Seyir

A microtonal melody explorer for Ableton Live, built as a VST3 instrument. Version 0.1.0.

Pick a maqam, a raga or any tuning, and Seyir improvises a melody in it over a drone, the way a player moves through a mode: mostly by step, leaning on the strong notes, ending phrases on a resting note, and climbing away from the tonic over several phrases before coming back. That path is what seyir means in maqam music. It makes its own sound, so the quarter tones need no setup: put it on a MIDI track and press play.

The Seyir panel: a ladder of the scale against the piano's notes, a melody path, and walk, voice, shape and drone controls

What it does

Modes: Arabic maqams in quarter tones (Rast, Bayati, Hijaz, Saba, Sikah and more), Turkish makams in commas of 1/53 octave, Hindustani ragas in just intonation with their own notes going up and coming down, slendro and pelog, and reference tunings from harmonics 8–16 to Bohlen-Pierce. LOAD .SCL reads any Scala file, including ones that don't repeat at the octave.
The ladder: One octave of the scale drawn against the piano's twelve notes, each note labelled with its nearest piano note and how far off it is (E -50). Click a note to hear it against the drone. Drag it down to make the melody lean on it less, or all the way to take it out; shift-drag sideways to retune it.
Jins: A maqam is built from two short cells, one on the tonic and one above. Swap the upper one and the maqam modulates, the way a player does it, mid-phrase if you like. Both are host parameters, so a modulation can be drawn into an arrangement.
The walk: DENSITY, LEAP, GRAVITY (pull of the strong notes), ARC (how clearly the phrases climb and return), PHRASE length and ORNAMENT, the chance of a slide, a grace note or a shake. The PATH strip draws the melody's shape as it goes. It locks to Live's grid while Live plays, or free-runs with RUN.
Deja vu: Steps are remembered in a loop of 4 to 32. Turn DEJA VU up and steps replay from the loop instead of being invented; all the way up locks it. Lock a phrase, then swap the jins, and the same melody moves through another maqam.
Play along: FOLLOW starts a phrase on whatever key you hold. PLAY maps your keys onto the scale: each key plays the scale's nearest note, or the white keys step through the scale from the tonic.
Sound: Seventeen synth voices (plucked string, modal, analog, FM, six-op FM, formant, additive, wavetable, speech and more) and four resonators, including sympathetic strings. Glide, envelope, a resonant filter, drive and reverb. The drone holds the tonic with a pure fifth, fourth or octave, or plucks it in a tanpura's cycle.

Every knob and button is a host parameter, the mode and the jins included. Seyir's notes are microtonal, so to keep what it played, record its audio.

Video

Walkthrough video — not up yet.

Documentation

Getting started (PDF) — setting Seyir up in Live, choosing a mode, reading the ladder, a tour of the panel, and steering the melody.

Every control is also described in the project README.

Download

Builds are on the releases page. Every archive includes the getting started guide. VST3 only — there is no Audio Unit build, so Seyir will not load in Logic.

Installation notes are on the front page.

Source

github.com/taddeimania/seyir — C++ and JUCE, AGPLv3.