Microtonal tuning / Midi :(

Noob question, or not, regardless I'm still a Novice knob twiddler aspiring to become a Journeyman knob twiddler.

I've always seemed to gravitate towards music that doesn't necessarily use 12 tone equal temperament and am discovering the limitations of attempting to write music that isn't 12 tone equal temperament with Midi. This has become even more evident with the purchase of an Analog synth last week. Using the synth, by itself, I have created some sequences and tuning that I'd love to be able to drive from Ableton so that I can either send additional notes to the oscillators on top of whatever it might be playing, or control it directly from the DAW. Many of the sequenced notes fall somewhere between the 12-ET scale so anything coming from Midi is just out of tune w/ how the hardware is tuned. I was wondering if anyone had any creative solutions. I've been brainstorming a bit, but I didn't want to commit to one without a little more research. So far the best ideas to have bubbled to the top are to create 2 (or more) seperate midi input sources but to insert CC pitch bend data, or start mucking around w/ Scala (which is probably just generating the aforementioned modulations to the midi data to achieve the same effect). I'll have to deep dive into the Midi spec to get a better picture of what's going on w/ the device interface. Ideas are greatly appreciated.

There used to be a standalone program that would do the pitch bend deal you're describing, but I can't remember what it was called.  It was already really old when I saw it, Windows 95 or something. Also, unless you have an MPE instrument or use multiple channels on a multitimbral instrumentand split your notes out across them (basically what MPE does), pitch bend will only work monophonically because it's global per channel.

Scala, from what I know about it, is different, it's actually a microtuning standard that your synths need to support.  I've got a couple things that work with it, but I haven't used it yet.

You probably already saw it, but this is a good, if a bit out of date, starting point:

https://www.midi.org/articles-old/microtuning-and-alternative-intonation-systems

what synth you using?

  On 5/27/2020 at 11:11 PM, chronical said:

what synth you using?

I don't use microtuning right now, but I just built a Kijimi, I got a Juno 6 about 5 years ago and put in the Tubbutec MIDI retrofit that also adds Scala support, and the very first synth I ever bought was a Yamaha TX802, that allows microtuning, but you can only save two tunings unless you have a memory cartridge (it has about a dozen alternate tunings in ROM though).

I think the TX81z does microtuning, and I know some of the other Yamaha FMs do it but I'm not sure if they all do.  At any rate, in hardware they're one of the more accessible ways to et in to it in terms of price and availability.

I think the Audiothingies Micromonsta supports Scala but it was discontinued recently.

You could always go full Terry Riley - find an old transistor organ and manually retune it.

If your synth is monophonic and you have Max4live the easiest thing to do is make a patch that would add pitch bend to individual notes like you're talking about in your first post.  If it's polyphonic that's a lot trickier.  What are you using?

If you don't have Max4Live a free option is to use Reaper's internal scripting language with their VST plugin ReaJS:

https://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/

You'd have to learn the language, but it's not that complicated as scripting goes (I hardly do any scripting but I'm still able to poke around in other people's stuff and pretty much understand what's going on).

If your synth has CV inputs, there are definitely some MIDI to CV modules and standalone boxes that support microtuning, but that's not going to be the cheapest option and I couldn't recommend anything specific myself.

Thanks for the info, the synth I'm using doesn't support Midi CC pitch commands so that's no longer an option. Also, if I got a midi to CV gate, the only available input that can modulate pitch is the pulse width one and I don't think I'd achieve the desired results with that. 

So, I might end up just using the sequencer on the synth then running my soft synths with reaper. Luckily I've got 20 years of professional software engineering under my belt which had made a lot of this easier for me to pick up than anyone coming in blindly.

What synth are you using?

Retune > http://maxforlive.com/library/device/3068/retune-for-live 

Watch his tutorials. 

Used it on Monomachine (hardware) and Ableton's Wavetable. 

I also quite liked this quick and easy scale retuner > https://maxforlive.com/library/device/1741/zb-detune

Another option is using a synth like Operator and making a large chain of them and setting them at specific frequencies per note. For example C3 = 253.4 hertz, D3 = 258.09 hertz etc etc. There is probably a tutorial on Youtube for this. 

What synth are you using?

What synth are you using?

What synth are you using?