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

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.

I looked hard for this in Sonar myself and feel pretty sure it can't be found there. I do know SONAR will work with soft synths that use tuning tables, although any scale you use needs to be mapped onto a traditional 12-tone piano keyboard for things like Piano Roll view. I believe SONAR only allows pitch adjustments by half-tone, nothing finer.

Scala, available for free on the Web, provides literally thousands of tunings as well as the ability to customize your own. It can apparently send tuning tables to any synth, hard or soft, that can receive them. Many people have had good experiences with it. That said, I've never been able to get it to work.

Reaktor works with tuning tables, but not Tassman. A good plug-in for using tuning tables in Reaktor is in their user library.

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.

I'm also not sure if this answers your question but when I need quarter tone, just intonation, and other tuning variations I use extenal modules. I still have a Proteus 2 Orchestral synth which can often be found on eBay for around $75 which still has some sounds that I like and has various tuning capabilities that through MIDI would allow you to do what others have suggested in the thread.

Newer synths often have better tuning options but usually at a steeper price. Some however do not because not everyone requires this feature.

Richard

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

Hmmm I dont know about Sonar, I do know that on some Yamaha keyboards and modules you can change the pitch bend to only effect the highest or lowest midi note. Which I suppose you could use to impersonate a 1/4 tone. That is a good question. I would like to see more different temperments (literally) in electronic music equipment.

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

The - with SONAR supplied - soft synthesizer Virtual Sound Canvas allows to detune too e.g. an Arabic temperement. You can find the information in the MIDI implementation help file for the virtual Sound Canvas. I know that more synthesizers can do it, e.g. the Roland RD-700.

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

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