microtuning MIDI

Came across a very powerful piece of free software: 
Scala by Manuel Op de Coul

What it does: (from the website)

“Scala is a powerful software tool for experimentation with musical tunings, such as just intonation scales, equal and historical temperaments, microtonal and macrotonal scales, and non-Western scales.”

Scala is hugely powerful with MIDI and microtonality.  A number of 3rd party developers have since written scripts and applications to further apply the Scala’s use.  The downside?  It’s difficult and time-consuming to install, and even once it’s installed you must take some time to learn its command-line interface.  Trust me, it’s time well spent if you’re looking for alternate tuning and working with MIDI.  I’ve designed this post as a simple procedural checklist for any composer who wishes to run Scala on their computer.  Scala is available on Windows, Linux and Unix (Mac) systems.  It does require some command-line commands and configuration that may be somewhat unfamiliar to the average Mac user.  In this post, I will highlight the installation procedure for Mac OS 10.6.  It  should take approximately 3 hours to successfully complete the installation not including download time and time working through the initial tutorials.  It’s also advisable to have at least 20gigs of free disk space before installing these packages.

Step One = BACKUP! I highly recommend Carbon Copy Cloner (it’s free) for all your backup needs.  It beats Time Machine.  Among many features,  CCC will make an exact “carbon copy” of your computer to an external drive.  This way,  even in the event of a total data loss you can boot from your backup drive an escape crises unscathed.

2) Download and Install the latest version of X11 from the list found at this link:
http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki/Releases

3) Download and Install XCode from Apple.  This requires registering for free with Apple as a developer.
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html
Make sure to choose “Mac Dev Center” and not “iOS Dev Center”

4) Download and Install MacPorts from this directory:
http://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/
Scroll down to the bottom and choose the latest “.dmg” version for the operating system.  At the time of writing this post, the latest version was “MacPorts-1.9.2-10.6-SnowLeopard.dmg”

5) Open up Terminal.  Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal (or in Finder, press Shift-Command-U all at the same time to shortcut to Utilities.

5a) From the Terminal, copy/paste or type in the following code:

sudo port install fontconfig
And then wait patiently while it installs.

5b) Remaining in Terminal, copy/paste or type in the next code:

sudo port install gtk2

Then wait even more patiently!  This is a large install of the GTK+ toolkit and will take quite a while.  There will no progress bar, but trust that even when things appear to slow down, the developer packages you downloaded are being installed in the background.  It will take a long time, depending on the processing power of your computer.  Feel free to practice some music while you wait!  If you’re paranoid, open up Activity Monitor in Utilities and observe your CPU and Disk Drive working like crazy while it’s installing.  It’s a good idea to just leave your computer alone while it’s doing this.

*UPDATE* (11/25/2011) courtesy of B. Shepard: There is apparently an issue with the gtk2 installation process. When running sudo port install gtk2, the installer hangs about halfway through with the error message “Failed to install atk.” The problem is with the atk installer. There is a workaround for it on the MacPorts site at https://trac.macports.org/ticket/32203. Hopefully it will be fixed permanently soon, but until then…

5c) Since we’re running Mac OS X 10.6 we’ll need to upgrade gtk2 to enforce compatibility for 32bit and 64bit applications.  Copy/paste into Terminal:

sudo port upgrade --enforce-variants gtk2 +universal
It will take another very long time while it re-installs and upgrades the components.

6) Download and Install Simple Synth
(this we will use for testing purposes only – just to make sure everything is working)
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/SimpleSynth.shtml

7a) Download Scala!
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/software/scala-22-mac-osx.tar.gz
Create a folder and name it “Scala” in your Applications Directory.  Drag the Scala.app into that folder.
*It’s important that you download Scala after you’ve already installed the developer packages above.  If you’ve already downloaded Scala before steps 1 thru 6, you’ll need to re-download!

7b) Download Scala’s Scale Archive
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/scales.zip
*DO NOT double click to open this .zip file – Leave it “Zipped Up”  If your browser unarchives zip files automatically, delete the folder it automatically creates and just keep the “scales.zip” file.  Drag this .zip file into the Scala folder you just created in the Applications directory for easy access.  Here’s a listing of the contents within the Scales Archive:  http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/scalesdir.txt

8) Open Audio MIDI Setup in Applications/Utilities.  Go to the Window Menu and click “Show MIDI Studio”
-Double click on IAC Driver and make sure “Device is online” is checked.

9) Read this: (It’s affectionately called “Scala for Dummies”)
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/dummies.txt
Also be sure to follow the tutorial within Scala itself for further orientation.

10a) Do some more test-driving: Open up Simple Synth, then open up Scala.
Load or create a scale as highlighted in the link above.  Click “play” on Scala’s toolbar to see a virtual MIDI controller.  Here you can map any scale to your controller.  Click on “Select” and choose a layout system fit for your scale.

10b) Set the MIDI input of Simple Synth to the IAC Driver Bus
-set the MIDI output in Scala.  Go to Relay -> Sound Settings and select IAC Driver Bus as the MIDI output.
-in the Relay settings window, select your MIDI keyboard or controller as the MIDI input device*
*in order for Scala to “listen” to your MIDI controller, you must enable “Start Relaying”.

Scala’s routing will generally look something like this:
MIDI input (from either a file or a controller) -> Scala -> Synth, Sampler, or DAW etc.
The routing is all virtual – internal via the IAC Bus – to/from software of your choice.  For instance, in Pro Tools or Logic you may select a MIDI track to listen to the microtonal pitch adjustments of Scala by selecting the IAC Bus as the input on any MIDI track!

Add-ons and other 3rd-party software helpful in implementing Scala into your creations:
-Scala Scale Browser:  http://www.h-pi.com/ScalaVistasoftware.html
-Scala Scale Editor: http://www.h-pi.com/CSEsoftware.html
-Scala to Kontakt Script*: http://www.12equalboresme.com/Scala2Kontakt/index.html
*this is a windows application but can run successfully via a virtual OS install of Windows via something like Parallels.

Other resources to check out:
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/links_en.html

Hope this helps!