Dynamic intonation for synthesizer performance
Ben Denckla · 1997
By default, all MIDI synthesizers are tuned to 12-tone equal tempera-ment (12TET). This is the most convenient tuning because it is applicable to all Western music and can be controlled from conventional keyboards. Although it is convenient, it is not necessarily musically desirable. For example, harmon-ically speaking, many musicians find its major thirds less consonant than they would like. Fortunately, MIDI synthesizers are only tuned to 12TET by de-fault, for convenience's sake. They can in fact be used to realize pieces with each note tuned arbitrarily. Thus, like the violin or the voice, they do not have to conform to a tuning at all. This thesis investigates how this dynamic intona-tion capability can be applied to the realization of pieces of Western music. It investigates dynamic intonation from two perspectives. The first perspective is theoretical, presenting and evaluating a variety of alternatives to 12TET. The second perspective is practical, presenting software that was written in order to allow dynamic intonation on MIDI synthesizers. This software can be used to