[PD] MIDI tools in PD

[X. J. Scott]

on 1/29/03 6:54 PM, Michael McGonagle wrote:

> I am interested in working with alternate tunings, and as such would be
> interested in any tools for PD that would handle "on-the-fly" retuning
> of a MIDI stream.

Hi Michael,

You can use freeware Scala or shareware fts on the FTS to convert single
channel midi to multi channel midi. On the Mac, you can use my commercial
program Li'l Miss' Scale Oven (LMSO). The OSX version of LMSO is not ready
yet so I run LMSO separately on a OS9 machine and feed it into PD. I assume
that on the PC you can do the same if you have a separate machine, or
possibly you can run Scala or FTS concurrently with PD and use a loopback
program or failing that, a hardware loopback. Once the OSX port is done,
then I'll run LMSO and pd concurrently in OSX.

You also mention the issue of tuning file formats. It's unclear to me if you
are seeking to begin a discussion of appropriate tuning file formats for use
with a PD module you want to develop. If so, I would not recommend the Scala
.SCL format as it does not contain the anchor key, anchor frequency and
mapping information, but that is held in a separate file. My feeling is that
it is better to have one file that completely contains all the info needed
to specify the tuning. The native format of my program does that, but there
is also the .TUN file used by many VST plugins which both Manuel (creator of
Scala) and I (creator of LMSO) have added support for to our programs.
Caution is in order as there are two versions of this file format; the old
one is constrained by single-cent resolution, but the more recent one has
basically unlimited tuning resolution. These file formats map 128 keys to
128 arbitrary frequencies and then the user can use Scala or LMSO or
whatever to create any possible fixed mapping of MIDI notes to pitches. I
can provide you with details of the format and examples if you wish. If some
other format seems more appropriate or convenient for PD (like pd parsable
table data), it can be easily added to LMSO and I can forward the info with
Manuel for inclusion into Scala.

Thanks,

- Jeff