Import microtonal tuning tables (scala)

danilosan

Hi, recently I discovered the beauty of microtonal tuning and did experiments with the Colundi and other scales.

Some software synth (Asturia Pigments or Reveal Spire), Eurorack modules (µTune) and DAWs (Bitwig) can import tuning tables made with Scala (scl-files). http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

Thus, I thought I ask you guys if you ever thought about to add an import features for SCL scale files for additional tunings? It would be magic to use microtonal tuning and analog synths with OXI.

Manuel

danilosan Hi Danilo, firstly say it’s not a trivial task at all what you request.
Can you explain if the microtonal tuning is done in conjunction with pitch bend messages in case of MIDI devices?
For CV stuff seems more reasonable to implement 🙂

danilosan

Hi Manuel

Thanks, that you are open to the topic. I know it is stuff at the edge and asked by experimental musicians…

As far as I understand it, standard pitch variations can be transmitted relatively finely with the MIDI Tuning Standard
Besides the first byte which specifies the equal-tempered semitones two bytes (14 bits) specify the fraction of 100 cents above the semitone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_tuning_standard

That should allow a very fine resolution: “(approximately 0.0061 cents) in size, which is far below the threshold of human pitch perception and which therefore allows a very accurate representation of pitch.”

However, there could be more complications which I am just not aware. But I think that is how Bitwig integrated it in their micro-pitch device.
https://www.bitwig.com/learnings/microtuning-in-bitwig-studio-77/

I think it would be an additional feature that would make Oxi stand out from most other hardware sequencers.