Bill Klinger asked after an unknown 49-key scale [211227 MMD].
It has been ages since I responded here. I still have all those
boxes of Mike Kitner stencils, which I never got around to scanning.
There were at least 35 different scales represented. At one time
there were over 700 stencils. The bottom boxes got wet and the
paper damaged.

In looking at my notes there is some music from a 49-key Limonaire.
I see that there was a cassette tape of these which I converted
to CD. Only a few of the tracks had titles; they were like 'La Rune
Du Belle...' or 'Fleur de cu...' It would take some effort to see
if I still have these stencils and what the spacing is.

These days I have been working with virtual organs -- specifically
virtual pipe organs, and most specifically Uniflex for the front end,
as I am supporting that hardware (like Tim Rickman used to do.)

The sound engines used are Hauptwerk and jOrgan. Both Uniflex and
jOrgan use Fluidsynth, so I have many scripts for working with xml
and soundfonts. If anything I have too much of a good thing.

Recently I was given some Rodgers xml to figure out. I also have
music from Allen and Emutek, as well.

What this enables is that, by using PostScript, I can read in an
instrument definition and create a virtual representation of the
scale. This also allows music via the 'abc' text representation to
be represented as either sheet music or roll masters (which can be
cut on a laser cutter I have access to.) Of course the underlying
representation is related to MIDI.

MIDI is of course proprietary to the organ or system the performance
is rendered on. These use extensions such as NRPN, text commands or
SYSEX to control the voicing.

Eventually I would like to get back to reading some of this old music.
I think I can use an old iPhone 6 to capture the images of the faded
stencils. A time consuming process to stitch them together.

Rich Olsen did some interesting work relating to virtual band organs.
From this I was also able to automate some of the generation of SF2
soundfonts, another time consuming tedious project.

But still there is something satisfying when one can recreate music
from marks printed, pressed, nailed or cut into paper or wooden
barrels.

Julie Porter
Martinez, California
sheepdoll@delectra.com.geentroep [delete ".geentrtoep" to reply]