MOTM

Do the Kenton units, Expressionist, etc. provide for other-than-equal
tempered tuning by any chance? It seems a natural (to me, anyway), but I've
seen no mention of it.

I also wonder why units like that put all the jacks on the back. I mean,
you're interfacing with an analog synth, right? Constant patching is the
name of the game! Oh well.

It depends on what you mean by "other-than-equal tempered tuning".  The
Expressionist has a scaling control that can certainly squish and stretch
an octave, just like the scale knob on Moog 952 keyboard, but it wouldn't
be something very musically useful, at least to me ;)  

I guess you could try to find a Moog 952 with a Scale programmer (60 knobs,
one for the voltage on each key!) but that won't work via MIDI...

The jacks in back don't bother me for my setup.  I run all the CV and Gate
outputs to a patch panel and normal them to trunks going to the synths.
The trunks either come out on a synth panel or as a set of patch cords by
the synth so they can easily be applied to whatever needs MIDI'd CVs.  If
the jacks were on the front of the Expressionist, I would have to patch
them into the trunks anyway since the Expressionist can't be right next to
every synth...

	Eric

At 09:06 AM 11/3/99 -0500, Tkacs, Ken wrote:

>From: "Tkacs, Ken" <Ken.Tkacs@...>
>
>
>Do the Kenton units, Expressionist, etc. provide for other-than-equal
>tempered tuning by any chance? It seems a natural (to me, anyway), but I've
>seen no mention of it.
>
>I also wonder why units like that put all the jacks on the back. I mean,
>you're interfacing with an analog synth, right? Constant patching is the
>name of the game! Oh well.
>
>>
>

It depends on what you mean by "other-than-equal tempered tuning".  The
Expressionist has a scaling control that can certainly squish and stretch
an octave, just like the scale knob on Moog 952 keyboard, but it wouldn't
be something very musically useful, at least to me ;)  

I guess you could try to find a Moog 952 with a Scale programmer (60 knobs,
one for the voltage on each key!) but that won't work via MIDI...

The jacks in back don't bother me for my setup.  I run all the CV and Gate
outputs to a patch panel and normal them to trunks going to the synths.
The trunks either come out on a synth panel or as a set of patch cords by
the synth so they can easily be applied to whatever needs MIDI'd CVs.  If
the jacks were on the front of the Expressionist, I would have to patch
them into the trunks anyway since the Expressionist can't be right next to
every synth...

	Eric

At 09:06 AM 11/3/99 -0500, Tkacs, Ken wrote:

>From: "Tkacs, Ken" <Ken.Tkacs@...>
>
>
>Do the Kenton units, Expressionist, etc. provide for other-than-equal
>tempered tuning by any chance? It seems a natural (to me, anyway), but I've
>seen no mention of it.
>
>I also wonder why units like that put all the jacks on the back. I mean,
>you're interfacing with an analog synth, right? Constant patching is the
>name of the game! Oh well.
>
>>
>

Simple stretching & squashing could at least offer 19-tone equal
temperament, which is very musical. I was hoping to be able to do more
off-beat tunings, though; non-equal. I'm just surprised that isn't a
standard feature (I guess I shouldn't be, now that I think about it!).

		-----Original Message-----
		From:	Eric S. Crawley [mailto:esc@...]

		It depends on what you mean by "other-than-equal tempered
tuning".  The
		Expressionist has a scaling control that can certainly
squish and stretch
		an octave, just like the scale knob on Moog 952 keyboard,
but it wouldn't
		be something very musically useful, at least to me ;)

So, aside from the MIDI/CV converter doing your scale programming, you
might consider some additional alternatives.  Analog Systems makes a scale
programmer for the RS Integrator.  I don't know anything about it other
than what I have seen on their web site.  [Yes, I know it is technically
inferior to the MOTM...]

I wonder if it would be possible to kludge some different tunings by using
a sequencer where every stage was "addressable".  You wouldn't run a
sequence in the traditional sense, but you would tune the stages to the
scale you wanted and trigger each stage based on a controller event.  The
problem is triggering the stages from the keyboard.  You might need a big
slab of VC switches...  Anyway, just pondering things out loud..

	Eric

At 08:49 AM 11/4/99 -0500, Tkacs, Ken wrote:

>From: "Tkacs, Ken" <Ken.Tkacs@...>
>
>off-beat tunings, though; non-equal. I'm just surprised that isn't a
>standard feature (I guess I shouldn't be, now that I think about it!).
>