Microtonality in New York

I prefer Csound, with some good samples, but it's a bear if your not a programmer at heart.

Nice review of your book, Kyle---congratulations! Sorry to hear that you do not like Shostakovich---he's always been one of my favorite composers, even at the top of my list (although Feldman is neck and neck). Some stuff of his might certainly be considered "mediocre," as is true with most prolific composers operating under oppressive political systems. But a lot of his music is pretty profound and on occasion even avant-garde for its time (4th symphony, the nose, and a few others). You may want to give some of his stuff another listen.

I gave up synthesizers in frustration back in 1999, and I have yet to return. After reading Genesis of a Music in 2001, I was determined to experiment in JI, but I had no idea how to proceed.

After trying to build my own instruments (which was a spectacular failure), I resorted to the simplest electronic timbre possible - sine waves. I now actually use Csound to generate sine waves, since I could find no decent software tone generator for free, and I refuse to pay for something as simple as sine waves. I've written a couple of simple shell scripts on my Mac to generate sliding tones and masses of sine waves, and I put them together in ProTools (matching the end points, etc.). Still, it is much less satisfying than writing music while playing an instrument, so I continue to write in ET as well.

I think there needs to be a software synth program writen specifically for composers writing in JI (preferably for the Mac). I found Scala pretty difficult to use, but I haven't tried it since my Csound adventures. Is anything like that out there? Could something be created using Csound and a decent UI? Anybody know a good programmer?

Kyle, let us know what you settle on - I would be interested to see how your transition goes.

I suppose you've considered recording sounds for yourself that have clearly defined pitches (e.g., bells, piano keys, wine glasses, triangles, tuning forks, wind instruments) and then altering the pitches to suit your needs?

Are the particular timbres you use part of the piece, or part of its realization on a particular recording? I'm ignorant of how the underlying technology works - could someone else use different timbres, for the same set of pitches, and come up with something that you would recognize as a "performance" (right word?) of the piece?

KG replies: Absolutely. I write the piece and then "orchestrate" it with what I've got. When I get a better instrument I'll orchestrate it again. There just aren't that many synths that allowed unlimited user tuning.

Hey Kyle, I didn't realize you were on the Mac now.

If you want really great support for tuning Kontakt 2, take a look at my Li'l Miss' Scale Oven. It has very comprehensive support for arbitrarily tuning Kontakt, is compatible with every other tuning format imaginable, has forward thinking features like switching between scales in real time with no glitching, and is super easy to use. It's the best tuning software around and will remove all headaches associated with tuning Kontakt 2, and a large number of other instruments as well.

http://www.nonoctave.com/tuning/LilMissScaleOven/

- Jeff