Plugin to change temperaments/tunings

• Nov 17, 2009 - 12:55

A french user requested a plugin to change temperaments of the score.
I have no knowledge about this. But as far as I understand from wikipedia pages, some temperaments can be obtained by adjusting the tuning of every notes in the score according to the exact pitch of the note.
I put together a plugin to change the temperament to pythagorian or go back to natural.
I thought it can be helpful to english users too.

Adding a temperament can be easy if you can provide a name and a list of difference between "normal" notes and "tempered" ones.
Something like : (C 0), (C#, 10), (Db, -4) etc ...

Here is the plugin. Not yet commited to SVN.

Feedback very welcome.

Comments

• Dec 3, 2009 - 23:48

lasconic: a pitch mapping plugin is very valuable in its own right. Next time I compose a microtonal piece, I'll try your plugin. (I just finished a piece using scala, but I end up writing my own Perl script to do various pre- and post- processing, as the work-flow just doesn't quite work directly.)

Werner: didn't quite understand what you mean, because I'm guessing you have access to a lot of info already. Just in case: the scl format is human readable, and probably easiest to implement a few options at first. Here are 2 examples I'd suggest to implement first, with a quick interpretation of what it probably means (or close enough -- if you can do these 2, you probably cover a lot of ground already):

---- 1 ---
! meanpi.scl
!
Pi-based meantone with Harrison's major third by Erv Wilson
12
!
88.733 cents
204.507 cents
293.240 cents
381.972 cents
497.747 cents
586.479 cents
702.254 cents
790.986 cents
879.718 cents
995.493 cents
1084.225 cents
2/1
---- end of 1 ---
Here ! means comment, the first line is the title, 12 means 12 tones in an octave, and the next 12 items signify the interval relationship with the starting tone. You can use cents (the word is optional) as the definition, or use fraction representation, as the way octave (2/1) is used.
---- 2 ---
! slendro_av.scl
!
Average of 30 measured slendro gamelans, W. Surjodiningrat et al., 1993.
5
!
231.00000
474.00000
717.00000
955.00000
1208.00000
---- end of 2 ---
Here is an example where there are only 5 tones in an "octave". Note that the octave is actually not 2/1, but spread out a little more (1208 cents). That means the note higher up which corresponds to 231 would not be 1431, but rather 1439.

I didn't really do any research on the details of the definition of the file format for this post. You can find very terse info by checking out the "help" content on scala itself. You can probably also check out how synthedit supports it in its VST s/w.

btw, take a look also at the *.kbm file. That may be needed for microtonal support when used in a notation software. That is not necessary for temperaments with 12 tones per octave. But for the 2nd example, that would be needed, or else we still need some kind of pitch-mapping plugin...

Hope you'll start this effort soon. Able to use scl file is probably the most important part of a microtonal support, and what would draw more people into using MuseScore.

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• Jun 19, 2010 - 23:14

I attempt to use the tuning plug in, but whenever I click the "apply the selected temperament to score" button, nothing changes. Do you know what may be the problem?

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• Apr 2, 2021 - 13:06

I can change the temperament with 'fifth based tuning'; I can tune koron and sori correctly with 'accidental tuner' BUT I cannot do both together. Has anyone successfully applied both on the same score?
In other words, use a key signature with quater tones AND play back in a pythagrean tuning ...

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