable.
I had similar experiences with ScaleGen, but I was thinking it was my mistake. Then I created a MIDI tuning translator/filter in Lemur, but it turned out to be too complicated for my scripting skills, so I left that project unfinished, and didn't find time to return to ScaleGen.
Synthmaster Player for ipad has a few alternate temperaments programmed in, but I cannot tell what they are. They don't seem to be documented and have names that are unfamiliar to me. No obvious way to create or import presets (in the ios version).
Ribbons from Olympia Noise Co. has support for some alternate tunings.
iSymphonic allows user to set offsets in cents for each of twelve notes/octave, and save these as presets.
delete
THUMBJAM!
I've been using it to retune other synths and it can do nonoctave scales! There's even a scale lock feature that allows you to use it as a midi port filter in audiobus to lock any midi to the scale, but it's been a bit finicky for me.
I've heard that Zeeon synth is going to add scala import similar to that of Sunrizer. I've contacted the creator of LayR and he seemed interested in adding microtonal support if there is enough interest. So if you're interested, please contact him and mention that you'd love scala or .tun support!!
there's also Droneo, bs-16i (it's hidden in the settings)
and don't forget that most of the korg synths can also be retuned.
It drives me crazy that most apps that offer the feature either have a handful of preset scales, ala FM4, which is far too limited, or only one user scale with 1 cent increments. Why 1 cent? It's far too coarse to even tune a 5 limit major scale perfectly. Even Scalegen uses 1 cent increments, which renders it utterly useless for me. Scalegen was so promising, but it leaves a lot to be desired and seems to have been more or less abandoned.
I've searched far and wide and Thumbjam is the winner for microtonal support. It has a midi filter, can do more than 12 notes per octave, can be mapped to white keys only, and has a finer resolution with scale import (the inbuilt scale maker is still by 1 cent divisions, but fingers crossed that it will get another decimal place or two in there some day).
@palm Wow! Lots of great news and helpful information. Thank you for sharing your findings. I tried playing with ThumbJam when I found out that it could use a Scala file to filter midi in Audiobus 3, but I was not sure how to verify that it was actually adjusting pitches correctly or just affecting interval spacing in ET. I think you have answered my question for me, and I now share in your excitement! THUMBJAM!
It's good to keep a list of exactly what frequencies you want in your scale, measured in hz. Then you can test the output from your synths with a tuner to make certain that they are correctly tuned.
I was trying to do that, but I didn't have a list. Plus the tuner I tried to use is more geared toward note names (A-G), so I thought it was working (accurate scala filtering), but was never totally sure. I could not say with confidence that it was working 100%, but now it seems that it is, and I am pretty excited. It is great to have found others who are interested in this area of music, and have more experience than I do. It is a lot to try to figure out on your own. Thank you as well, @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr
AFAICT, you add the .scl files through iTunes. The desktop version has a special folder for Scala files and the iOS player uses the same overall structure, including to use custom patches from the desktop version.
(At least on the desktop, SynthMaster does support more than 12 tones per octave and scales which repeat after more than one octave.)
The free expressionPad lets you have more than 12 tones to an octave, up to 24 I believe.
Neat! You know Samvada? The site might be done but the app is still on the App Store. It directly supports a number of Raga presets and you can adjust each tone by cents. It works as an Audiobus audio effect, emphasizing the notes which fit a certain Raga. So you could route Model 15 audio through it and emphasize things that way.
Agreed!
The scale input lock has been a major deal, for me. Was my best way to use my WX-11 wind controller, for a while. And, to an ethnomusicologist, playing outside of 12EDO/12TET is really satisfying.
The scale input lock has become even more useful since @sonosaurus enabled ThumbJam to work as an Audiobus MIDI filter (after mentioning something about that in this forum).
Really? Very interesting! Hadn’t heard anyone else complain that 1¢ wasn’t granular enough for practical use.
Would you happen to have documentation on the concrete effects of intervals <1¢?
Isn’t JND (“Just-Noticeable Difference”) usually measured in more than 1¢? Might also depend on the range, actually.
Maybe there’s more recent research on this but my memory is that most musicians’ ears don’t discriminate intervals smaller than several cents, even in harmonic context. (And non-musicians discriminate very well around 50¢? Something like that.) Always surprised me (because, FM beating). But it sounded like the conventional wisdom had it that Ellis’s measure was fine enough for all musical uses. Would be particularly delightful to hear about a musical tradition making good use of sub-cent tunings.
This 2002 McGill psychoacoustics study by Warrier & Zatore sounds intriguing but, AFAICT, the smallest non-zero interval they’ve used was 17¢ (which sounds huge, to me, though my own perception test results might not have gone that much smaller). Maybe your ears are incredibly precise, which could be cool (or incredibly annoying to you, depending on the situation).
Fascinating stuff!
Nice list! Thanks for that. Didn’t know about all of them. ThumbJam might be my favourite, but having more options could be quite useful, especially once you integrate the tuning with the sound design.
Neat idea! Been doing something similar with ThumbJam (which also supports both MPE input and output, though the output is labeled “Channel Per Touch”).
The combination between MPE and non-12TET is quite interesting. In some ways, they’re different issues, addressed by different members of the MIDI Manufacturers’ Association (for some reason, Phil Burke, the Google guy was the microtuning advocate in that panel on the future of MIDI).
At the same time, those two things go really well together. Having finer granularity in tuning can really open up expressiveness and note-specific pitchbend in MPE can do a lot to support that kind of playing.
Sounds like most electronic musickers remained unconcerned about the limitations of 12TET, but people do realize the limits to expressiveness more readily. In a way, it corresponds to what we call “ethnocentrism” in ethnographic disciplines. Contrary to other ways to use the term, it’s not about believing that “your culture” is better than another any more than egocentrism is equivalent to pride. It’s about being stuck in a frame of mind that you consider just “the normal way to do things”. People just take 12TET tuned at A 440Hz as a given, everything else being considered strange, peculiar, even gimmicky. Some app developers probably think that any other tuning system is too much of a niche and they don’t feel like supporting it. Yet our current technology makes it almost trivial to support all sorts of tuning systems. It’s a little bit like taking QWERTY keyboards for granted, all the way to our touchscreens. It might be too late to adopt other keyboards, but new input systems need not follow the setup from typewriters (which, as this comic makes clear, wasn’t about slowing people down, contrary to popular belief). So, our controllers and synths would do well to support diverse tunings. Especially if they’re not tied to the keyboard!
Sounds to me like “pianocentrism” is a big part of the reason people don’t focus much effort on diverse tuning systems. Part of the reason MPE is making significant headway is because of ROLI’s efforts. To me, Roland Lamb (and, by extension, ROLI as an enterprise) is all about keyboardists with wind-instrument envy. If ROLI were to add tuning-friendly features to its Lightpad Blocks (or new devices which don’t rely on a keyboard layout), we might be able to raise people’s awareness a bit more.
Couple of months ago, was taken aback by comments about non-12TET that Rich Hilton made on Sonic Talk 499. He was basically dismissing microtonality and microtuning. Was so “upset” that it made me misremember his characterization, as he did talk about the importance of pitch correction in choir music and how great a chord in JI can sound. But his attitude made it sound like microtuning wasn’t important for electronic music. To me, it’s like saying that expressiveness isn’t important for electronic music. Since Hilton is a big fan on ROLI Seaboards, that could lead to an interesting conversation.
Anyhoo… Thanks again for the list, @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr. Will explore more of these apps. At some point, it could even be fun to have tuning support as part of comparison tables between iOS apps. (Same with MPE, AUv3, Ableton Link, AB3, etc.)
I love Samvada, but I have never gotten it to work as an effect. Too bad the site is down. I had always intended to download his scala files but never got around to it.
How do you get to that setting? I canot find it in mine.
Nice analysis; sounds right to me. For people who are unaware of the history of Western music and who don't listen widely, it's easy to assume that 12et is normal and everything else is weird at best, wrong at worst.
I agree that one issue is that a lot of electronic musicians come from a keyboard background where you never think about tuning, or a guitar background, where tuning is just foreplay and not a central part of the musical experience. If we had more people who started with flute or violin and were intimately aware of what it means to play in tune, they might be more "tuned in" to it.
Second, tuning is a concern of more advanced musicians. People who are starting out and using grooveboxes to assemble prefab music kits into a dance beat have enough of a challenge already to deal with. Tuning is a distraction for them. And if they never sing or play an instrument that requires constant attention to intonation, they may never get around to considering it at all.
The third factor is that a lot of microtonal music is made by nerds who like "weird" music. People hear that and begin to associate non-12ET with it--not realizing that the most beautiful, "normal", consonant music in the world is non-12ET.
All that talk with scary words like MPE horrifies me.
In short, what i need to play/compose in style of persian sufi on ios? or indonesian gamelan?
You just need to learn one app to get started. I would recommend either Thumbjam or Geoshred as the best start for your interests. Geoshred has some gamelan scales already built in and tuned, although the sounds may not be exactly what you want. Thumbjam can import whatever samples you want to get the sound you prefer.
I don't know what Persian sufi music sounds like. Can you give us a Youtube link to some examples?
@Enkerli while I appreciate your discussion about non-traditional western 12 tones scales, I do think there is a lot of status quo inertia that also prevents more usage of technology to support other scales. As you’ve mentioned, people are used to the music and the instruments they grew up with, the history of MIDI and many hardware synths all revolves around 12 tone scales. In addition, when there’s not an aready developed market for non-traditional scales, it makes it tougher to invest in an even riskier proposition as there’s not the musical infrastructure to support it.
I think apps like Wilsonic are great because they truly use the touch screen to create a play surface that’s designed for the scale rather than having to use a cludge like a 12 tone instrument to do so. While I appreciate ThumbJam’s ability to use scala files output by Wilsonic, it certainly loses a lot in translation from the playing surfaces in Wilsonic which are arranged based upon the characteristics of a particular scale. I hope at some point the Wilsonic app is able to output MIDI directly and that more apps would support such output.
In addition, many musicians believe a tactile component to playing an instrument is essential and is lost on a touch surface without such tactile feedback which is another barrier as the cost of creating scale based tactile instruments is significant.
That makes sense to me. But also i don´t find it hard to use just a common midi key layout for any scales.
It´s just about choices. Of course it is for a niche inside a niche of users and i can understand why it´s so rare.
But .tun file support is still so easy to play whatever scale you could imagine with your controller of choice.
Of course i don´t know how hard and complex it might be for a developer to include that.
There are some tunings, some might be not so far away from a western scale even, which can create moods and atmospheres which are close to impossible otherwise or at least a lot of the magic is gone.
Especially some "exotic" instruments which works with MPE would benefit from this.
MPE + microtuning =
Microtonal dance music? Maybe not........but i might give it a chance when i think about it