mIcrotonal support in LIve

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Stromkraft
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by Stromkraft » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:01 pm

Make some music!

stringtapper
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by stringtapper » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:06 pm

Hopefully if the MIDI HD protocol ever becomes reality it will enable much easier use of microtonality and non 12-TET tunings.
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gsbe
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by gsbe » Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:53 pm

stringtapper wrote:
I've posted this before but it's the most thorough and systematic discussion of the 432 thing and why the science of sound doesn't support any of its proponents' claims:

http://www.miltonline.com/2014/01/07/hertz-so-good/
That's an interesting read. I had not seen any of your other posts about this so thanks for posting this here.

I am most interested in the effect of the different temperaments that the piano tuner performed in the videos I posted earlier in this thread. It really did seem that certain keys would have different emotional weight as a result of how the thirds and fifths clashed and clanged together. I continue to wonder how these temperaments could be applied to EDM and cinematic music to heighten the emotional ride.
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stringtapper
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by stringtapper » Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:03 pm

gsbe wrote:I am most interested in the effect of the different temperaments that the piano tuner performed in the videos I posted earlier in this thread. It really did seem that certain keys would have different emotional weight as a result of how the thirds and fifths clashed and clanged together. I continue to wonder how these temperaments could be applied to EDM and cinematic music to heighten the emotional ride.
And that's absolutely legit and great territory to explore.

The whole idea behind equal temperament was so that instrumental music could be written that modulated to different key centers. When instruments are tuned with just intervals like in Pythagorean tuning problems start to arise when you start trying to modulate.

But I agree that those same "problems" can also have some very cool effects.

Hermode Tuning is something that tries to deal with the problem of navigating multiple keys in just intonation. Logic X can implement Hermode Tuning (and has very robust tuning and temperament options overall).

http://www.hermode.com/index_en.html

http://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/paperspdf/hermode.pdf
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ikeaboy
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by ikeaboy » Wed Mar 18, 2015 3:05 pm

Thanks for taking the time to listen.

Just getting back to 432hrz topic would it not make sense to manually detune each melodic part until it felt right both for your taste and the music your applying it to? I admire anyone who explores these esoteric topics as it shows a depth of interest but I dislike the idea that applying a rule, that doesn't take that piece of music into account, can somehow improve the music.

stringtapper
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by stringtapper » Wed Mar 18, 2015 3:20 pm

ikeaboy wrote:Just getting back to 432hrz topic would it not make sense to manually detune each melodic part until it felt right both for your taste and the music your applying it to?
Seems like a lot of work when simply changing the reference pitch (A) will detune all instruments at once. Live can't do that (without the kinds of workarounds found in this thread) but other DAWs like Logic have preferences for changing the reference A.
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by ikeaboy » Wed Mar 18, 2015 11:26 pm

stringtapper wrote:
ikeaboy wrote:Just getting back to 432hrz topic would it not make sense to manually detune each melodic part until it felt right both for your taste and the music your applying it to?
Seems like a lot of work when simply changing the reference pitch (A) will detune all instruments at once. Live can't do that (without the kinds of workarounds found in this thread) but other DAWs like Logic have preferences for changing the reference A.
I never new they could do that! It's not a million miles away from loading .tun files!

stringtapper
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by stringtapper » Wed Mar 18, 2015 11:30 pm

I think Logic X can load either those or scala files (or both), but the tuning possibilities in it are wide open with a ton of presets and the ability to roll your own.
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by Sevish » Wed Mar 30, 2016 4:40 am

Logic X's microtuning is crippled. It only support 12-note scales, which must repeat at the octave, and each note can only deviate from its 12-tet counterpart by a semitone. It's a good starter pack, but it leaves out many great scales, such as the Bohlen-Pierce scale or Wendy Carlos' scales as an example.

Ableton, when you start supporting microtonal musicians, do NOT copy Logic's crippled implementation... Instead, do it right, allow full microtuning of every note without limitation. I'm happy to provide examples and consult if need be.

I have written the following blog post to detail my own workflow for microtonal music using Ableton Live and Scala. I hope this information will be helpful to others who are starting to use novel scales in their own work: http://sevish.com/blog/index.php/2016/m ... ive-scala/

stringtapper
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by stringtapper » Wed Mar 30, 2016 5:49 am

^ Not a bad point.
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ze2be
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by ze2be » Wed Mar 30, 2016 8:55 am

Sevish wrote:Logic X's microtuning is crippled. It only support 12-note scales, which must repeat at the octave, and each note can only deviate from its 12-tet counterpart by a semitone. It's a good starter pack, but it leaves out many great scales, such as the Bohlen-Pierce scale or Wendy Carlos' scales as an example.

Ableton, when you start supporting microtonal musicians, do NOT copy Logic's crippled implementation... Instead, do it right, allow full microtuning of every note without limitation. I'm happy to provide examples and consult if need be.

I have written the following blog post to detail my own workflow for microtonal music using Ableton Live and Scala. I hope this information will be helpful to others who are starting to use novel scales in their own work: http://sevish.com/blog/index.php/2016/m ... ive-scala/
Thanks for making that blog! So obviously a hexagonal keyboard is better then traditional 12 note piano keys, however what are your thoughs about squares? (Push, Mashine, Linstrument, etc..)

Sevish
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Re: mIcrotonal support in LIve

Post by Sevish » Tue May 10, 2016 12:48 pm

ze2be wrote:
Sevish wrote:Logic X's microtuning is crippled. It only support 12-note scales, which must repeat at the octave, and each note can only deviate from its 12-tet counterpart by a semitone. It's a good starter pack, but it leaves out many great scales, such as the Bohlen-Pierce scale or Wendy Carlos' scales as an example.

Ableton, when you start supporting microtonal musicians, do NOT copy Logic's crippled implementation... Instead, do it right, allow full microtuning of every note without limitation. I'm happy to provide examples and consult if need be.

I have written the following blog post to detail my own workflow for microtonal music using Ableton Live and Scala. I hope this information will be helpful to others who are starting to use novel scales in their own work: http://sevish.com/blog/index.php/2016/m ... ive-scala/
Thanks for making that blog! So obviously a hexagonal keyboard is better then traditional 12 note piano keys, however what are your thoughs about squares? (Push, Mashine, Linstrument, etc..)
I don't have any opinion on square-based layouts as I've never used Push, Linstrument, etc.

The more and more I play my hexagonal keyboard controller, the more I want to go back to the old style of keyboard. The main reason is that the 2D layouts are not as musical. It feels more like typing, and all the action is in the fingers and wrists. When you're playing a keyboard or piano, you can let your whole arm get involved in the action, and still hit the correct keys accurately with muscle memory. There's something highly musical, expressive and corporeal about that and it can't be recreated with a fiddly 2D controller imo.

I'm gonna buy two of those cheap m-audio 88-key keyboards later and pull out all the keys so I can rearrange them into a new layout. I think this will help me get back to my roots while keeping things 100% microtonal. Check the following page for an example of what I'm talking about: http://www.verticalkeyboards.com/keyboa ... index.html

You're welcome for blog post btw. When I started there was very little information on the internet about how to set up a working microtonal rig. I genuinely think there is something awesome about microtonal music so I'm happy to share everything I've learned.

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