Picking up this old thread. Just wanted to add that
you can easily do Johnston notation in Dorico; you define the white notes as tenths-of-cents (12000-EDO) using the 5-limit major scale, so AB, CD and FG are 2039, BC = 1117, DE = 1824 etc.
Pianoteq 6 responds to VST tuning from Dorico. No scala files are necessary
Still haven’t tried this but that was how I hoped it would work. Simpler than Finale.
Simpler than Finale - indeed, to put it mildly! I’ve done a lot of Johnston notation in Finale, and it’s a tedious task: first you have to tune your white-note scale to 5-lim JI using a synth that can be tuned by scl, tun, MTS or some other method without pitchbend. Then, you have to create a library of expression symbols and give them pitchbend values for playback (that you have to calculate). And then you have to manually insert the symbols on the staves and keep taking care of their positions as they’re not really accidentals, they’re text symbols that don’t attach to the notes . And after each note, you’ll have to insert an invisible symbol that returns pitchbend back to zero.
In Dorico, you choose an accidental, defined by you in cents, from the library you’ve created, and it’s a real accidental, with correct spacing, and it plays back, and of course you can write chords.
That’s my exact method in Finale except I put the accidentals above each note, which makes the positioning simpler and reminds the players that the accidentals don’t mean the same as in 12ET. I really look forward to having a big JI project in Dorico!
I have been hopeful that Dorico would become more “tonality aware”. For example, it would be nice to have an option under the note colors to show how notes fit within the present chord (not the key signature). For example, if my current chord is C major 7, then it would be nice to see C, E, G, B in green (indicating those notes are in the chord), D, F, and A in blue (indicating they are in the scale associated with the chord) and C#, D#, F#, G#, and A# in red (indicating they are not in the scale, but might be valid color tones). That would make it easy to spot harmonic problems. For example, if an F# were showing up in red, maybe the correct action would be to change the chord to FMaj7(#11), which should turn that F# green.
It seems like it would not be a huge leap from that point to consider a just intonation option, where each note was tuned according to the present chord. It seems like the foundations are in place. We can hope that these more exotic capabilities will be added to these foundations at some point.
The big point here is that if Dorico were aware of each note’s role in the current tonality, there are very useful things that could come from that, including just intonation adjustments.
You probably know, but Kontakt can dynamically tune justly, which works reasonably well for some things.
Maybe this question isn’t related to this thread, but I’ll ask here anyway.
Can Dorico play back a composition written with normal notation (regular sharps, flats, etc.), but in a different temperament? And with the installed Halion instruments? I don’t mind keying in a bunch of frequencies or intervals (if just one octave!). After quite a bit of searching I’ve not found a step by step discussion on this.
I don’t think so, not in the general sense. The best I have seen is a VSTi that can use just intonation for a PARTICULAR key. Of course, in the real world, music can change harmonic context continuously. I don’t know of any program that can automatically recognize the tonality and apply just intonation within that context, as real musicians do all day long.
OK, I was asking about keyboard music, where it’s set for a particular key.
Kontakt can do this. Not suggesting that it is as sophisticated as real musicans…
This plug-in purports to do this also:
http://www.tallkite.com/alt-tuner.html
I am not sure just how automatic this is, though. The videos imply that the developer had to go in a set up profiles for each key center. It also implies that all the music must be on a single instrument in order for the roots to be recognized.