Microtonal Fonts
Is there such a thing? I am interested in getting some of these slides and bends from instruments like fretless banjo and the Arabic oud. The best I can think of so far is to notate it standard, load it to my DAW and alter the pitches slightly, but that is going to be very labour intensive since even a short 30 second clip that I'm examining (of a live oud performance) contains over 100 microtones. Any ideas?
Comments
Both MuseScore (for playback) and the soundfonts (for pitch indexes) use MIDI, which only supports a twelve-tone octave (so no split C♯/D♭ for example, nor any microtonal thingies).
So, yes, you’ll have to work with pitch bending.
In reply to Both MuseScore (for playback… by mirabilos
https://musescore.org/en/plugins
What about this page? Here we have 19 TET.
In reply to https://musescore.org/en… by Rockhoven
There are plugins who apply pitch bend automatically to achieve various tunings.
In reply to There are plugins who apply… by mirabilos
I'll have to look at this. all I'm hoping for now is to have a little bit more range in the pitches. I'll still have to use tuning in a DAW to get more exactly what I want. The Arabic oud sounds good but the pitches are way too fixed for that instrument. And with hundreds of microtones in just a brief passage of 60 seconds, I think a wider pitch range is mandatory. It's going to be tedious work to score this accurately in a DAW. 19 TET might cut 50% of the labour.
In reply to I'll have to look at this… by Rockhoven
The MIDI pitches are standardised with equal temperament, and you can enter deviations in whole cents, and I think even ⅒ of a cent (so you have 1000 steps of subdivision between each ET semitone).
And, as I said, you can apply these offsets from a plugin.
In reply to The MIDI pitches are… by mirabilos
Thanks. That's good to know. But does the pitch change apply to every instance? Because I need to apply unique pitches to each instance of pitch. I need A 220, A 221, A 223 etc up to Bb. I don't even need the twelve tones for this short passage. If I could just program a minor third into about ten or twelve micropitches, that will work.
In reply to Thanks. That's good to know… by Rockhoven
You have to apply the pitch change to every single note(head) individually, so it can easily differ.
In reply to You have to apply the pitch… by mirabilos
OK. Then that might be where I need to start - with the Inspector.
Still checking around. Here is a 24 TET playback plug in. That with the Inspector ought to be close to what I need.
https://musescore.org/en/project/quarter-tone-24-tet-tuning
There's actually a lot of resources here on this Musescore site. And developments are always being made, by degrees.