LinPlug SaxLab - Manual (Page 35)

Appendix A: Using TUN Files
By Jacky Ligon
About Microtuning
Microtuning, or "microtonality" are methods for tuning musical instruments
whereby musicians may explore and compose with ethnic, historical and
contemporary tuning-systems. Microtuning musical instruments allows one to
use scales which may have pitches lying between the notes of our familiar
Western 12 tone scale. These pitches which are found in the 'cracks' of 12
Tone Equal Temperament are one of the things that give musics of Bali, India,
Africa, Thailand, Turkey and the Middle East (to name but a few) a special
international flavor, but is something that is of immeasurable value to the
contemporary acoustic and electronic composer, who may require a more
broad palette of musical pitches for their music.
The quest for creating beautiful and musically useful tuning-systems has been
an unending process of discovery and debate amongst musical theorists,
mathematicians, physicists and musicians going back to early history. Quite
often the reasons for microtuning instruments may involve improving the
consonant intervals of a tuning-system for sweeter sounding harmonies, as
well as offering wider variety of choices for melody. "Microtuning" an
instrument can sometimes mean there may be less or more than 12 tones in
an octave, or even that the octave itself may be stretched or compressed.
Microtuning is a vast topic, rich with lore, music and infinity of musical
possibilities for the sonic explorer.
Creating TUN Microtuning Files with SCALA
Scala is a freeware utility developed by Manuel Op de Coul in the
Netherlands, which can be used for the creation and analysis of historical,
ethnic and contemporary microtunings. A powerful capability of Scala is that it
enables the user to create the proprietary tuning data required for microtuning
a wide range of hardware and software synthesizers and samplers.
Scala may be used to create the TUN format microtuning-files needed to
explore microtunings with this instrument.
The Scala home page is http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/
Specifying the Reference Frequency of a Microtuning
One of the powerful capabilities of the TUN file format and Scala, is the ability
to specify the pitch and midi note which will be the reference pitch for the
microtuning in use. This becomes a very important consideration when one is
using a number of different synthesizers and wishes to keep them in tune with
a given base frequency. It is very common for one to specify a chosen concert
pitch such as A440 Hz or C261.6256 Hz as a reference for a microtuning,
SaxLab 2.1.6 User Manual Page 35