1/4 Tone programming for Sonar ??!

ORIGINAL: pharaoh

I play Arabic Music and in the Arabic scales you might play 1/4 of a tone instead of semi tones as the western music.
how to programme Sonar to recognise that you dont hant for example D but you want D+1/4 tone ?? I've got some free plugins can make it for itself so it's possible but I don't know how to programme it for my other VST's when I want to do it.
I believe it must be something you can adjust in Sonar to control the notes of the scale with Cents if you wanted but I don't know how to do it ..... does anyone know how? ..... thanks

Someone else who has more direct experience might have to weigh in on this but...I don't think what you are looking for is within Sonar per se. I SUPPOSE you could deal with it by adding pitchbend offsets to your MIDI data (hmm...maybe that's not such a bad idea...just poke them in in the event list, as long as you are dealing with a monophonic line), but I think the more traditional way to handle this is by using alternate tuning tables in your synth or softsynth. That way Sonar just plays back normal MIDI notes, but the target synth reinterprets them as 1/4 steps instead of the usual equal tempered half steps. Yamaha used to be pretty good about giving you this facility on their units. It should be easy enough to implement this in a softsynth, but I don't know how many actually offer this.

ORIGINAL: pharaoh

I play Arabic Music and in the Arabic scales you might play 1/4 of a tone instead of semi tones as the western music.
how to programme Sonar to recognise that you dont hant for example D but you want D+1/4 tone ?? I've got some free plugins can make it for itself so it's possible but I don't know how to programme it for my other VST's when I want to do it.
I believe it must be something you can adjust in Sonar to control the notes of the scale with Cents if you wanted but I don't know how to do it ..... does anyone know how? ..... thanks

It seems like the number of possible pitch wheel values in MIDI should be enough to get any frequency you want, that should work with any sound module / patch that can respond to pitch wheel data. The problem is most insturments have this as a global control. To make it work right the module would have to be designed to have each voice of the patch be able to respond on a different midi channel so you could bend each note without affecting the others.

Also, I've seem GigaStudio (gigasampler) gig files that have some of the keys assigend to functions not notes. For example on a solo violin an octave below what would be used might have keys to have to bow trill, finger pluck and not bow, etc. A gigafile could be designed such that those control keys modify the note such that you can get the 1/4 tone values just by sending two notes. Again this only works well on single notes not chords but might give you an idea.

The simple solution is to change the tuning of your synthesizer to Arabic tuning. Most synthesizers can handle that, even the Virtual Sound Canvas which is shipped with SONAR

My stage piano Roland RD-700 has the same feature too. Arabic is even one of the standard selections.

Falco .... do you mean the TTs1 module that shipped with Sonar 4 ??

I use Sonar 4 and didn't upgrade to 5 yet.

Thanks Falco

I went there but I didn't know how to apply this syx info to my track ... can you advise me?

Hello,

I'm looking forward to same topic, how can I do that in new versions?
I'd like to use/hear 1/4 tones.

ralf
This is more a question about softsynths than about Sonar. Sonar just sends note on/off for midi notes 0-127. It's up to the synth how to interpret it. Most synths use halftone steps with standard tuning, where concert pitch A is note number 69. Drum synths usually have a different instrument or articulation for each note. But it can be anything else.
 
If you right click on the keyboard area in PRV, you can select alternate labels for the keys, which are defined in Master.ins. So, you can adjust the PRV to alternate tunings of a synth.
 
For synths without 1/4 tone tuning, you may use pitch bend to detune in other than half steps, if the synth supports pitch bend.

Could you help me for doing this on the TeamViewer and Skype?
I have to play a sound with Arabic notes.

Here's an idea. This will work if you have a suitable sfz multisample set that you want to use for this purpose.

1. Load the soundset into DimPro's Element 1.
2. Copy and paste the same soundset to Element 2.
3. Set DimPro to Multitimbral mode.
4. For Element 2, increase the tuning to +50 (i.e. up half a semitone).

In PRV, select channel 2 for any individual notes that are require to be half a semitone higher than their position normally indicates. Alternatively, create two separate midi tracks for channels 1 & 2. Set different colours for the two tracks so that normal pitched notes and up-pitched notes can be readily distinguished. View both tracks together in PRV.

The full version of DPro including v1.5 support scala files. So does z3ta+. Below are images for DPro and the original z3ta+.
 
Click pitch for an element then click in the area pointed to by #2

 
 
Click options then "Load Tuning..."