> 'tuning to a color' is currently complicated

Oh okay, what do you mean by that as opposed to the current alternate
colour mode? Or is it just that making it work with keys and
transposition is complicated?

> We're also thinking about changing 'layouts' to 'presets', e.g. "use this color scheme for that layout, with that number of tones"

I definitely like the idea of having colour schemes and key layouts
combined in that way; could potentially also let you disable the LEDs
if a layout has keys that are outside the playable range (though I
guess you could also just shift the highest / lowest notes by an
octave to keep them playable). I also like Nick's idea of using MIDI
note 69 = A4 as a constant for note mapping, as it seems like that's
the default for retuning in some software.

> Looks like they have a warm/cold thing going on, with the brightness being used as a differentiator.

Yeah, I like the idea of making the
sharps/flats/half-sharps/half-flats darker to make them more distinct.

> What are the most popular microtonal scales?

As far as equal temperaments I feel like the most commonly-used are
ones that have a good fifth or good 4:5:6 major chord, since that
allows you to create familiar-sounding melodies and harmonies. There
are quite a few that could fulfil that but 17, 19, 22, 31, 41, and 53
are the main ones that come to mind as "popular" for me.

> Besides 'closeness to CDEFGAB', what's another way to highlight the notes that would be useful?

Do you mean ways to arrange the notes or ways to colour them? I'm not
really sure about either to be honest - for colour maybe a good
alternative could be to progress through the colours by single steps
instead of by sharps/flats? Like for 41edo say that for G - G^ - G+ -
Ab - G# - Ad - Av - A you had white - lime green - amber - red -
purple - blue - teal - white; compared to that Lumatone layout where
the sharps are lime-green and then the up-naturals (enharmonic to
double sharps) are amber, and then the half-flats are red etc. Could
be good for something like that third layout where the notes go by
single steps on one axis.

On Sat Feb 17, 2024 at 11:13 AM EST, Lewis McRae wrote:
> > 'tuning to a color' is currently complicated
>
> Oh okay, what do you mean by that as opposed to the current alternate
> colour mode? Or is it just that making it work with keys and
> transposition is complicated?

Yeah, I meant 'making it work with keys'.

> I also like Nick's idea of using MIDI
> note 69 = A4 as a constant for note mapping, as it seems like that's
> the default for retuning in some software.

I didn't know about the 69 = A4 thing. (currently, I made the microtonal thing include 440 somewhere, and have 0 ~= C, so that 'red' = C in the default coloring).
I was hoping that the midi tuning standard would take care of that.
Is there a good amount of software that doesn't support MTS, but *does* support microtonal under the assumption that 69 = A4? (@Nick if you have comments on this)


> As far as equal temperaments I feel like the most commonly-used are
> ones that have a good fifth or good 4:5:6 major chord, since that
> allows you to create familiar-sounding melodies and harmonies. There
> are quite a few that could fulfil that but 17, 19, 22, 31, 41, and 53
> are the main ones that come to mind as "popular" for me.

Okay, I'll keep that in mind to consider adding 17, 22, and 53
(currently just 12,19,24,31,41,72 are implemented).