Polyphonic Microtonal Malström

[Ahornberg]

This is a practical tutorial about how to play microtonal music on Malström in a polyphonic way.
The theory and math behind microtonal tunings can be found at http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/

About cents

The most important thing you need to know here is that when I'm talking about cents I don't mean any money.
Each semitone (e.g. the intervall between A and A#) can be divided in 100 cents to express pitch-values in a very precisely way.

Using MIDI velocity to display cent-values

My solution to enter and display different cent-values is to use MIDI velocity.
In MIDI there's is Pitch-Bend to express fine-graded pitch-values, even in a higher resolution than that given by cents.
The drawback of Pitch-Bend is that it can not be used to tune a single note in a chord. Instead Pitch-Bend would detune the whole chord.
Another drawback of Pitch-Bend is that it's values in the note editor do not move automatically when you move the corresponding note.

Other synths like Thor and REs like Parsec do have a knob called KBD to change the size of a semitone from 100 cents to some smaller amount and I used this method over years to play microtonal music. But Malström is a different beast.

In my solution a velocity-value of 100 played on an A3 results in exactly 440 Hz. This means that 0 cents are added or subtracted to this note.
A velocity-value of 101 means that 1 cent will be added to the pitch. So by playing an A with 101 cents and playing an A# with 1 cents results in exactly the same pitch (as shown in the picture below).

microtonal reason note editor.png (24.34 KiB) Viewed 1679 times

The drawback of my solution is that you can not play velocity sensitive and you can not use velocity to modulate other parameters in Malström than pitch. So you end up with only one modulator section for sound design purposes. Fortunately we are using Reason and Malström provides a series of modulation CV inputs on its back side.

Setting up Malström

By using the attached Combinator patch you only need to set up the following automation lines.

malstrom microtonal automation.png (119.74 KiB) Viewed 1679 times

I also attached a Reason song where you can copy the the track including all automation lines to your own song.

By doing this you can use any Malström patch and all this automation lines are going to lock the parameters that are needed for the tuning to work correctly. Just hit Play after loading a patch and everything should work fine. Some patches will not sound the same because modulator A is used explicitly for tuning purposes.

You should not reset the Malström device because there's a scaled CV input used for tuning purposes (as shown in the picture below).

malstrom microtonal back.png (936.96 KiB) Viewed 1679 times

So have fun with Microtonal Malström

[Ahornberg]

Here is the attachement containing the Combinator patch and the Reason song for Microtonal Malström.

[ravisoni]

This is interesting. Thanks for sharing!

[timaeus185]

thank that's very interesting, I've been using a different technique (that before I bought the ochen k micro tuner) which is by using matrix curve connected to pitch cv on (which works on any synth), you can keep the same cv values by using some of the available rack utilities or just by using 'alter notes' in the matrix which alter the order of the same curve cv values.

[Ahornberg]

thank that's very interesting, I've been using a different technique (that before I bought the ochen k micro tuner) which is by using matrix curve connected to pitch cv on (which works on any synth), you can keep the same cv values by using some of the available rack utilities or just by using 'alter notes' in the matrix which alter the order of the same curve cv values.

Yes, for monophonic usage this works fine.