So, you wanna listen to Historical Temperaments?

[Michel Lachance]

Dear List,

I've found a way to listen to historical temperaments and even 
toggle between them without having to retune a piano!

I got this idea by looking at the Lime program, which is a shareware 
music notation sofware.  This is not, by far,  the most user friendly 
program I have ever seen  but it's got a very nice feature that lets you 
detune a piece for microtonal music.  You can put any kind of derivation 
by tenths of a cent increments for each notes on a chromatic scale and 
you can even put a different figure for each enharmonic notes.

It takes a certain time to master the program and make it work with a 
MIDI program but it is certainly worth the trouble.  For example, you 
have to select all the notes and click "Recompute Playback" each time 
you make a change in the tuning.  When using a MIDI device also, you 
have to choose the "Microtonal Music using Pitch Bend" option to make it 
work properly.

Here is what you need to gather the "Virtual Historical Temperament 
Kit":

First, get the Lime program (don't forget to pay your shareware due...) 
at this page:

http://datura.cerl.uiuc.edu/

Second, you may wish to get some classical pieces in MIDI format that 
can imported in the program.  You can get many of these at the Classical 
Music MIDI Archive:

http://www.prs.net/midi.html

Finally, if you don't have a good MIDI device, you may also wish to 
boost your sound card with the Roland Virtual Sound Canvas that uses 
real instruments sounds.  You can get a demo version that works for 50 
seconds on this page :

http://pgmusic.com/rolandvs.htm

Have fun!!!

Michel Lachance
Registered Piano Techician


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