Harmonic Drone Generator tuning

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scg
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Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2023 10:14 pm

Harmonic Drone Generator tuning

Post by scg » Sun Mar 19, 2023 3:48 pm

I've posted several threads here in the past few weeks, the reason being that I recently finished going through the entire Ableton documentation, and I accumulated a number of questions and possible bugs along the way which I'm now trying to resolve. I've gotten good answers though, and it seems like those answers could be useful to others as well, so here's the next mystery I'm trying to solve.

It seems like Harmonic Drone Generator's tuning modes ('just' and 'equal') are either incorrect or mislabelled. This could definitely be my misunderstanding, so I'm hoping someone could check this and tell me if it seems right or not. Does Harmonic Drone Generator's tuning work as expected?

Here are more details for those who are interested. This is based on both empirical observation and examining the device in the Max editor.

What the interface calls 'just' actually appears to be twelve-tone equal temperament. The Tuner device reads it as 12-TET. I suppose it could be a just tuning with ratios with very large numbers, but although I don't know Max that well, I don't see anything in the device structure that would make it anything other than 12-TET.

Conversely, I'd assume that the device's 'equal' mode is supposed to be 12-TET (as in 'equal' temperament), but it instead appears to be a linear subdivision of the octave. So, I think it may actually be a just tuning, with (unreduced) ratios of 12:12, 13:12, 14:12, and so on up to 24:12. Maybe that's the intended tuning, and 'equal' means equal linear subdivision in this case, but in that case the naming of the intervals (m2, M2, etc.) seems odd. For example, what the interface calls a perfect 5th is 19:12, which isn't very close to either a just or 12-TET perfect 5th.

This may be one of those cases where I've misunderstood something or made an unfounded assumption at some point, and everything is in fact correct about the device. But, I haven't been able to make sense of the tuning, so I'm posting here in the hopes that someone can provide some insight.

Is this a bug? Or am I misunderstanding?

yur2die4
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Re: Harmonic Drone Generator tuning

Post by yur2die4 » Sun Mar 19, 2023 4:49 pm

I’m interested in this now too. But in the case of 19:12, that would at least make sense as a fifth in an equal temperament situation.

12:12 being unison. 24:12 being an octave. Equal division would be 13, 14, 15 and up for semitones in an equal 12 tone scale. And 19:12 would be seven semitones up which is a fifth in equal temperament.

But yeah, I’d love to see your findings on this device and explore its quirks and possibilities.

Edit: I guess I should be digging a little deeper into this. The 12ths thing makes sense in Some contexts but yeah, I was just recently reading something and it had me quickly generalize that relationship. Again, I’m down to learn more about this one and brush up on some of these concepts.

scg
Posts: 136
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2023 10:14 pm

Re: Harmonic Drone Generator tuning

Post by scg » Sun Mar 19, 2023 5:05 pm

Thanks for the reply :)

What you say about the intervals may actually be why the Harmonic Drone Generator's 'equal' tuning is (perhaps mistakenly) called 'equal'. It's a reasonable guess that equal temperament means an equal linear subdivision of the octave (13, 14, 15, as you say), but equal-tempered in this case is actually logarithmic, based on the 12th root of 2. So an equal-tempered perfect fifth would actually be just under 18:12, rather than 19:12. Because of that, I don't think what Harmonic Drone Generator means by 'equal' can be equal temperament - it must mean something else.

In any case, I'm hopeful this thread will produce some answers. Again, I may be overlooking something obvious, but it definitely doesn't seem like the device's tunings are 'as advertised', as it were.

[jur]
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Re: Harmonic Drone Generator tuning

Post by [jur] » Sun Mar 19, 2023 5:30 pm

Thx for pointing this out :wink:
I don't use the device so I don't have any answer, but I'll check.
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scg
Posts: 136
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2023 10:14 pm

Re: Harmonic Drone Generator tuning

Post by scg » Sun Mar 19, 2023 5:34 pm

I don't use the device so I don't have any answer, but I'll check.
Thanks :)

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