The month of February will be one of transition for me and my business, as I’ll be returning to my home state of Indiana to be nearer my family. Orders taken for Tonal Plexus keyboards during the month of February will be held until March, while Tuning Boxes and software will be available as usual, with interruption only at the end of the month.
Moving day is Saturday, February 27, 2010.
Thanks to all my Illinois friends I’ve come to know over the almost half of my life spent in the state of Illinois, some of whom will be helping with the move. Starting March 1, the little tag at the bottom of the about page will read: H-Pi Instruments is a legally registered business in the state of Indiana. The headquarters will get an upgrade in the Hoosier state, and I’m looking forward to the opportunities ahead. Thanks as always for your support.
I was happily surprised to see this new video by Jonathan Glasier, demonstrating 19-tone equal temperament (19ET) on a synth keyboard using a TBX1 Tuning Box. He shows the box briefly at the beginning of the video.
Many tuning enthusiasts know about Jonathan’s career, but since biographical facts are not listed in the video comments (Jonathan is not one to draw attention to himself) it might be useful to know that here we have someone who has done an awful lot in this field, and who is also a direct link to one of the most influential people in the history of tuning! Jonathan worked with Harry Partch in the 60’s, as his personal assistant, and a member of his ensemble. He also founded the Interval journal in the 70’s, and Sonic Arts Gallery in the 80’s. He lives in San Diego where he performs microtonal music with his own ensemble. See more details at the Sonic Arts website.
He says early on if you’re interested in the mathematics, that’s not what his videos are about; he is showing practical keyboard related issues. This type of instruction is sorely needed, and it’s great to see this kind of video being made, using an overhead camera so you can see what he’s doing.
If you are more interested in the theory, I have some things about 19ET here and here. A list of the intervals of 19ET according to the H-System is:
Notice we have a Perfect Large Minor 3rd and its inversion a Perfect Small Major 6th. Thirds and sixths aren’t normally thought of as intervals that can be Perfect, because they aren’t called Perfect in 12ET. In the H-System, the term “Perfect”, when it is placed at the start of the interval name (in abbreviation as a letter to the left of a dot), is referring to a “virtually beatless” sound produced by an interval in voices of harmonic timbre. Jonathan demonstrates these intervals in the video and calls them the “Perfect Minor 3rd” and “Perfect Major 6th”. The H-System basically supports these names, further qualifying them with Large and Small, respectively, to clearly differentiate them from their 3-Limit siblings.
He also says in 19ET we don’t have a Perfect 4th or Perfect 5th, and in terms of evaluating harmonic-timbre intervals for beatlessness, this is indeed true. In 19ET, the 4th and 5th both beat noticeably, the 4th being noticeably sharp and the 5th noticeably flat. The H-System names for these 19ET intervals are Major Perfect Fourth and Minor Perfect Fifth, indicating that they are 1 JND (Just Noticeable Difference) out of tune from their Perfect (beatless) harmonic versions.
Just to be clear, I had no idea that Jonathan was going to make these videos, I didn’t ask him to point out TBX1 or talk about it at all, and I certainly didn’t pay him to advertise for me! The fact he mentioned TBX1 was a really nice surprise. Thanks, Jonathan! He says that this is part 1 of 3, so I look forward to the next videos.
Well, in case you didn’t catch it on C-SPAN, or you didn’t notice just now, the H-Pi website has been updated to display correctly on those smaller netbook screens (resolution: 800×600) as well as overhead projectors, and navigation has been changed from a sidebar to a drop-down system. Navigation categories have been rearranged a bit, and I think this is overall an improvement.
Content updates will follow for the new year; for the time being, the content is essentially the same. I’m not crazy about limiting the website to an 800 pixel width, leaving those big unused swaths on either side of the screen for a lot of users, but for now its what the industry demands.
Any pages loading weird or looking funny, let me know; there are bound to be a few. Also, note that the music theory pages have not been updated to the new format. For now they will remain full page width.
Here I show one of the new U-PLEX keyboards, first just playing through the editor (TPXE) and then routing out from there to Native Instruments KONTAKT, using the one-of-a-kind, super-cool H-Pi Universal Microtuning Script, which you get free when you download TPXE or CSE.
This video shows a PC running Windows XP, which can’t create virtual MIDI ports, so MIDI-Yoke is used. On Mac, TPXE creates the virtual ports for you, called External App to TPXE and TPXE to External App. These ports are used to communicate with other software like KONTAKT as shown in this video.
U-PLEX are the new more affordable USB-only line of Tonal Plexus keyboards. Buy one! You’ll love it.
I just received notice that UPS shipping rates are increasing (again) by 4.9% across the board. See the official UPS notice here. Order before the end of the year to get current shipping rates. UPS starts the rate hike on Jan. 4, 2010. The increase will take effect for all orders at this website beginning January 1, 2010.
Well, in case you didn’t catch it on C-SPAN, or you didn’t notice just now, the H-Pi website has been updated to display correctly on those smaller netbook screens (resolution: 800×600) as well as overhead projectors, and navigation has been changed from a sidebar to a drop-down system. Navigation categories have been rearranged a bit, and I think this is overall an improvement. 
I just received notice that UPS shipping rates are increasing (again) by 4.9% across the board. See the official UPS notice