Cv sequencing of non western tunings possible in reason ?

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Ahornberg
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17 May 2023

ljekio wrote:
17 May 2023
Malstrom too.
Thor (and other devices with CV ins and mod matrix) can it through mod matrix.
I love this particular method, because I don’t like it through the pitch bend because of the unwanted portamento.
Good to know.

On Thor ans also on Parsec (and on some other synths like Antidote) there's a Keybd or Keytrk knob that makes it possible to set up non-12-equal-division-tunings.

The one thing I'm mising is a general solution for going microtonal in Reason.

Worker 13
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17 May 2023

If you want to go the free VST route then do this:

1. Use the attached SCl file I created using the musical ratios in the The Sacred Sounds Scale doc.
2. Tune down Reason to 432HZ
4. Use a free VST that supports scl files (like Vital or Surge).
Attachments
Sacred 32.zip
(283 Bytes) Downloaded 73 times

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visheshl
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18 May 2023

Ok so i didn't read the comments, the need for microtonality is pretty subjective.
Some may see it a frivolous, some may see it as a requirement.
Regardless, microtonality should be a part of the new midi specification i believe. When instead of note, you send frequency(or detune factor) along with the note on off message...and then it could be implemented and adopted on an industry wide scale.
IMHO.

Eg, i detune f# on my midi keyboard itself.
Now when i play the note, the keyboard sends note on f# detuned by X hz.
And the vst responds accordingly.
Last edited by visheshl on 18 May 2023, edited 1 time in total.

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

visheshl wrote:
18 May 2023
Ok so i didn't read the comments, the need for microtonality is pretty subjective.
Some may see it a frivolous, some may see it as a requirement.
Regardless, microtonality should be a part of the new midi specification i believe. When instead of note, you send frequency(or detune factor) along with the note on off message...and then it could be implemented and adopted on an industry wide scale.
IMHO.
The MIDI Tuning Standard already exists since 1992 as an optional part of the MIDI specification.
http://www.microtonal-synthesis.com/MIDItuning.html

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visheshl
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18 May 2023

Ahornberg wrote:
18 May 2023
visheshl wrote:
18 May 2023
Ok so i didn't read the comments, the need for microtonality is pretty subjective.
Some may see it a frivolous, some may see it as a requirement.
Regardless, microtonality should be a part of the new midi specification i believe. When instead of note, you send frequency(or detune factor) along with the note on off message...and then it could be implemented and adopted on an industry wide scale.
IMHO.
The MIDI Tuning Standard already exists since 1992 as an optional part of the MIDI specification.
http://www.microtonal-synthesis.com/MIDItuning.html
Oh i wasn't aware.
Thank you ill read thru the link.

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

visheshl wrote:
18 May 2023
Ahornberg wrote:
18 May 2023


The MIDI Tuning Standard already exists since 1992 as an optional part of the MIDI specification.
http://www.microtonal-synthesis.com/MIDItuning.html
Oh i wasn't aware.
Thank you ill read thru the link.
Unfortunately it is only supported by a handful hardware synths and VSTs.
Even MIDI MPE doesn't use it and uses pitch-bend messages instead.

For my microtonal work, I found lots of capable synths (REs, VSTs ... and VCV Rack !!!), so I don't need a general solution. There are also workarounds for the piano-roll, e.g. the following wokaround for Bitwig can also be applied to Reason: https://sevish.com/2022/microtonal-pian ... ig-studio/

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visheshl
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18 May 2023

Ahornberg wrote:
18 May 2023
visheshl wrote:
18 May 2023


Oh i wasn't aware.
Thank you ill read thru the link.
Unfortunately it is only supported by a handful hardware synths and VSTs.
Even MIDI MPE doesn't use it and uses pitch-bend messages instead.

For my microtonal work, I found lots of capable synths (REs, VSTs ... and VCV Rack !!!), so I don't need a general solution. There are also workarounds for the piano-roll, e.g. the following wokaround for Bitwig can also be applied to Reason: https://sevish.com/2022/microtonal-pian ... ig-studio/
Well sending pitchbend is also a good way to do this...a little hacky though...

Im not into microtonality as of now so, its not needed, but it would sure be nice as a standard thing...i mean the pro composers would like it a lot i think...

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visheshl
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18 May 2023

Ahornberg wrote:
18 May 2023
visheshl wrote:
18 May 2023


Oh i wasn't aware.
Thank you ill read thru the link.
Unfortunately it is only supported by a handful hardware synths and VSTs.
Even MIDI MPE doesn't use it and uses pitch-bend messages instead.

For my microtonal work, I found lots of capable synths (REs, VSTs ... and VCV Rack !!!), so I don't need a general solution. There are also workarounds for the piano-roll, e.g. the following wokaround for Bitwig can also be applied to Reason: https://sevish.com/2022/microtonal-pian ... ig-studio/
The music in the tutorial is strangely familiar yet somethings a little off...

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

Bitwig has a standardized solution for it's own stock devices that too works fine with MPE-capable VSTs.
For VSTs in general, there's MTS-ESP.
Both solutions do not require one to edit pitch-bend messages.

And yes, mircotonal music sounds "strangely familiar". Depending on the tuning you can get a "neutral" chord between major and minor, you can get a richer flavor of 7ths, but you can also go beyond the octave like I do.

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

My 2 cents about the Sacred Sound Scale:
The octave is divided into 32 steps, each step has a frequency that is 8 Hz higher than the step before.
This only works fine, if the octave starts at 256 Hz.
In the next octave, the steps are 16 Hz apart.
From my perspective, this sounds pretty weird.
Maybe the OP could give us an example piece of music to listen to?
Thanks in advance!

phletch432
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18 May 2023

Nice to see a few more people involved and a warmer tone :-D

As the OP i don't have a example sound example of Bo's proposed musical scale in action, also I'm not super fast on maths but like simple solutions and creative thinking

IMHO his course " Learn to Hear the Dissonances of Equal Temperament " on udemy is very informative and well presented https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-hea ... emperament

this video gives a flavour of his approach and teaching style, which i feel is very strong

I've messaged him direct with a few questions as a interested student on his course via udemy and fingers crossed he may reply

here is what i uncovered yesterday in my further research in case it interests others

the sevish website previously linked to looks like a rich resource for interested people as does


https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/3409 ... -important shows that this can be a hotly debated musical topic that people can have strong viewpoints on but there is some very interesting personal takes on this and many examples of non standard western tuning music

https://audiokitpro.com/tuneup/ "AudioKit Synth One, AudioKit Digital D1, and Wilsonic have a revolutionary new feature called TuneUp which enables you to tune synthesizers to the same microtonal scale. It’s like Ableton Link for tunings (instead of tempo)."

@ahornberg when you say "From my perspective, this sounds pretty weird" do you mean you have tried out this in practice and it literally "sounds weird" to you as you have listened or do you mean that his proposed theory doesn't make sense to you intellectually ?

you say bo proposes "The octave is divided into 32 steps, each step has a frequency that is 8 Hz higher than the step before.This only works fine, if the octave starts at 256 Hz.
In the next octave, the steps are 16 Hz apart.

bo states "Notice how inappropriate the term “octave” – meaning “the 8th note” – is here. Even in modern music theory, the 13th “note” is still called “octave” despite the fact that the 7-tone system has been expanded for hundreds of years to 12. A correct approach to the Sacred Sounds Scale would be to somehow use the number 33 in the name, because this is the 33rd tone, but for the sake of simplicity I use the term “double”. This describes perfectly the acoustic phenomenon of frequency doubling that takes place as the series progresses, and matches accurately any other scale of any number of tones"

"Modern Western music theory considers any tone whose frequency has been halved or doubled to represent the same sound. Musicians even use the same name for tones that are one or many doubles apart, although they are not one and the same tone. Doubling or halving the frequency of a tone does not return the same tone, because x ≠ 2x ≠ x/2. This is a mere convention, which has absolutely no natu- ral, no fundamental basis. If you were to double the atomic vibrations of a cat, by some mysterious process, it will no longer be the same cat, and probably no more a living being. If you take a sound and raise its pitch, it is no more the same sound.1

In case you were wondering, 424 Hz is the “Standard Frequency of Mother Nature”, or the “RA Music” tuning standard. Check out ramusic.com for more info.

The name Sacred Sounds Scale does not imply that certain frequencies meas- ured in Hertz like 424, 432, 440 or 528 are sacred, but that the scale itself – or better yet, the Natural Series of Ascending Harmonics (overtones) from which the scale is derived – is sacred. That's because the Harmonic Series comes from Nature; it is not a product of culture or human intellect."

https://en.xen.wiki/ appears to be a very rich resource of in-depth information of many, many people exploring this are not just Bo - still a lot for me to take in. it has sections such as Arrangers,Composers,Developers,Educators
Ensembles,Former names,Improvisers,Instrument makers,Musicians,Organizations,Pseudonyms,Theorists,Wiki editors

Bo is described at https://en.xen.wiki/w/Category:People

as "Being mathematically challenged, his work is geared towards the musically innocent, through the use of simple descriptions and intuitive visual correlations between sound and images. He's of the opinion that those who believe in urban myths like 432 Hz and its New Age connections to music have the right to know better. His approach to teaching is scientific and evidence-based. He proposes a logarithmic version of the Pythagorean Lambdoma, which he calls HarmoniComb, as didactic tool, musical instrument and notation system. His own musical discovery consists in the interpretation of any ratio as the harmonic genesis of the sonic entity it represents. In 2013 he successfully crowd funded the building of a batch of Second Generation Terpstra Keyboards. He's the Head of the Board of The International Organization for Numerical Musical Tuning, an independent international nongovernmental organization (iINGO) concerned with the specifications and guidelines for a standardized, worldwide universal format of defining musical tuning and signal processing through the language of numbers alone"

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

@phletch432 thank you for your long and detailled explanations.

Yes, I tried to play something in the Sacred Sound Scale. I'm used to play microtonal and at least for me, this tuning is not playable.

By octave, I refer to the double frequency, not the 8th note in a tuning or scale.

From my perspective, the Sacred Sound Scale (it's not a scale, it's a tuning) messes up absolute frequencies (measured in Hz) with relative intervals (measured in cents - 100 cents refers to 1 semitone in western standard tuning and 1200 cents refer to 1 octave aka the double frequency). There's no way to convert Hz to cents without referring to a reference frequency. But if you use a reference frequency, e.g. the "sacred" 424 Hz, then you have to use a logarithmic formula to convert it to cents. At the end, using simple fractions to define intervals only works fine in the relative cents-domain, not in the absoulte Hz-domain.

IMO if a tuning is not used (or usable) to produce music that others can listen to, it's just a mathematical mindgame.

I searched for music composed and played in the Sacred Sound Scale but I didn't find one single piece. So I asked for examples I could listen to. I really want know how this tuning sounds if it is used "the right way". A scientific reading doesn't help here.

Btw, I know https://en.xen.wiki/ very well and I didn't find just a word about the Sacred Sound Scale on this site.

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

Just an addition:

The (maybe sacred) harmonic series of overtones consists of:

1 - the root frequency (not an overtone per se)
2 - the octave (double root frequency)
3 - the octave and a perfect fifth (triple root frequency)
4 - the double octave (4 times the root frequency)
5 - the double octave and a major third (5 times the root frequency)
6 - the double octave and a perfect fifth (6 times the root frequency)
7 - the double octave and a subminor seventh (7 times the root frequency)
8 - three octaves (8 times the root frequency)
9 - three octaves and a whole tone (9 times the root frequency)
and so on up to "infinity"

You see, there are no absolute frequencies in Hz. You can apply every root frequency (in Hz) and calculate the harmonic series of overtones.

If you play a sine wave on each overtone and sum all that sine waves together, you will get a sawtooth wave. If you sum only the odd overtones, you will get a square wave.

If you want to go further, you can also add "undertones" like Oskar Sala on his Mixture-Trautonium. If you want to play around with that stuff, I made a free module named "Harmonizer" for the VCV Rack that addresses overtones and undertones as CV signals.

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

Another addition:

If I apply the concept of overtones to the Sacred Sound Scale, the root frequency must be exactly 8Hz,
and e.g. 424 Hz is overtone no. 53, 432 Hz is overtone no. 54, and so on.

Now I think I got the calculus behind the Sacred Sound Scale :thumbup:

So in terms of microtonal tunings this is a so-called "Overtone-Scale Mode 32", see https://en.xen.wiki/w/Overtone_scale for more theoretical background.

Here is a listening example played in Overtone-Scale Mode 7:



Here is a listening example for a similar ascending scale on saxophone:



here is some overtone singing:



maybe check out https://www.overtone.cc for more information

... and here is Oskar Sala on his Mixture-Trautonium (no this is not Eurorack)


phletch432
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18 May 2023

@ahornberg
thanks for your in-depth reply and taking time to share your depth of knowledge - really appreciated

it's taking me a little while to take in and compare what you've posted with his doc

initially i spot some of the concepts you mention in your rationale he disputes in his doc such as octave and cents but i'll look at both more over the weekend and get back with my thoughts n questions . . youd've thought there must be music made with the first run of Terpstra Keyboard eh ?

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Ahornberg
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18 May 2023

I think it's kinda strange that someone takes a lot of time to develop a microtonal tuning and writes a paper about it, but then doesn't make any music with that tuning.

I developed a tuning some years ago. That time I was fascinated by the Bohlen-Pierce-tuning and by Gamelan tunings. It took me years to get my tuning down to the paper, but before I wrote the paper I already had composed dozends of music with my tuning.

I don't know much about the Terpstra Keyboard, I was more interested in the Hi-Pi Tonal Plexus and I owned a C-Thru Axis 49 hexagonal keyboard for a while. Now I'm on a LinnStrument with 200 keys and that works fine for my purpose.

One thing that is mostly overseen in mircrotonal compositions is the fact that not every synth sound works fine for every tuning. Most of the butter-and-bread synth sounds do sound terrible in some microtonal tunings because the overtones that make up the sound stand in relation to the standard western tuning. For my tuning (I call it 33ed4 or equivocal tuning) I use sounds with inharmonic overtones like bells, e-pianos, or a vibraphone. Sometimes a cello or a saxophone also works fine. But acoustic piano, guitar, and common-used synth-sounds do a bad job. Piano fits well e.g. for the 15edo tuning.

Dalle
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19 May 2023

phletch432 wrote:
16 May 2023
his course is very rational in how it evidences his research findings and propositions
I find Bo Constantinsen to be very clear,logical and articulate
In the paper you linked he says his system is based on the resonant frequency of a former planet that was home to the people of Atlantis.

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Jagwah
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19 May 2023


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Ahornberg
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19 May 2023

Jagwah wrote:
19 May 2023
Didn't see MicroTune mentioned:

https://www.reasonstudios.com/shop/rack ... microtune/
This device works monophonic only. If you want to play microtonal chords, you have to set up multiple MicroTune-devices, each one connected to it's own synth. And you can only have 12 notes per octave.

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Ahornberg
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19 May 2023

Dalle wrote:
19 May 2023
his system is based on the resonant frequency of a former planet that was home to the people of Atlantis.
I think, this should be discussed in th kitchen viewforum.php?f=11

But the Terpstra keyboard was also mentioned (maybe this should be discussed in hardware). Now it is named Lumatone and here is a short video about it:

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selig
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19 May 2023

Ahornberg wrote:
18 May 2023
I think it's kinda strange that someone takes a lot of time to develop a microtonal tuning and writes a paper about it, but then doesn't make any music with that tuning.
This is a huge issue for me. If you come up with a tuning/scale that allows you to create the most beautiful music ever, the music speaks for itself. If I heard music like that I would skip right over all the math and find any way humanly possible to get access to the tools required to make music in that tuning.
For me, at least, it doesn’t work the other way around…
That said, the huge body of incredibly moving music made over the past centuries with equal tempered 12 tone scales drew me to create in that scale long before I delved into what the heck was the twelfth root of two!
Selig Audio, LLC

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visheshl
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20 May 2023

I explored the idea of microtonal music, then quickly abandoned it...why ?
Simply because if it indeed was music to the ears...instead of nerdology...it would have been widely used throughout history of different countries and there would have at least been a couple of chart toppers using microtonality...and the scales would be well known then

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Ahornberg
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20 May 2023

visheshl wrote:
20 May 2023
I explored the idea of microtonal music, then quickly abandoned it...why ?
Simply because if it indeed was music to the ears...instead of nerdology...it would have been widely used throughout history of different countries and there would have at least been a couple of chart toppers using microtonality...and the scales would be well known then
Other cultures do use other tunings, e.g. Gamelan music

or this wonderful instrument I don't know the name of

or a sitar (notice the uneven spread of the frets)

or simply when I play baroque music, I tune my Pianoteq VST to Werckmeister tuning.
Here's a guitar tuned in Werckmeister (notice the broken frets)

and don't forget the Blues

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Floyd42
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20 May 2023

Ahornberg wrote:
20 May 2023
Other cultures do use other tunings, e.g. Gamelan music
That's right, it's a cultural thing. And this music is played on instruments that have evolved in this culture. And heard by people who grew up in that culture.
Trying to transfer music from one culture to another sometimes sounds a bit weird.
music will save us

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crimsonwarlock
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21 May 2023

Floyd42 wrote:
20 May 2023
Trying to transfer music from one culture to another sometimes sounds a bit weird.

That's not weird, that is beautiful :clap:
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