Thummer(tm)

[K]

[Jim Plamondon]

K, et al. --

Regarding the "meantone continuum" -- a "meantone tuning," for the purpose of this discussion, is any tuning in which (a) the syntonic comma is tempered to unison and (b) the major second is tempered to be half of a major third. Such a tuning is built by stacking and octave-reducing "perfect" fifths. The width of all such "perfect" fifths is the same within a given meantone tuning, and that single width defines the tuning. As this width increases across tunings from some minimum to some maximum, a continuous sequence of all possible meantone tunings is produced. This is the "meantone continuum."

Twelve-tone equal temperament (12-tet) is one such meantone tuning (in which the "perfect" fifth's width is 700 cents). 12-tet is the default tuning of essentially all piano-style keyboards and guitar-style fretboards -- that is, of the primary instruments of Western mainstream (commercial) music. Any instrument-maker who intends to (a) affect the mainstream of music-making, and (b) deliver a growing return to investors, must support 12-tet first and foremost.

Yet many other musically-useful tunings fall within the meantone continuum. At one extreme of the continuum, Indonesian gamelan music is tuned in 5-tet, and at the other extreme, Thai classical and central African music are tuned in 7-tet. Within these bounds fall a large number of other interesting n-tet meantone tunings (including 12, 17, 19, 22, 24, 31, and many other n-tet tunings), and all of the various 1/n-comma meantone tunings, including the 1/4-comma meantone tuning which is often the one meant when one says simply "meantone tuning" as if there were only one. But these specific points along the continuum are just pearls on a string -- it's the continuous nature of the string that is most interesting.

All of the structures of tonal harmony have precisely the same fingering on the Thummer's keyboard across the entire meantone tuning continuum. The pentatonic scale (for example) has the same fingering in 31-tet as in 12-tet; the I chord (DoMiSo) has the same fingering in 5-tet, 12-tet, 1/4-comma, and 7-tet. Furthermore, the meaning of these musical structures -- in terms of tonal harmony -- is the same across all of these different tunings (more or less).

Because these tunings differ only in the width of their "perfect" fifth -- a single variable -- an electronic musical instrument can be retuned dynamically along the entire continuum by moving a single control. That ability to change tuning dynamically is useless if one has to constantly re-arrange one's fingering (or one's frets, or whatever) to match the changing tuning. Dynamic tuning is only useful on an instrument whose fingering is consistent across all tunings...such as the Thummer.

Dynamic tuning also requires that at least one degree of freedom be devoted to the current tuning, which requires an instrument with expressive power to burn...such as the Thummer.

Alternatively put, the Thummer enables a whole new aspect of tonal harmony to be explored: that of dynamic tuning. The Thummer delivers this benefits while being uniquely well-suited to learning and expressively controlling mainstream commercial music in 12-tet. By exposing the consistency of music's underlying structure, the Thummer delivers the elegant combination of power and simplicity. With the Thummer, you can have your creative cake and ease of learning, too.

I don't claim to have figured all of this out for myself. A number of other people made contributions that were larger than mine in figuring this stuff out (although any errors in my presentation of their ideas, above, are purely my own), relating it to the Thummer keyboard, and to some other stuff that we're ot talking about yet. We're going to be putting out a scientific paper on this topic shortly, initially to the Web.

And of course, the Thummer itself should be available for just AU$497 (that's about US$370) in time for Christmas 2006. To register your interest and be notified when the Thummer becomes available, please complete the online form at http://www.thummer.com/contactus.asp.

In the meantime, your readership may be interested in seeing demos of the Thummer at www.thummer.com/demo.asp, or learning more about the ThumMusic System at www.thummer.com/thummusic1.asp.

Hoping that this posting will be of interested to your membership, I remain

Yours,

Jim Plamondon
CEO, Thumtronics Ltd
The New Shape of Music(tm)
www.thummer.com

[seraph]

Syntonic Comma
links about alternate tunings

[Jim Plamondon]

That's a good description of the syntonic comma.

It's worth noting that all such commas originate in the Harmonic Series, as expressed in the timbres of those instruments whose vibrating elements oscillate in simple harmonic motion (strings, columns of air, etc.).

Using electronic sound synthesis, one can adjust the intervals between partials to align with the intervals between scale steps in a given meantone tuning. Doing so eliminates the syntonic comma (and the Pythagorean comma, too, for that matter). Sethares addresses the alignment of partials and tuning steps (in what I think is one of the most important papers of the last 20 years), but not the elimination of commas as a result thereof.

Lots have people have noted that 12-tet tuning eliminates various commas (Blackwood, for example), but those commas are still lurking in the harmonic timbres whose use is clearly assumed by anyone who describes intervals and commas in terms of "ratios of small whole numbers" (as does the Wikipedia). To eliminate these commas from meantone music theory, eliminating them from the tuning alone is insufficient -- they have to be eliminated from the timbre, too, by aligning the timbre's partials with the current meantone tuning's scale steps. Only then is such a comma truly eliminated.

This may seem like an arcane digression into esoteric tuning theory, beyond the scope of a forum on electro-music per se, but only electronic music synthesis can support dynamic tuning. Dynamic tuning gives electronic music a scope that acoustic instruments can't match, while still falling within the constraints of tonal harmony (and therefore of potential commercial success), but it requires the elimination of these commas. If dynamic tuning is of interest to this forum's members, then perhaps this kind of digression into the nature of commas is, too, since they go together.

Unless I'm missing something?

Thanks!

Jim Plamondon
CEO, Thumtronics Ltd
The New Shape of Music(tm)
www.thummer.com

[seraph]

[seraph]

microtonal lurking :

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/MakeMicroMusic/message/13149

[seraph]

received by e-mail

[jjj]

Nice words indeed, the problem is that I'm waited for month; now years and don't see them followed up. Walk the talk (was also the name of the Australian movie, I performed to) is my advice!

[seraph]

[mosc]

I've very sorry to hear this news. That's Carlo for letting us know. Just another sign that experimentation in music is not on a high point these days.

[jjj]

My condolences...
Sad indeed and it shows again what such seemingly simple looking projects can do to you... Thus, the only way of promoting a new idea/ project of this kind is on a hobby level and then promoting it by selling (on demand) one by one, until sizable demand grows.

Actually, I too was fooled by this intriguing Wicky/ Hayden Kbd pattern and only later on realized how difficult it is to finger 4 note chords.
In that regard my Janko conversion adapter offers a better and faster chance to relearn an easier to play Kbd pattern.
(http://www.live-styler.de/home/Janko%20Project.pdf)

In the meantime I even got tired of relearning Janko and cleanly dismantled it, because it took me too long to get used to it.

Now I came up with a new idea to try out:
I pondered... how about sticking to the conventional (zebra) piano Kbd, but amend it with a button Keyboard (see attachment), which has very little key travel, narrower (than normal), pentagonal shaped and equal-sized, equal-leveled keys?
Since this novel Kbd is narrow, two/three Kbds can be mounted (!)
Logically seen, this kind Kbd should allow me the same advantages as Janko!

The main notion in this is to equalize all keys in size and heights. It's very much what Janko had in mind, because it's the irregular zebra pattern of the traditional piano Kbd coercing us to learn 48 scale pattern of major and minor scales (for both hands) alone. Thus, with equalizing the size and heights of all keys I hope to gain the almost same advantages of Janko. To really find out I need to build and try it out myself. At least it doesn't require relearning a new Kbd pattern... That in itself is a great plus; i.e. the main reason why so few musicians are keen on buying and relearning exotic Kbd patterns.

On my Kbd key travel will be only 3 to 4mm, because I don't need a touch sensitive keys. Instead, I vary volume and tremolo changes via movement of a 120-button pentatonic (Stradella format) accordion bass box (from an old accordion), for manual accompaniment and also for automatic (Yamaha-Styles) accompaniment.the accompaniment box movements. Besides, all fast plying records have been won by button accordion players with short travel buttons.

The keyboard has only 4 Octaves for melody play, because the 5th, lowest octave will be used for accompaniment only.
The TDA1524 chip allows me to control the PC stereo output via one LDR for volume and tremolo variations.
From Poland I bought a couple Kbd encoders etc. ( http://www.midi-hardware.com/products.html ). From USA electronics surplus I bought a couple 100 of low-cost-silent PC pushbuttons and now I need to find time to put it all together. Soon I'll be moving to Santiago and set up my new hobby room there.

For notation I plan to use WYSIWYG Klavarskribo: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/Jo.Jansen.Deurne/totfreng.htm
The whole instrument could be even build like a super-light accordion, allowing volume and tremolo variations control similar to an accordion bellow.

Several brains think better than one (tiny mine). So, please tell me where my reasoning goes wrong... Thx

Some time back, I bought a new (Italian-made) KetronSD2 sound module for only $315 and I must really say that I fell in love with its sounds. It's almost impossible to get these sorts of quality sounds from INTERNET d/l sites. Apart from that I'm musically very demanding, for I know all too well what a great sound sounds like and anything less is just not making me happy. Thus, the SD2 delivered quite a number of these dearly desired quality sounds.
I always had a weakness for K. Wunderlich's Wersi and Tyros2 sounds, but until now I was never quite knew where my hunt for better instrumental sound quality will take me. With Ketron SD2 I learned (to understand my musical demands) that it's only then, when I get the right sound, that this sound will do me forever... or longer. So, there's in fact an end to my hunt. Thus far, the low quality sounds from Internet downloads kept me running in circles and never got me contented.

The thing I did with the Ketron SD2 was quite interesting, though:
I used SampleRobot to convert all interesting sounds to (truly) perfect Sf2 soundfonts and then sold the SD2 again (!) ...of course at a lower price. The difference was the price I had to pay to get my hands onto these great sounds (at least, that's how I justified it to my wife... )
Also, I earned myself a copy of Live-Styler.de accompaniment, by translating their user manual. Hence that, together with SD2 sounds gets me pretty near the "real Mc Coy" of my music making dream. That's certainly one way of getting there cheaply, isn't it?
Maybe I should do the same with some other worthwhile sound modules?

Would you have an idea what other sound modules I should aim at? So far I only discovered the KetronSD2 as a true quality module.
(Chances are you own a Tyros/Wersi Kbd; then we could even swap our best SF2.)
Business is on thing and quality of life is the other...
The only drawback with SF2 is that it cannot create layers/articulation switches, but SD2 didn't have much of it it either and still sounds convincingly realistic. Besides, I don't believe that the lateral noises and imperfections are really necessary to emulate a known instrument. I'm rather interested in top tonal quality than its side effects.

Far more important is how effectively volume and tremolo variations are applied. Accordion players (for instance) apply volume and tremolo variations very effectively with the bellow; unlike keyboard players, i.e. wished there would be a similarly effective way for keyboard players. A piano's touch sensitivity is very different from the Synth Kebds; even after-touch isn't quite the same. I create the same dynamics by whistling to music. Thus, I know what I'm missing and what I'm after...

Actually, these effective volume and tremolo variations alone are sufficient to introduce rich emotional creative values (the soul) into the music. Of course an interesting sounding instrument enhances the overall performance considerably and lends realism. On the other hand, poor dynamic variations merely enhance the "robotics" of a melody.
Greetings, from Joh living in a little town down-under in the Chilean Andes...

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[MusicScienceGuy]