The MIDI Forum

Aha?

Now you're talking about something completely different, I suspect.

As far as midi is concerned, the keyboard sends ONLY a note number. As in - Play Note 60. I assumed from your original question that the keyboard was going to play the note (as in make the sound). Now, you seem to be talking about the keyboard merely providing the midi data, and something else, (i.e. Kontakt ?) makes the actual noise/sound. If this is the case, then settings for the keyboard are irrelevant. The keyboard still sends the same instruction, i.e. Play Note 60, and it will be up to - say kontakt - as to exactly what actual frequency the sound is. I have no idea if this can be controlled by midi, you'd need to delve into the instructions/set-up/etc of the system to see if you can do this, but this may not be very much to do with midi, and more to do with the sampling system/software used by the actual sound source you're using.

Geoff

Yes, I'm looking at changing the pitch of each individual note on my keyboard by a different amount. Anywhere from about 10Hz all the way up to 400Hz in the upper range.

I'm being told that some software samplers (such as Kontakt) will allow me to do this on a per zone basis (each individual note being assigned it's own zone) and my Kurzweil would then control the new configuration.

Thanks all for answering my question as best you could.

Joe

Oops, I missed the bit near the beginning where you refer to changing the tuning of CERTAIN notes. Most of my comments are GLOBAL.

Please clarify. I'd expect that if you change certain notes, and not others, then you would need to change the same notes in each octave so that all the scales are consistent? Is this so? I take it that you're thinking of playing non-western music that may use different scales, I think say Indian does, maybe Oriental music does too.

Geoff

The MIDI Tuning Standard defines a method for setting the pitch of each note. I don't know much about Kurzweil instruments, but I think most of them probably support the MIDI Tuning Standard.

Sorry to be awkward, but the answer is probably No and Yes.

I don't think this is possible with normal midi. As far as midi is concerned, there is no 'tuning' adjustment, and this is really dependant on the device which is the destination of the midi commands. It is possible that your specific device may have a controller that might allow a small adjustment, but the amount may not be enough.

But, maybe Yes if you use SysEx commands, and there are specific facilities within the device to allow some sort of global tuning. You'd need to look into the Memory Map for the Midi implementation, for something like Global Tuning.

Leaving aside specifically midi, your keyboard (?) may have some sort of 'Master Tune' facility - I'm looking at the manual for my Yamaha MU90r unit and this has such a setting which allows an adjustment of +/- 102 'cents' where at 440hz 1hz is approx 4 cents. So this has sufficient range to do the adjustment you suggested. This Master Tune data IS visible in the Midi format/map, so in theory you might be able to use SysEx to change it, but the various examples of using SysEx do not include master Tune so I don't know how practical this would be. May be necessary to experiment. The specific parameters, and the addresses of them, would be quite different for your device.

Oh, I'm not sure that any such change could be 'permanent' Unless you leave the device on/powered-up. If you find you CAN do it with a SysEx command, then it would be easy enough to run this command at startup each time you use the system?

Geoff.