Harmonic Drone Generator tuning
Posted: 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?
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?