Option to force MIDI notes in custom tonality systems to be expressed as integers

Dorico
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1

I don’t know too much about programming, but I feel like this would be a very easy fix: when attempting to play microtonal scales with synths via SCL/KBM mappings, it would fix loads of issues if there was a way to choose to have Dorico simply send the notes as sequential integers, as in with a 31EDO scale if MIDI note 60 maps to C3, then C4 would be 91 instead of 72, and the 31EDO note directly above C would be note 61, instead of the way Dorico expresses them with fractions for pitch bend. This would make synths like Surge that support microtonality work natively with Dorico. Would be (I believe) a small fix that would prevent me from needing to use Musescore for my work. (Currently Surge cannot playback Dorico tonality systems as it just ends up rounding all of the fractional notes to integers, resulting in heard octaves being misaligned from visual octaves in 31EDO, and multiple notes coding for the same midi note.)

2

Welcome to the forum, Cayden. How do you specify the sounding octave range for the MIDI note range of 0-127 if that number of integers can only specify four octaves?

3

Perhaps something with separate MIDI channels would work? As in maybe there could be a way to just define the range for the specific instrument, and let the MIDI have less range than normal - and just have this option specifically not be intended for much higher EDOs. I don’t think it would be too much of a hassle, as a user to just have hidden instrument changes when needing to play higher / lower notes than the 0-127. Right now I’ve been using Write > Transform > Map Pitches to manually respell all of the written pitches into nonsense ones on an alternate instrument for playback, but as far as I know there’s no easy way to make that quicker than manually writing it out for 31 pitches. It would help, as an alternative, if we could save a list of mappings that Dorico could remember and quickly apply later, or even better as a keyboard shortcut too, but it would still be most ideal if I could just hear the music I’m writing as I’m writing it.

Thanks!