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Microtuning is a long way from being a solved problem in MIDI 1.0. MIDI Tuning Standard is sufficiently poorly implemented that there are several non-standard a
by jdietrich 8y ago
Microtuning is a long way from being a solved problem in MIDI 1.0. MIDI Tuning Standard is sufficiently poorly implemented that there are several non-standard alternatives in widespread use.
This is very much a "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" type of situation - what western engineers perceive as an insignificant edge case is a constant frustration for many non-western musicians. The answer to the question "How do I play music from my own culture using electronic instruments?" should not be "Well, it's complicated...". Support for non-western scales should not be a clumsy, optional part of the spec.
https://www.midi.org/articles/microtuning-and-alternative-intonation-systems https://www.midi.org/articles/microtuning-and-alternative-in...
- jzoch 8y agoAgreed. This reminds me of a few discussions i saw about unicode being silly and over the top and that ascii is perfectly functional. Non english languages can work around the spec!
- rebolek 8y agoTell how western-centric they were to those Japanese engineers from Yamaha, Roland, Korg and Kawai who worked on MIDI 1.0 specs.
- jdietrich 8y agoJapanese traditional music is primarily pentatonic or heptatonic and aligns closely to western 12-tone equal temperament. Contemporary Japanese music is entirely compatible with western music theory. That's a happy coincidence for a Japanese-American project, but it's distinctly inconvenient for Arabic, Persian or Indonesian musicians who use notes that have no useful equivalent in the western scale.