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Microtones
The MaxScore and LiveScore Editors were designed with microtones in mind, with the capability of representing pitch with
virtually unlimited precision. The editor offers notation in various staff styles, quarter-tone, eighth-tone, 12th-tone and 16th-
tone and Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch notation among them, as well as cent precision playback via MaxScore Sampler
or MaxScore Fluidsynth. Pitch Tool’s floating palette will let you transpose pitch by cent increments and/or just ratios.

Pitch Tool & JI Interval

The Pitch Tools allows you to set as well as add notes and intervals in terms of just intonation ratios.

The intervals menu uses the list of intervals from the Huygens-Fokker website. There are a few modes that need a bit of explanation:

1. Add Note adds a note in respect to the current key area (C major if no other key area is specified) and octave range (4 = one-line octave).
Therefore, if you select “3/2 perfect fifth” the note will be G in C major and E in A major.
2. Set Pitch sets the pitch of a note or interval in respect to the current key areaand octave range.
3. Add Interval adds an interval in respect to the current key area and octave range.
4. Stack Interval adds an interval in respect to the selected note or interval.
5. Transpose transposes a note/interval by the amount expressed by the ratio.

A ratio can also be defined manually if not contained in the interval menu. Choosing “enter manually” on the top will open a dialog letting you
define the desired ratio.

Use the up/down button to set the ratio and its direction.

Labels

Each note can also be labelled either according to its pitch,


frequency or ratio in respect to given fundamental. N.B. labels
will need to be updated manually if the pitch of the note
changes.

Keyboards

The editor comes with a number of virtual “keyboards” which will


let you choose a tuning and convenient enter of its pitches.
“Keyboards” are Max patches that can be created and added to the
MaxScore/patchers/keyboards folder from where they will be
invoked when selected from the Entry Tools menu. The
MIDI Input for standard tuning
corresponding pitch will be played back while entering a note from
a “keyboard.”

The nTET-entry tool can be used to input pitches of equidistant


scales within arbitrary frame intervals.

Its Action menu contains following items: Add Note, Add Interval,
Set Pitch, Set Transposition Interval, Play Thru, Approximate and
Copy Scale. Add Note adds a new note, Add Interval adds an
interval to an existing note and Set Pitch changes the note/interval
to the desired pitch. Set Transposition Interval set the Pitch
Tool’s transposition interval to the interval between the clicked
pitch and the first note of the tuning. When Play Thru is selected
the pitch will be heard with note entry and Approximate allows you
nTET-entry: Keyboard for equidistant tunings. to approximate selected notes to the pitches of the chosen tuning.
Copy Scale puts all pitches on the MaxScore clipboard from which
they can be pasted into other scores.

Other keyboards

A Bohlen-Pierce Just Intonation diamond created by Todd Harrop.

User-created keyboard for the input of Easley Blackwood’s study in 23TET.

In order to listen to his piece, find “23 notes.XML” in MaxScore/examples/Scores. In the MaxScore Combo patch open the editor, open the file and
load the 23-Tones.json preset file into the MaxScore.FluidSynth2 player to experience multi-timbral playback of music in non-standard tuning.

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