is it possible to send a sysex?

I have a synth that supports MTS real-time tuning. I'd like to retune it at arbitrary times so that the MIDI note numbers that Synfire outputs will play the MIDI notes I've microtuned to the EDO I want to use at that time. This is different from pitch bend microtuning, which limits pitch bent notes to one per channel. It's also different from pre-loading the synth with a microtuning, which limits it to 128 possible notes. That's not enough, for example, for EDO-31, which has over 300 notes over the 10+ usable musical octaves. I really need real-time microtuning via sysex to use Synfire to create microtonal music.

I've already created and tested sysex's that will do what I need, but they must be sent out at moments that coordinate with the music. The best way to do that would be from within Synfire.

Yes, I'm thinking results that may be interesting in themselves even if not musically idiomatic in any established way.

But there's another important factor to take into consideration. Take EDO-19, for example, If I can custom-tune any MIDI note to any frequency, I can then place a desired 4-note chord or sub-scale of 12 (or any number of) notes in locations to "fool" Synfire into doing clever things with them. So perhaps working with a 12-note subset of EDO-19 would give a microtonal sound within a modulo 12 context, if you see what I mean. Partch's 43-note scale, for example, isn't used as a monolithic collection of 43 notes per octave, but as a source to choose and work with subsets.

Results could be muscially worthwhile, or could be garbage. Probably musically useful, but it might turn out that this way of working is too much of a pain to be fun--or it might turn out that it's relatively easy to get useful and unusual stuff by dropping in cleverly placed re-tunings of the MIDI notes. It's definitely experimental, and I wouldn't ask if I didn't think that a "send sysex" function would have additional uses for people using external synths. Historical variants of the well-tempered tuning, sure, but perhaps also controlling hardware synthesizer functionalities available via sysex on a per-synth basis.

Microtonal is pretty niche, and I can't see practically restructuring systems built for EDO-12 and diatonically oriented music to accommodate microtonal for the reasons you mentioned. I, for one, wouldn't want to try to follow microtuned pitches on some extended version of the 5-line staff, and a piano keyboard is visually too confusing when you map higher EDO's onto it, and doesn't offer enough range to boot. I've tried isometric controllers like the LinnStrument, which worked quite well for certain EDO's, but the range limitation imposed by its limitation to 128 MIDI note numbers was too constraining. That leaves the only interest in microtonal music--at least for me--in algorithmic generation, which is why I wanted to try Synfire. I'm also looking at Opusmodus, a composition system with a rather different orientation than Synfire, but even that more experimentally-oriented environment doesn't support sysex messages. It does support 1-note-per-channel microtonality via pitch bend, but I have a synth that can do better than that, so I'd like to use it.

I also have a 6-octave Haken Continuum, which can be set to divide its octaves into any number of equal parts. Since its "keys" are only painted on, playing it--improvising on it--microtonally may be cramped at EDO-19, but you can develop enough muscle memory to make it worthwhile. I'm just after a composition system to generate accompaniment, etc. As I mentioned, I'm currently working with Opusmodus, and I haven't yet learned to really use Synfire since I purchased it. When you say articulations might be a good place to support sysex, I hope you mean that's functionality you will consider adding because I don't think I can hack something like that. I was hoping sysex might be more generally desirable than my single-use purpose so that you'd want to add it for your power users.

Yes, I saw your stuff over at the Opusmodus forum. Very cool! I'm looking forward to trying it out. I hope someday you'll be inspired to come back to it.

As for MTS-ESP, I communicated with them the day it came out. It simply will not do what I need, which is real-time retuning. That's the only way to achieve simultaneous access to all 10+ octaves of any EDO (or other microtuning). In other words, polyphony limited only by CPU (not 16), and any note from the lowest bass to the highest soprano. That requires less than 120+ notes of EDO-12, which the 128 MIDI semitones cover, but higher than that...well, you see the arithmentic. I've written my own sequencer in Ruby that will do this via dynamic allocation of the notes scheduled to play each beat, but my little system is hardly a Synfire or Opusmodus. Oddsound doesn't dynamically allocate re-tuned sections of the keyboard, but that's the only way to get full-spectrum microtonality.

It's a square peg in a round hole here at Synfire, whose set of functionality orients to very harmonically extended tonal music (to put it briefly). I'm just thinking simply adding sysex functionality could be really fruitful for microtonal in a way that has no effect or side effects on any of Synfire's existing paradigms. I would think the more geeky Opusmodus (I mean that in a good way) would be open to adding sysex as just another user function, but I don't think I've communicated to the dev very well the difference between channel-based pitch bend tuned microtones and MTS-based real-time tuned microtones.

Just to verify, you do accomplish your Opusmodus MIDI micro-tunings via pitch bend, correct?

I guess that's possible, but for me injecting a sysex into a Synfire score at arbitrary locations would be the simplest thing because it wouldn't involve a third party app. I could actually have my sequencer listen for a CC from Synfire (OSC would be better, if supported) and get the job done, but again, the external software becomes one more chore I'd have to manage.