I am feeling very LAZY. So I would appreciate some help. Been very busy with 'other things'. But hope to be back to patching soon.

Would like to keep using the NM for African music. What I want to do next is make the Nord sing with the weird scales and stuff that traditional African koras, xylophones and other instruments are tuned to. They're just not the same unless you get the scalings, overtones and inharmonics right... and that's kind of like what I want to do.

I opened up my NM editor. Been a while. Mind just went black. Sighed.

Then I remembered this great list!!! Hi guys!!!! Are you all COOL GUYS OR WHAT!!!! (If there's anything else I need to do in the way of baseless grovelling and insincere prostration just let me know).

Rather than reinvent the wheel ... anyone know of anyone who has created a patch that I could have a look at to get me started? I would like, for example, to get a rough idea of how I could create say a hemitonic pentatonic or heptatonic scale -- and without having to read the manual. Please forgive me. I'll do it if I have to -- and I hope none of you guys object too greatly to this incredible bit of idleness on my part.

When I'm ready I just want to get going. I don't want to have to figure out something that I'm quite sure one or another of you has already figured out before me. Come on!!!!!! At least one of you must have experimented with microtonal stuff and so can tell me in a flash how to set up them oscillators and keyboards so that they give me only the notes and overtones I do want and none of the ones I don't want. Yeah yeah yeah I know that's what filters do.

OK. That's it. Back to the tiresome business of earning a living. Don't any of the rest of you guys have to do that from time to time?

Oh yes you will be glad to know that my bent for mindless loquacity has remained undimmed. Just be grateful that it hasn't been hitting your Inbox much recently.

My way to do alternative tunings is to do it like in the attached patch. I don't know anything about african scales but in this way you can get it right. (I think) With the constant modules you can get a rough tuning, which you can finetune with the control mixers. Well, that's my approach to this matter... 

The patches aren't very suitable to be played from a keyboard, and I think a keyboard implenmenmtation would be a real challenge - but nevertheless, I once made them for a bass player who had some specially refretted bass guitars for micro tonal music and he was very happy with it, so maybe it works for you as well

One of the first things I did when I got my Nord was to play with tunings.

I've attached a couple patches. One attempts to play "just intonation" by using the partial generator. Use the lower octave of the keboard to set the fundamental tone. It doesn't give all the possible notes, but the ones you get will all be harmonics of the fundamental.

The other patch allows you to tune each note in the octave individually, i.e. turn a knob and all the C#'s tuning will change. I left off one note because the Nord's master tuning could be used for that if you needed it, and about 80% of the DSP load is used just for detecting notes. I know some tuning systems aren't based on repeating octaves, but I suppose you could make some sort of adjustment for that by combining this with a note scalar.

Kofi, you've got me real curious what you're up to with the Nord. If your past patches are any indication, it will be good. You've gotta post a link to an .mp3 when you're finished!

Thanks very much Kees. I am grateful. That will at least get me started along the right kind of lines. I'll be sure to let you know how things work out.

> I have something about TET scales on my website

Thanks very much. Mr. monkeyfinger had also mentioned them to me in a private mail. Didn't have the chance at the time, but I've just been there and had a look. Looks like what you've got there will be very helpful... most especially the calculations you've done about the settings of the knobs -- which I REALLY was not looking forward to.

> he patches aren't very suitable to be played from a keyboard, and I think a keyboard implenmenmtation would be a real challenge - but nevertheless, ...

Ho hum ho hum !!!!!!! I was really rather looking forward to play my creations from the keyboard. I am sure it will all gradually come together once I start working on it ... whenever that may be.

> I once made them for a bass player who had some specially refretted bass guitars for micro tonal music and he was very happy with it, so maybe it works for you as well

Well ... if they work for a guy on microtonal bass ... we shall see

> I do not know the term hemitonic, and I barely know about penta & hepta (5 & 7 respectively if I remember rightly

The people who came up with our current classifications for scales and notes and things were all Western-based. They therefore had a totally perverted idea (hey ... my idea of a joke OK guys) of what is 'normal'.

Hemi- is part; tone you know. So hemitonic is part-tone or else a scale with semitones. Note that this sets the standard of what is normal. Anhemitonic simply means without semitones.

Pentatonic scales without semitones (i.e. anhemitonic pentatonics) are extremely common. They are used by blues and jazz guitar players all the time to improvise with because they are very easy to play on the guitar. One can run up and down the fingerboard and strings very easily. On the keyboard, it's easy to construct a pentatonic scale just using all the black keys. Alternatively, C, D, F, G, and A (to C) would be another one.

Hemitonic pentatonic scales, however, are quite rare. (Unless, of course, you happen to live somewhere where people play that kind of stuff everyday in which case it is normal. You guys really don't know how lucky you've all been that I've been so very quiet for so long, hay!!!) An example of a hemitonic pentatonic scale would be C, E, F, G, B (C). Note the semitone between the E and the F. This immediately means, of course, that there has to be at least one much bigger interval somewhere else. Note the two major thirds between C and E and G and B.

The standard scale of Western music is a heptatonic or 7-note scale. These you surely know well!! If you don't I really don't know what on earth you're doing on this list. Not that the standard diatonic Western scale is hemitonic because it has those semitones. You know where they are.

Another issue concerns that of the distances between the notes. There are places in Africa that have equi-pentatonic scales, and places that have equi-heptatonic scales. That is to say, there are places that have pentatonic scales in which all the notes are placed an equal distance from each other across the octave, and places that do the same with 7-note scales. The interval distance for the equi-pentatonic scale is, obviously, 240 cents or 2.4 semitones; while that for the equi-heptatonic scale is 171 cents or 1.71 semitones. Obviously, the one is just a bit more than a standard Western equal-tempered tone, while the other is a bit less!! They sound strange at first when you are used to the Western way of doing things ... but then hey ... what's normal, right? African musicians tend to bend and play around with the notes a bit while they are singing and playing anyway -- which is kind of how the blues came along. When African musicians were confronted with the standard chromatic system of Western music, they couldn't find the notes that they were looking for and play around the third. So they developed a system of juxtaposing the major and the minor third -- and now everybody does it.

Anyway ... I am kind of looking to use the Nord modular to create a simulation of a kora or balaphon or something like that. In order to get it right, of course, I have to be able to reproduce those intervals ... and hopefully the way that musicians bend and play around with them a bit. God alone knows why I want to do such a thing though. You'd think I'd learned by now to stick to just Bach and The Beatles.

In case any of you are interested in reading or hearing any of this stuff. Probably the best I can do for you is this album that I personally rather like of a Senegalese singer by the name of Samba Traore. He plays a traditional 6-stringed donso ngoni which is ... well, you'll see for yourself what it looks like if you follow the link. If you listen to his songs, you'll hear his intervalic scheme and the way he uses his voice both to bend the notes as well as to explore some polyrhythmic textures:

It is really rather a good album and he is a very good singer. I am totally biassed but I think you should check it out. I will be setting you all a test on the lyrics very shortly. I'll show you a picture of a balaphon which is a kind of a small wooden xylophone.

OK -- seen it!

I am now off to my hibernation. Maybe ... by the time I get back and actually get around to starting on this caper, one of you idle people with nothing better to do will have worked out for me a way in which I can reproduce those tones and thereby get myself an equitonal anhemitonic heptatonic scale.

Now ... wouldn't that be nice. I really am a very lazy man.

OK. You can all relax now. I am going back to that ridiculous thing that has been keeping me occupied so long so it may be a while before you all hear from me again.

> One of the first things I did when I got my Nord was to play with tunings. I've attached a couple patches. One attempts to play "jus intonation" by .....<snip>

Thank you very much indeed. I am not at home at the moment having hit the road to do some out-of-town teaching for the weekend. So my beloved Nord is far away, bit I will do the necessary as soon as I get home.

>The other patch allows you to tune each note in the octave individually, i.e. turn a knob and all the C#'s tuning will change. I left off one note because the Nord's master tuning could > be used for that if you needed it, and about 80% of the DSP load is used just for detecting notes. I know some tuning systems aren't based on repeating octaves, but I suppose > you could make some sort of adjustment for that by combining this with a note scalar.

Yeah ... the kora's kind of like that. It's actually a 21 stringed instrument, and sometimes people don't tune the octaves just right. Kind of cross between a harp and a lute.

> You've got me real curious what you're up to with the Nord. If your >past patches are any indication, it will be good. You've gotta post a link to >an .mp3 when you're finished!

Well ... I really and honestly don't think you mean that. Like I mean ... I really really don't think you want to invite me into your home even secreted into an mp3. I suggest you check with your wife or significant other first!

I'll definitely post the patches, though. They'll take me a while because (a) not only don't I have much time right now; but also (b) there's a lot more involved than I thought.

And just before I go: To those of you who only just got your Nord and are still trying to learn to programme and stuff. There's some very weird and ridiculous kind of idea doing the rounds on this list that I'm some kind of whizz Nord programmer dude who knows lots of stuff. Hope you are now beginning to see the really rather cunning way in which I got this reputation! Just post a couple of ridiculous questions; get others to do all the hard work; cobble those suggestions together into a patch of your own, submit that patch; and then sit back and take all the credit!!! Works a treat every time.

Hope to get my balaphons and koras to you some time within the next 6 months.

Oh ... for those of you who don't know what a kora is, you're really missing something:

The Mandinka kora is a unique instrument with a harp-like appearance and a notched bridge similar to that of a lute or guitar. It sounds somewhat like a harp, but its intricate playing style can be closer to flamenco guitar. The first known reference to the kora comes from Mungo Park in his 1799 book, Travels in Interior Districts of Africa. He describes it as "alarge harp with 18 strings."

The kora's body is made from a calabash gourd cut in half and partially covered with cow skin. Traditionally, there are twenty-one playing strings plucked by the thumb and forefinger of each hand. The remaining fingers grip the two vertical hand posts. For strings, players use fishing line which provides a brillant tone and is easily obtained at the local market. Twenty-one anchor strings attach the playing strings to an iron ring bored through the base of the kora's hardwood neck. The player tunes the kora by moving the leather rings to achieve the appropriate tension on each string. Kora players use a variety of tunings. The Gambia has more kora players than Mali, Guinea and Senegal. In these countries they sometimes use the French spelling cora.