ReaTune feature request for Microtonal tuning.

[IDDQDSound]

Hello!

For years now I've been waiting for DAWs to catch up to microtonal music, and if there's one DAW I have faith in to do it, it's REAPER.

To that end, I have a feature request for Reatune:
The MIDI Editor is able to import .ReaScale files. ReaTune cannot. Being able to import it is a start, but I can still easily build any scale I want out of the 12 notes of 12TET and go to town.

What I want is the ability to move the reference tone from 440Hz to any other value, which is again, a start, but better yet, if there was a system for ReaTune to import a text file similar to a .ReaScale file, and allow the user to define the Frequency of any number of given notes in any arbitrary octave and build a scale from those. So .ReaScale files simply turn on or off a number of the 12 available notes. I don't want that. I want something that basically reads like this:
A=[frequency]
A#=[frequency]
....
G#=[Frequency]

So say I want a regular minor scale, but I want my 2nd and 7th scale degree to be 25 cents flat. I can simply calculate those frequencies in, say, the 4th Octave (where A=440Hz) and then load it up into ReaTune.

I know a lot of people who ask for a non-440Hz reference tone are hacks who think the earth is tuned to 432Hz, but I promise that's not why I want this feature. I want to be able to work with Turkish, Iranian, and Kurdish Makaams which use quarter tones, etc.

Adding this feature will also allow people to work in 19TET (by adding additional notes, perhaps defining a separate frequency reference for G# and Ab, and so on) or 7TET (by defining only 7 notes instead of 12, and splitting the octave that way) and none of this would break the current functionality of ReaTune. It's still detecting frequencies and then tuning them to a set of 12 frequencies and their integer multipliers. I just want the ability to go around that when needed and use my own scales. The system is in place, it just needs some tweaking!

I will of course love you forever for this, Justin & Schwa, and dedicate my next 5 albums to you

[TonE]

First thanks to all your great videos and interviews together with Leandro, very cool. Second great suggestion. What about scala files? Would not those fit here perfectly for importing in order to change tuning or defining the wanted frequencies?

Do you want to output midi notes of ReaTune having the correct pitchbend events sent together (built in) ? Or what is the exact feature request?

"The MIDI Editor is able to import .ReaScale files." Did you make any videos using those, just to see how those can be used? Thanks in advance. And greetings to you and Leandro, friends!

[tohubohu]

+ 100

[IDDQDSound]

Originally Posted by TonE

First thanks to all your great videos and interviews together with Leandro, very cool. Second great suggestion. What about scala files? Would not those fit here perfectly for importing in order to change tuning or defining the wanted frequencies?

Hey thanks for the kind words! And yeah I didn't know about Scala files until you mentioned them but they seem to fit the exact bill I'm after. So I guess yeah Scala file support for ReaTune would basically make my life easy

Originally Posted by TonE

Do you want to output midi notes of ReaTune having the correct pitchbend events sent together (built in) ? Or what is the exact feature request?

Not necessarily needing to output midi notes, but just to make the automatic & manual tuning of audio work with microtones. Behind the scenes, it's still finding the fundamental frequency and tuning it to arbitrary values, so all I need is for a backdoor access to those values so I can tweak them. ie right now if my fundamental is sang at 435Hz it gets corrected to 440Hz, but what if I want it corrected to 420Hz, or whatever

Originally Posted by TonE

"The MIDI Editor is able to import .ReaScale files." Did you make any videos using those, just to see how those can be used? Thanks in advance. And greetings to you and Leandro, friends!

Yes. Check this video out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfmBzZqCUMA

[TonE]

Originally Posted by IDDQDSound

Not necessarily needing to output midi notes, but just to make the automatic & manual tuning of audio work with microtones. Behind the scenes, it's still finding the fundamental frequency and tuning it to arbitrary values, so all I need is for a backdoor access to those values so I can tweak them. ie right now if my fundamental is sang at 435Hz it gets corrected to 440Hz, but what if I want it corrected to 420Hz, or whatever

Ok, thanks for clarification, for audio retuning, like Autotune does for example. Here as Reaper variant, Reatune, got it, thanks. Did not use audio tuning much. Maybe after your feature request will be added, who knows? Let us hope Justin and Schwa will read this sooner or later and find it interesting enough topic not to ignore for opening up Reaper more to the world tunings. Scala file support addition to Reatune would round it up nicely. There are thousands of scala file definitions, plus many synthesizers which support them already. Scala file for defining any world scale, plus selecting the root note freely (again in Hz, any Hz) then this feature could be considered as complete, I guess.

Summary:
1- scala file support for defining scale in Reatune
2- allow any Hz being the root frequency of the scale (including those of the scala file, but also outside of them, in case you want to play to an old recording which has some other mysterious frequency, so you would need this feature here)

In case you want to generate a scala file (.scl) to any audio recording yourself there is a great free java tool, Tarsos (https://github.com/JorenSix/Tarsos), very interesting. If you want to find out which makam is used in any audio recording (should be a shorter part as makams use can change over time) you can check this java tool: https://github.com/miracatici/MakamBox
If you want it as command line variant, I modified it a bit some time ago, check this: https://github.com/miracatici/MakamBox/issues/1
If you follow those steps you can analyze all audio recording on your harddisk for outputting their used makam, as string, plus its root frequency in Hz. Best is splitting those audio files first based on silence, also from command line, for example using mp3splt. For example, as linux shell script:

PHP Code:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
mp3splt -s -p th=-50 $1 


The threshold you might need to modify after first run, based on the used audio material, if there are no splits found for example.

[IDDQDSound]

woahhh that's amazing! At least I can do what I want real quick with this, but yeah obviously if they add this to ReaTune then I do it live! Then I won't even have to re-fret my guitars, Just set it to be super fast and it'll catch and tune them down. On Waves Tune Real-Time this is possible and pretty baller results too!

[TonE]

Originally Posted by IDDQDSound

On Waves Tune Real-Time this is possible and pretty baller results too!

Some video examples would be cool, if not already existing?

[TonE]

Check also this: https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...89&postcount=6