Ableton Forum

i do a lot of pitch bending along with racking and controlling synths together. i'm surprised to learn this now but operator's fine pitch knob does not adjust pitch in a linear way like all other synths i tested do. as such when doing a pitch bend with a complex sound using operator and another synth together the frequencies clash during the transition. i have provided a simple example to illustrate the problem:

http://jpodtbc.com/music/pitchbend.mp3

in this example i am doing a 1-octave pitch bend from low to high using operator and massive and you can clearly hear where the synths go out of tune. i'm aware that doing pitch bend in clip envelopes is a work-around but it's an annoying one for my workflow. and the fact remains that this does not work correctly. it should be a linear pitch transition of one octave and it is not. i have tested it against massive and razor, which both behave as expected. i tried to test with analog but it does not provide a fine-tuned mechanism for automating pitch bends.

i guess this is just something to be aware of and hope that ableton cares to fix. especially if you're doing long pitch bends or jumping to mathematically calculated values using operator you might notice that things are out of tune.

That's pretty weird.

I haven't looked too far into it, but it appears that the halfway mark, of 500 ends up being a fifth interval, with 1000 being an octave.

That's pretty weird because a fifth is 7 of 12 tones. That'd mean the remaining is 5 of 12.

I wonder what the theory for this is?

I also wonder if it imitates any hardware specifically or has any specific purpose functioning in this way. I'm really curious haha

Edit: fun experiment.

Doubled two Operators. One used the Pitch mod percent automated linearly
The other I automated the Fine knob. I used a curve. Then in Arrangement view I placed the cursor at the center of the rise. Finally I tried to get the curve on that point to have Fine set as closely to 414 as I could (412, I was a tad lazy)

Before, they had the detuning.

After, it was dramatically less detuning.


So to sum it up, you either need a curve with 414 as the center (actually even 414 wasn't a perfect amount, if you want you can try to get the closest decimal tuning to go with a diminished fifth, or, in relation to C, the Gb/F#).

Or use the Pitch Env knob (set Initial, Peak, and Sustain all to +12).

Excuse the double post.

Okay, so. Just as the course knob is harmonic overtone ratios, the fine is divided into parts of harmonics.

0 is like the root. Go to 1000 for the octave. Come back around

0 root, .5 fifth (third overtone), 1000 octave again (4th overtone)

Come back around. 0 fourth overtone, .25 is fifth overtone (major third), .5 is sixth overtone (fifth again) and so on.

So it most be like this, to be able to use harmonic relationships for frequency modulation, and pure related frequencies.

thanks for figgin this out! definitely spreads some light into the situation. at any rate it's not a useful control designed like this. since i sometimes rack it with other synths and control both pitches at the same time.

to solve i'm resorting to max4live patches that abstract the pitch bend to an automation lane.

why not automate the transpose dial?

Transpose goes in increments of semitones. It is not a smooth pitch bend/rise. The 'Pitch' mod knob would work fine, unless for some reason he was already using it for something else. So I guess pitchbend is his weapon of choice