Software for trying out 19-TET (and others)

Question

I've been reading on non-standard scales such as the 19-tone equal temperament. I'd really like to try some of them out, but it turns out to be difficult. Adjusting a physical instrument would be a major hassle, so I'm looking for software.

Preferably I'd like to use the computer keyboard as input and have tones of a microtonal scale as output. Such software of course is abundant for the standard 12-TET. I don't care very much how the software works (MIDI, OSC etc) as long as I can "play" and hear sound real-time.

Can anyone point me to such software?

Answer 1

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_%28program%29 : "Scala ... allows users to create ... musical scales..., play them with an on-screen keyboard or from an external MIDI keyboard ... retune MIDI streams and files using pitch bend ... supports MIDI sysex and file-based tunings ... export them to hardware and software synthesizers ... as a midi sequencer, ... its ASCII-based sequencing format ... is ... very powerful ... its use of human-readable text files to store musical scales ... has become a standard for representing microtonal scales ... The Scala site lists over thirty applications that support the format, including several major commercial packages..."

Installation and configuration of Scala can be a bit tricky but if you follow http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/downloads.html carefully, it should be relatively painless (remember to get the "Scale Archive" near the bottom of the download page too).

"For trying out 19-TET", after starting Scala, type the following command into where it tell you to "Type any command below here" near the bottom (and hit the enter key):

EQ 19 2

Then, click the play button (i.e. on the row of buttons named [Open] [Save] [Input] [Edit] [Stop] [Show] [Comp] [Play] [Relay] [Send] [Freq] [Opts] near the top, and play with the on screen musical keyboard that pops up using your mouse. After having fun with that, you may want to issue the following command to Scala for it to tell you more about how to use it:

@tutorial