I’ve navigated to a folder full of files of pentatonic (5 note) scales given by the Californian composer and instrument builder Lou Harrison. In the Tuning Menu options, select “Import Scala Tuning…” Now you can navigate to where you have your cache of Scala files stored (more on that shortly). And each place for each note has a number corresponding to the MIDI note number it will play. Down the left are octave numbers, from -2 to 7. Notice that across the top are the names of pitch classes – C C# D etc. Go back to Figure 2 and have a look at the Micro Tuner table. Now, let’s try loading a Scala file into Falcon.
If you save a Falcon patch with a tuning loaded into it, the tuning will be saved as part of the patch, as well. Use “Load Preset” to load scales you’ve saved, obviously. It will then appear at the bottom of your Scale Menu, as in the image to the right. Use “Save Preset” when you want to save a particular scale. If you move your mouse to the menu button on the top right of this table, and click on it, you’ll see another menu with four options: “Load Preset,” “Save Preset,” “Import Scala Tuning…” and “Import Scala Mapping….” as shown below. You can select one of the preset scales, or you can click on “Default.” If you do, a table shows up with lots of numbers in it. This brings up two panels, one marked “FX”, the other marked “Event.” If you click on the “+” just after “Event”, you’ll be presented with a menu of four options: “Arpeggiator,” “MIDI Player,” “Micro Tuner,” and “Script Processor.” When you touch the “Micro Tuner” option, a further menu of scale types shows up. But first, let’s look at basic microtonal implementation in Falcon.įor normal, garden-variety microtonality, once a sound or sample set is loaded into Falcon, you expand the “Layers” level by clicking the leftmost triangle.
To really understand how tuning works in Falcon, we’ll have to take a brief look at Scala itself, a free program that is the standard for making tuning files for many software synthesizers and programs. You load tunings in Falcon by loading in Scala scale (.scl) files, and you map the pitches of your scales to a keyboard, if your scale has more or less than 12 notes, using a Scale keyboard mapping (.kbm) file. So you can have, for example, one layer in thirteen-tone equal temperament, and another layer in nineteen-tone equal temperament, making a very unpredictable sounding tuning, one in which the two voices can potentially be tuned more closely together around the root pitch (say MIDI C3 = 60) and then get farther apart as you go both above and below that pitch. But it gets even better than this – with a Falcon patch, every LAYER of every patch can have its own unique tuning. So all of the UVI sound libraries, and any sounds you put into Falcon yourself, can be detuned in any way. Briefly stated, any sound loaded into the machine can be put into any tuning you want, and that tuning can be mapped to a MIDI keyboard (or sequencer) in any way you desire. One of the most attractive things about it, for me, is its microtonal abilities.
I got mine last November and it’s quickly become one of my main composing and performing tools. UVI’s new Falcon synth/sampler is a delight. UVI’s new synth/sampler has very sophisticated microtonal implementation – which enables ANY sounds that you load into it to have ANY imaginable tuning, and easily too.