Note entry

Note entry refers to the ways that notes are entered into a digital audio workstation (DAW) when composing. The two most common methods are piano roll and notation.

Piano roll

Many virtual instruments (for example, Vital and Dexed) support alternative tuning systems through uploading .scl files to the plugin. Once the .scl file is imported, 128 notes of the new scale are available through the piano roll in the same way that one would write notes in 12edo.

The piano roll can be utilized in several different ways depending on the preferences of the user. It is common for composers to have a maximum number of notes equal to a useful edo, such as 31, 41, 46, or 53. Because there are only 128 MIDI notes, range is a concern for larger edos.

Range (Octaves)	Max Edo
1	128
2	64
3	42
4	32
5	25
6	21
7	18
8	16

Note that N octaves of range means that each octave-equivalent pitch class occurs exactly N times. The table stops at 8 octaves because that covers the entire usable pitch range, from a bass guitar with extremely heavy strings to a professional glockenspiel.

It is also possible to use midi channels to increase range. This can be done by either assigning them to octave offsets, steps of an edo superset, or a combination of both. The former is available in Surge synth by default, but the others tend to require custom scripts like the in-progress TuneLoon.

Notation

MuseScore has a few plugins for microtuning. The one most commonly used is XenKit (which supports MuseScore 3 and 4), which allows the user to specify an EDO or JI and redefines MuseScore’s built-in accidentals to mean alterations within that tuning system according to standard notation. MuseScore by default does not allow multiple accidentals to be placed on the same note (as would be necessary for JI notation), but XenKit allows these extra accidentals to be applied by writing them as lyrics.