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Out of curiosity, how do you go about auditioning these systems in your own practice? Are you a performer playing an instrument by ear? Are you sequencing sound

Out of curiosity, how do you go about auditioning these systems in your own practice? Are you a performer playing an instrument by ear? Are you sequencing sounds in a DAW? Or are you tuning your sounds in a programming environment similar to the linked article? I ask because I'm an electronic musician working in a DAW (Ableton mostly) and am trying to find the best workflow to start exploring these concepts. Ideally, there would be an interface for switching between tuning systems that's as easy as drawing in a time-signature change, but micro-tuning seems to be a low priority for most DAWs. The only one I know to even begin integrating alternate tuning systems is Logic, and those settings are tucked away deep in the preferences. Does anyone here have a resource for starting to familiarize oneself with how to integrate alternate tunings into their composition? The simpler the better, I suppose. As soon as one sets their foot into the world of alternate tunings you're usually flooded with 40+ tunings. As someone who's worked in Equal Temperament their whole life I would like to pick ONE system and really drill down on it until I get a grip on how to integrate these tunings into programs that are built for ET.

devilduck 6y ago
You can use jack or soundflower to pipe audio into Live from the outside.
smrq 6y ago
I won't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but I think it's more a synth problem than a DAW problem. VST, for example, deals in 12TET, so the best a DAW could do to support alternate tuning systems would be to translate each pitch into a 12TET pitch + offset. Which is feasible, but like, not a feature I would expect to find. (I would be curious to know if any DAW actually can do this.) Personally I have experimented with alternate tuning using SuperCollider. It definitely doesn't qualify as simple, but the upside of code-as-music is that if you can imagine it and express it, you can do it. I recently made a track that switches tuning systems periodically by responding to a particular MIDI CC. I have to imagine that those sorts of shenanigans would be pretty hard without some code. To live a bit more in Ableton-land, you might be able to find a Max device that does something similar-- maybe a MIDI insert that converts MIDI notes to note + pitch bend?
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  VST does not deal in 12TET. VST2 delivers MIDI data to a plugin, which most plugins (not all) will interpret in 12TET. But the plugin may offer its own mechanism to change the mapping between MIDI note numbers and frequencies, or it might use the MIDI Tuning Standard to do so. The only role for a DAW in this comes if the DAW labels MIDI data with note names. If you're not using 12TET, these labels will likely be wrong. But since MIDI itself doesn't inherently use 12TET, just 128 notes numbered from 0 to 127, any DAW can still be used to work in non-12TET tunings and scales.
  - smrq 6y ago
    Since I knew someone on HN would be pedantic about this, I looked it up before I posted anything: > NoteOnEvent Struct Reference > Detailed Description > Note-on event specific data. > Pitch uses the twelve-tone equal temperament tuning (12-TET). https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_doc/vstinterfaces/structSteinberg_1_1Vst_1_1NoteOnEvent.html https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_doc/vstinterfaces/stru... You can, of course, implement a synth that doesn't follow the spec, if you like. (This documentation is for VST3, which does not use MIDI. VST2 has been deprecated for years.)
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      VST2 was officially deprecated last year by Steinberg. The majority of plugins at this point are still in VST2 format. You missed the tuning field in the struct, which effectively makes it use 12TET only as a reference, not as the only tuning standard.
      - smrq 6y ago
        Perhaps you missed my original comment where I explicitly referred to using a 12TET pitch + offset? What you claim I missed is literally what I said.
        kmill 6y ago
kmill 6y ago
I've mostly used Pure Data patches or a C program I wrote that interfaces with Jack. I like Johnston's notation for extended just intonation, and the C program lets you press buttons on your MIDI controller to alter notes by the various commas/accidentals. Eventually I'd like to have a sequencer for it... His idea was actually pretty cool: you start out with an F, C, and G major chord tuned just like in the ratios a couple comments up, which gives you an entire C major scale, and then there are a handful of accidentals. The syntonic comma (+) is what turns A into the fifth above D rather than a third above F, # applied to the top note of a major third turns it into a minor third (defined by the division of a major triad into a major and minor third), 7 applied to a Bb lowers it to coincide with the 7th harmonic of C, 11 applied to an F slightly raises it to be the 11th harmonic of C, and so on. Each accidental also has an inverse operation. With just these accidentals above, the system is able to uniquely represent every ratio whose prime factorization contains numbers up to 11. Unfortunately MIDI is not so good for non-12-EDO. Some instruments support SYSEX messages with per-note-number alterations. There's also a program out there, forgot the name, which takes a MIDI channel and splits it across multiple channels to apply independent pitch bends per note when there's polyphony. I hope MIDI 2 will help... I don't know much about real DAWs, though there are some Adam Neely videos exploring microtonality and alternative tuning systems where he pulls up some plugin -- maybe that will help you find something. Having seen a video of Jacob Collier's projects, it seems like he might do microtonality using only pitch correction. I think if you're familiar with your commas -- there aren't many after all -- you just learn how many cents you need. Edit: I thought to look up Sevish, a microtonal musician who seems to actually care about making good music, and he has some resources on his site: https://sevish.com/music-resources/ https://sevish.com/music-resources/
- elihu 6y ago
  > There's also a program out there, forgot the name, which takes a MIDI channel and splits it across multiple channels to apply independent pitch bends per note when there's polyphony. I hope MIDI 2 will help... Perhaps you mean alt-tuner? http://www.tallkite.com/alt-tuner.html http://www.tallkite.com/alt-tuner.html
ratww 6y ago
Some VST instruments support alternate tunings. Here's a list: https://en.xen.wiki/w/List_of_Microtonal_Software_Plugins https://en.xen.wiki/w/List_of_Microtonal_Software_Plugins

devilduck 6y ago

You can use jack or soundflower to pipe audio into Live from the outside.

smrq 6y ago

I won't pretend to be an expert on the subject, but I think it's more a synth problem than a DAW problem. VST, for example, deals in 12TET, so the best a DAW could do to support alternate tuning systems would be to translate each pitch into a 12TET pitch + offset. Which is feasible, but like, not a feature I would expect to find. (I would be curious to know if any DAW actually can do this.) Personally I have experimented with alternate tuning using SuperCollider. It definitely doesn't qualify as simple, but the upside of code-as-music is that if you can imagine it and express it, you can do it. I recently made a track that switches tuning systems periodically by responding to a particular MIDI CC. I have to imagine that those sorts of shenanigans would be pretty hard without some code. To live a bit more in Ableton-land, you might be able to find a Max device that does something similar-- maybe a MIDI insert that converts MIDI notes to note + pitch bend?

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
VST does not deal in 12TET. VST2 delivers MIDI data to a plugin, which most plugins (not all) will interpret in 12TET. But the plugin may offer its own mechanism to change the mapping between MIDI note numbers and frequencies, or it might use the MIDI Tuning Standard to do so. The only role for a DAW in this comes if the DAW labels MIDI data with note names. If you're not using 12TET, these labels will likely be wrong. But since MIDI itself doesn't inherently use 12TET, just 128 notes numbered from 0 to 127, any DAW can still be used to work in non-12TET tunings and scales.
- smrq 6y ago
  Since I knew someone on HN would be pedantic about this, I looked it up before I posted anything: > NoteOnEvent Struct Reference > Detailed Description > Note-on event specific data. > Pitch uses the twelve-tone equal temperament tuning (12-TET). https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_doc/vstinterfaces/structSteinberg_1_1Vst_1_1NoteOnEvent.html https://steinbergmedia.github.io/vst3_doc/vstinterfaces/stru... You can, of course, implement a synth that doesn't follow the spec, if you like. (This documentation is for VST3, which does not use MIDI. VST2 has been deprecated for years.)
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    VST2 was officially deprecated last year by Steinberg. The majority of plugins at this point are still in VST2 format. You missed the tuning field in the struct, which effectively makes it use 12TET only as a reference, not as the only tuning standard.
    - smrq 6y ago
      Perhaps you missed my original comment where I explicitly referred to using a 12TET pitch + offset? What you claim I missed is literally what I said.
      - kmill 6y ago

kmill 6y ago

I've mostly used Pure Data patches or a C program I wrote that interfaces with Jack. I like Johnston's notation for extended just intonation, and the C program lets you press buttons on your MIDI controller to alter notes by the various commas/accidentals. Eventually I'd like to have a sequencer for it... His idea was actually pretty cool: you start out with an F, C, and G major chord tuned just like in the ratios a couple comments up, which gives you an entire C major scale, and then there are a handful of accidentals. The syntonic comma (+) is what turns A into the fifth above D rather than a third above F, # applied to the top note of a major third turns it into a minor third (defined by the division of a major triad into a major and minor third), 7 applied to a Bb lowers it to coincide with the 7th harmonic of C, 11 applied to an F slightly raises it to be the 11th harmonic of C, and so on. Each accidental also has an inverse operation. With just these accidentals above, the system is able to uniquely represent every ratio whose prime factorization contains numbers up to 11. Unfortunately MIDI is not so good for non-12-EDO. Some instruments support SYSEX messages with per-note-number alterations. There's also a program out there, forgot the name, which takes a MIDI channel and splits it across multiple channels to apply independent pitch bends per note when there's polyphony. I hope MIDI 2 will help... I don't know much about real DAWs, though there are some Adam Neely videos exploring microtonality and alternative tuning systems where he pulls up some plugin -- maybe that will help you find something. Having seen a video of Jacob Collier's projects, it seems like he might do microtonality using only pitch correction. I think if you're familiar with your commas -- there aren't many after all -- you just learn how many cents you need. Edit: I thought to look up Sevish, a microtonal musician who seems to actually care about making good music, and he has some resources on his site: https://sevish.com/music-resources/ https://sevish.com/music-resources/

elihu 6y ago
> There's also a program out there, forgot the name, which takes a MIDI channel and splits it across multiple channels to apply independent pitch bends per note when there's polyphony. I hope MIDI 2 will help... Perhaps you mean alt-tuner? http://www.tallkite.com/alt-tuner.html http://www.tallkite.com/alt-tuner.html

ratww 6y ago

Some VST instruments support alternate tunings. Here's a list: https://en.xen.wiki/w/List_of_Microtonal_Software_Plugins https://en.xen.wiki/w/List_of_Microtonal_Software_Plugins