From: mclaren
Subject: extant microtunable synthesizers
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There seems to be continuing confusion about
which synths are microtonal & which aren't. Also
about which manufacturers support non-12, and
to what extent.
-------------------------------------------------
First, the manufacturers. Yamaha, Waldorf, E-Mu
(in its line of stand-alone sound modules) and Ensoniq are
firmly dedicated to supporting microtonality on their
synths.
Akai, Peavey, Roland and Kawai, on the other hand, are
implacably hostile to microtonality. These companies
have never manufactured a synth with a tuning table.
They'd be delighted if everyone on this tuning forum
died of Ebola virus. These companies are ruthlessly
dedicated to preventing anyone, anywhere from breaking
out of the twelve-tone equal tempered scale.
Oberheim, Kurzweil and Korg are sitting on the fence. Some of
their synths support non-12, some don't. Kurzweil and
Korg both build synths that allow all 12 notes per octave
to be retuned--but ONLY 12 notes at a time, and ONLY
within the octave. (There are some subtleties in dealing
with the Kurzweil instruments. See below.)
----------------------------------------------------
The companies can be broken down into:
GOOD GUYS BAD GUYS FENCE-SITTERS
Yamaha Kawai Oberheim
Ensoniq Akai Korg
Waldorf Peavey Kurzweil
E-Mu Alesis
Roland
This is important to those of you who want to compose
non-12 music. If you buy the wrong synth, you're stuck.
And I mean *stuck.* There's just no way to get out of 12
without adding a pitch-bend to each and every note--a
process of which you will tire very VERY quickly.
Pitch bends also destroy the attack of percussive timbres.
This is *not* subtle. A piece composed by a member of
this forum using pitch-bends for retuning has prompted
the question from everyone who's heard it: "What's wrong
with the weird sliding attacks on those notes?"
Plus, pitch-bends clog MIDI's datastream, especially in fast music.
If you're thinking of composing in non-12, best to pick
up a synth by Yamaha, Ensoniq, Waldorf, Oberheim or E-Mu.
Avoid synths by Peavey, Akai, Kawai, Alesis, Roland or Korg.
-----------------------------------------------------
Second:
A lot of people are confused about what "retunable" means.
By retunable, I mean that any key on the synth can be tuned
to any pitch desired. So middle C can sound A0, 27.5 Hz, or
it can sound A8. The keyboard can be turned upside-down,
tuned to a just scale, an equal-tempered scale, a non-just
non-equal-tempered scale, a non-octave scale, or anything
at all.
Any other synth is *not* retunable. It may allow you to
tweak a few notes, or mess with pitch-bend, or use some exotic
sys-ex table to alter the pitch of various notes...but sooner
or later you'll get frustrated. Sooner or later a synth
without full keyboard retuning and storable uploadbale/downloadable
tuning tables will *PREVENT* you from producing the pitches
you want to hear.
Only a few synths are fully retunable. They have what are called
pitch tables. A pitch table is a set of 128 memory locations
that contain the note number and a pitch. By setting each of
the 128 internal memory locations to any pitch, you can get
any tuning desired.
Tuning accuracy is usually not nearly as important as full-
keyboard retunability. Very few people will notice the
difference between a tuning resolution of 768 parts per
octave and a resolution of 1024 parts per octave... But
everyone with ears instantly hears the difference between a
synth which only allows 12 notes of 19 and a synth that
allows ALL 19 NOTES of 19.
A few synths even allow more than 1 tuning table. The
advantage of these is that they permit just intonation
composers to modulate quickly and easily between
different just arrays. If you're a JI composer, this is no
trivial matter! In fact it may well prove the most
important decision you make when choosing a synth
to compose with.
So JI fans, pay special attention to the section
marked MULTIPLE TUNING TABLES below.
------------------------------------------------
Here in detail are the models (by manufacturer) :
ENSONIQ
Mirage - Full keyboard, 256 parts per octave or
4096/octave by entering all 60 notes
Requires Dick Lord's UPWARD CONCEPTS
alternative operating system disk or
Buzz Kimball's alternative OS disk.
ESQ-1, ESQ-M, SQ-80 - Only retunable into equal temperaments
from 12 to 24 tones per octave. Details published
in a 1986 KEYBOARD magazine article.
VFX, VFX- SQ, TS-10 - Full keyboard, 768 parts per octave.
12 tuning tables!
EPS, EPS-16+, ASR-10 - Full keyboard, 768 parts
per octave. Tuning is stored on disk along
with the sound sample. 8 tuning tables.
SQ-1, SQ-1R - NOT RETUNABLE!
MR-RACK - Full keyboard, 1 tuning table
Also, none of Ensoniq's dedicated piano modules are
retunable.
KURZWEIL
The early Kurzweil series listed here used the
lowest 12 MIDI notes to store a tuning table,
tunable only within 12 notes per octave.
K-150, K-1000 - Only within 12 notes per octave.
K-2000, K-2000S, K2500 - Only within 12 notes per octave
and only 1 tuning table UNLESS you use a "key map,"
which can apparently be applied to all the patches
you're using. The keymap, alas, only allows you to
specify pitches to + or - 1 cent, which might not
be sufficient accuracy--particularly for just
intonation. There also does not appear to be
any way to download a keymap via computer, as
can be done for tuning tables on any of the instruments
which feature them.
ROLAND
None of this company's synths can be retuned in
any way, shape or form. Various folks have claimed
that this or that drum mapping or sys-ex function can
be tweaked to generate microtonal pitches, but this
is a giant pain-the-ass kludge.
ALESIS
Quadrasynth - NOT RETUNABLE!
YAMAHA
FB-01 - Retunable ONLY by sending each note-on
as a sys-ex message. Only Larry
Polansky's HMSL currently supports
retuning on this synth. The advantage,
however, is that (unlike any other synth
on this list) you get a FULL 10 OCTAVES
of notes in any scale you want, 768/oct
resolution.
TX81Z, DX11 - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
DX7 with E! - Full keyboard retuning, 1024/oct. 1 tuning table.
Note: DX7 with E! allows a succeeding note to be retuned
without glitching the current note. This is the ONLY synth
which permits this function, to my knowledge.
TX7 - NOT RETUNABLE!
TX816 - NOT RETUNABLE! (Except via kludge. You could theoretically
change the master tuning on each unit of a rack of 16 of these
synths, giving you up to 16 microtonal pitches--one on each
MIDI channel. A godforsaken kludge.)
DX7II, TX802 - Full keyboard retuning, 1024 /oct 2 tuning tables
on DX7II, 8 tuning tables on TX802
SY-22, TG-55 - NOT RETUNABLE!
TG-77, SY-77, SY-99 - Full keyboard retuning, 1024/oct. 1 tuning table.
>>>>> IMPORTANT! No Yamaha sampler can be retuned. <<<<<
VL-1, VL-1M - Full keyboard retuning, 1024/oct. 1 tuning table.
OBERHEIM
The Matrix-6 and Matrix-12 can reportedly be retuned by kludging
the volts/octave function. Not verified, and in any case a
godforsaken kludge.
Their latest (1993) rack-mount synth apparently allows
+ and - 50 cents retunability for each of the
12 notes in the octave. No more than 12 retuned
notes per octave are allowed.
E-MU
Proteus I, Proteus XL - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Ultraproteus -- full retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Proteus II, Proteus IIXL - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Proteus III World - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Proteus FX - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct 1 tuning table.
Proteus Classic Keys - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Planet Phat - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Morpheus - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Proformance, Proformance Plus - NOT RETUNABLE!
Emax, Emax II, ESi, Emulator II, Emulator III - NOT RETUNABLE!
No E-Mu samplers can be retuned without "tricking"
the operating system by detuning each note and
storing it as a separate sample, etc. (At best the
results from detuning E-Mu and Yamaha and Akai
and Kawai samplers are poor and it gobbles RAM
like you wouldn't believe. A godforsaken kludge,
NOT recommended, and usually not practical.)
KORG
T-1, T-2, T3 - Retunable only within 12 notes per octave
Wavestation - Retunable only within 12 notes per octave
O1/W, O1/W Pro - Retunable only 12 notes per octave
X20, X30, X50 - NOT RETUNABLE!
X5, i4, i4S - Retunable only within 12 notes per octave
KAWAI
None of this company's synths can be retuned in any
way, shape or form except via kludge. The K5 can,
for instance, theoretically be used so that each
MIDI note is distributed to one of 15 different MIDI channels,
and each of the 15 channels can then be detuned on the
master panel. Again, this is a godforsaken kludge
and NOT recommended.
AKAI
None of this company's synths can be retuned in any
way, shape or form.
WALDORF
MicroWave - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
Wave - Full keyboard retuning, 768/oct. 1 tuning table.
PEAVEY
None of this company's synths can be retuned in
any way, shape or form.
------------------------------------------
MULTIPLE TUNING TABLES:
COMPANY SYNTH # OF TUNING TABLES
Yamaha TX802 8
Ensoniq VFX, TS-10 12
Ensoniq EPS, EPS-16+,
ASR-10 8
Ensoniq ESQ1, ESQ-M,
SQ-80 8 (only within
12 notes per octave)
This means that the TX802 can support up to
8 different full-keyboard tunings at once;
likewise the VFX & TS-10 can support up to
12 different full-keyboard tunings at once, etc.
The ESQ-1, ESQ-M and SQ-80 are special cases.
These synths don't have tuning tables; you retune
by using the MOD operators in each voice to
modulate notes/octave. It works, but it's
a godawful kludge.
One addendum to the above table: observant
readers will have noticed that the info for
Ensoniq samplers is not quite accurate. Since
a tuning is stored with the layer to which a
sample is assigned, and since Ensoniq samplers
can use up to 8 different layers within each
channel, there is a theoretical maximum of
64 different tuning tables possible on an
Ensoniq EPS, EPS-16+, or ASR-10. In practice
memory runs out long before the 64-layer
limit is reached, however.
-------------------------------------
Third (and last):
Here's a very quick overview:
ONLY 1 COMPANY MAKES A FULL-KEYBOARD
RETUNABLE SAMPLER: ENSONIQ
If you want to compose or perform using
a sampler in non-12, you have ONLY 3 CHOICES:
The ASR-10, a used EPS-16+ or a used EPS. NO
OTHER SAMPLER ON THE PLANET HAS A
TUNING TABLE!
>>>>>> IMPORTANT! IMPORTANT! <<<<<<<
The only synths recommended for
those who want to compose or perform
in non-12 are:
Yamaha DX7 w/E!, DX7II, TX802, TG-77,
TX81Z, FB-01, SY-77, SY-99, VL-1, VL-1M
Ensoniq VFX, VFX-SQ, TS-10, MR-RACK, EPS,
EPS-16+, ASR-10, ASR-X
Waldorf MicroWave, Wave
Ensoniq VFX, VFX-SQ, TS-10
Waldorf MicroWave, Wave
E-MU Proteus I, Proteus II, Proteus III,
Morpheus, Classic Keys, Proteus FX,
Ultraproteus, Planet Phat
Time and time again, I've seen people
buy a synth *not* on this list. Time and time
again, they get interested in microtonality...
and discover their synth is *locked into 12*,
or locked into only 12 notes out 19, or 12
notes out of 31, or 12 harmonic series pitches,
or 12 notes out of Harry Partch's 43...
The frustration and rage and hair-pulling
frenzy this produces cannot be adequately
described. It's unbelievably maddening to
discover that your shiny new $3000 synth
*CANNOT* produce the pitches you want to
hear.
So those interested in composition or performance
in non-12 would do well to choose wisely (as
the knight in "Indiana Jones and the Quest for
the Holy Grail" put it) and pick one of the
synths on the RECOMMENDED list. Otherwise,
dollars to doughnuts, you are going to let
yourself in for a whole *world* of frustration.
IMPORTANT: IF YOU LIKE A PARTICULAR SYNTH
BUT ARE BUGGED THAT THE MANUFACTURER
DOESN'T OFFER RETUNABILITY, WRITE A LETTER
TO THE MANUFACTURER. ENOUGH LETTERS AND
THEY WILL GET THE MESSAGE!
--mclaren
