Tunesmith and Tonality: a review

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One of the unique thing about Tunesmith, besides creating themes and 
accompliments, is it's TONALITY SECTION. This is one of the Genuies 
of Jim Johnson, as he integrated many ideas in the Tonality section 
of Tunesmith.

Just as a starting note: It might be interesting to know where Jims 
original ideas came from for Tunesmith. The seed was planted from an 
article in "Contemporary Keyboard" called "Automatic Improvisation 
with Modular Synthisisers" by Roger Powell(former keyboardist with 
Todd Rungrens UTOPIA band as well as a creating his own sequencing 
software called TEXTURE)The Tonality section ideas came from a book 
called "Music Possable" by Stan Jungelieb, then director of 
publications at Sequential Circuits.The concept of Microrhythms came 
form Jack Citrons book "Cybernetic Music". Looks like a lot of heads 
came together to bring us this program.

Tunesmiths Tonality sections includes 4 cluster of keys on the 
computer keyboard.These four sections determine which notes Tunesmith 
will use at any given moment as it converts it into actual Midi Music.

1.SCALES: Every key on the qwerty keyboard starting at numerical key 
1 to 0 and q to / can be assigned a different scale. There are 46 
default scales. The first 38 scales are derived from the scale 
clasification as set out in the book called "Music Possable" by Stan 
Jungelieb. The rest are "user scales" However, any of the scales can 
be over written with user scales. More on that in a later posting.
The keys in the Top row select the more common scale families: major, 
minor, ect. the further you move away from the 1 key, the more exotic 
the scale is.The 5th help screen (Just select help and click 5 times)
shows a list of all the default scales. Once you get into tunesmith, 
you may want to try creating your own scales, or inputing a pattern 
of notes that Tunesmith can use as its pitch structure, and not  
nessisarily a scale.Load the VOYAGE.TUN for an example of this.

2.MODES. The Function keys F1-10 This selects a MODE that the scale 
can be altered to.

F2- the first mode:equivalent to the scale itself
F3-selects the second mode, ect up to
F8 which select the 7th mode.
F1-selects the 7th mode one octave down
F10 selects the 2nd mode one octave up.

The best thing to do is start Tunesmith playing in a MAJ scale (no 1 
on the top part of the keyboard)and start hitting the Function keys 
to hear the results. From there you can be more selective. You can 
create a whole arrangment with just alternating Modes. Most Jazz 
music has discovered this, instead of changing keys.

3.KEY Selectors: These are the 12 keys at the top of the Numerical 
keypad at the far right side of the computer keyboard .The "( " key 
is the beginning .Going to the left, it transposes the scale selected 
up one semitone. 

4. OCTAVE selectors: On the Numerical keypad, the 1,2,3,0,and . keys 
deturmine the octaves. the "0" key is No transposition. The "." key 
transposes DOWN one octave. "ENTER" transposes down two octaves. The 
1,2 and 3 keys transpose up by one, two and three octaves respectivly.

USING THE TONALITY SECTION

This is where Tunesmith can be an interactive instrument, by 
selecting different Modes, scales and keys as well as changing 
octaves on the fly.All of these actions can be recorded using the 
ARRANGER mode.(more on this latter)

Try sticking to one or two scales, and then changing the Modes as 
well as being very selective in the KEY settings. You can create an 
entire arrrangement from using changing these parameters IN REAL 
TIME. 

Let me stress that THIS IS A REAL TIME PROGRAM Which brings us to the 
point why Jim Johnson did NOT use GEM is programming Tunesmith. Gem 
would be too slow in a real time situation, so he purposly avoided it.

Once you get used to the Tonality section, it becomes a lot of fun to 
create interesting accomplments that you can use in your own 
creations.

Tim Conrardy
5/4/01