The ID700 is a modern interpretation of the Buchla 700, and it comes with 4000 tunings pre-installed, one of which is the Partch 43-tone scale. The overlay I created for the SenselMorph has C as its root note but the scales in the 700 have A as their starting point 1, which means that I have to shift the incoming MIDI notes either up by 9 steps, or down by 34 in order to have them work with the overlay.
I’ve done that using Bram Bos’ Mozaic MIDI filter, and I’ve set up quite a few instances so that I can quickly shift between octaves or play them simultaneously.
One interesting thing about working with a 43-note scale and only having 128 MIDI notes to work with, is that one is just one MIDI note short of having a full three octave range.
So in this case this (21/16
) is the lowest note, and if I go to the top register, that’s the highest (27/20
), and after that, I run out of MIDI notes.
If I come back to a middle register, one of the nice things about the ID700 is that it offers MPE support, which means that I can shape each note independently of the others. And in this case I’ve mapped pressure to index number 2, so what sounds a little bit like opening up a filter is actually frequency modulation.
One of the joys of just intonation is rediscovering the beauty of these pure, simple triads, and then with the synth one can add a little bit of character.
As I mentioned in a previous video the symmetry of both the scale and the layout are useful to keep in mind when navigating it. So for example a major triad, when mirrored, gives a minor. So there are these music-theoretical aspects that are mirrored in the visual layout.
If one wants a little more fun one could add an arpeggiator… and so on…
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Update: This has since been changed to ‘C’ eliminating the need for shifting the incoming notes, unless one wants to change octave. ↩