Dynamic Tuning, Mark I

Bill Sethares has recently implemented a demonstration of Dynamic Tuning & Timbres, running on top of Max/MSP. You can try it for yourself!

To run it, you need to already have the Max/MSP Runtime installed.

Then, right-click and "Save as..." this WickiSynth.zip file, unzipping them with WinZip.

Run Max/MSP, and open the wickisyn~.MXF file. There's a volume button to the lower-left; click it to activate your sound. Your QWERTY keyboard is now a QWERTY Thummer, with the Wicki note-layout. On the right-hand side, you'll see a slider controlling the width of the tempered perfect fifth. With your mouse, click and drag it up to increase the P5's width; drag it down to decrease the P5's width.

While playing (say) a major triad, drag the slider up and down. The pitches of the triad's notes will be adjusted automatically. So will the pitches of the partials that make up the tones sounded at those pitches.

The QWERTY keyboard is not an expressive instrument, nor are the timbres produced by with WickiSynth impressive. We don't expect that anyone is going to use this implementation in public (although, if you do, please post a video to YouTube and let me know!)

But...when you mess with this stuff, you are changing tuning and timbre dynamically, baby, using the Thummer's tuning-invariant note-pattern. That has never been done before.