Different tunings

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meltman
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2012 1:12 am

Different tunings

Post by meltman »

Hi, new to the forums! I didn't see any mention on here about tuning the instruments. Is this possible?
convergent
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 3:36 am

Re: Different tunings

Post by convergent »

What do you mean? Every instrument (I hope we're talking about synths and sampler) plays the whole range of notes from 0th octave to 10th of something. And every module has transpose option ("relative note") + finetuning (in cents, I think? never used).
meltman
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Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2012 1:12 am

Re: Different tunings

Post by meltman »

convergent wrote:What do you mean? Every instrument (I hope we're talking about synths and sampler) plays the whole range of notes from 0th octave to 10th of something. And every module has transpose option ("relative note") + finetuning (in cents, I think? never used).
Oh that sounds great actually; could you add notes in-between?
convergent
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 3:36 am

Re: Different tunings

Post by convergent »

Subtone music? Hmm. Never thought about it. SunVox is designed to work with MIDI-based workflow and MIDI keyboards and hardware. If you need just slides — you'll have them, but if you want to control the pitch totally — I don't see anything like that in the manual http://www.warmplace.ru/wiki/sunvox:manual_en (although it lacks some new features descriptions). Maybe, someone else knows better.
gilzad
Posts: 92
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2012 6:46 am

Re: Different tunings

Post by gilzad »

Hi meltman,

you can either use the (yet) undocumented 'PR' command, or have a look into the following two threads to control the generators/samplers with different tunings:

1) http://warmplace.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2609
2) http://warmplace.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2574

So you can map a microtonal scale to a usual keyboard manual by using finetuned metamodules, which are connected to a generator/sampler, if your intention is related to that. Alternatively you can utilize many metamodules with normal tunings, but have them connected to many different generators/samplers whose tunings differ. The first solution is easier though.

It's interesting so many people are interested indifferent tunings with SunVox lately. :)
miekko
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 6:43 pm

Re: Different tunings

Post by miekko »

Since this forum seems to be rather low-activity, I guess threads without activity for half a year are still necroable

I've been composing microtonal music using sunvox for about half a year. It is somewhat tedious but definitely doable. To enable this I basically use:

1) a spreadsheet where I can enter what interval (given as a ratio of the frequencies) I want to divide into what number of equal steps, as well as an offset, and produces a column of hexadecimal numbers to give as pitch bends. Of course, the pitch bend restricts the availability of other effects, but there are ways around that - usually it'll end up adding a bunch of extra modules though. The only effect that is almost entirely unavailable is the arpeggiator.
Learning to count in hexadecimal is quite useful too. (Basically, if you just want to be able to calculate for some equal temperament with n steps, all pitch bends being upwards, you do this: HEX(((768/n) mod 64)). For tone t in an n-tone temperament, you can calculate which 'regular' tone the pitch bend goes on by FLOOR(12t/n) and mapping the result along the lines of, say, 0=C, 1=C#, 2=D, ...11=B, ...

2) for transposed parts, add a copy of the instrument and set the copy to transpose at the desired interval - individual changes in the melody might be required if you want a transposition that sticks to some subset of the 'temperament' you're using. (That is, like, say you're having a part do a very similar melody but in a slightly different mode of the scale). Generally transposing using instrument transposition is significantly simpler than manually transposing, due to the added hexadecimal arithmetic.

3) For chords that are tuned weird - in case your piece relies on many chords and some of these chords are not rooted on regular 12tone equal temperament notes - just make a huge bunch of multisynths that you chain along, basically something like

[ROOT][SUBMINORTHIRD][NEUTTHIR][SUPERMAJTHIRD][FOURTH][FIFTH]
where each of those represent an interval in the chord, and is set to retune the signal the right amount.
Then you add those that represent the chords, so say
[SUPERMAJOR]
[NEUTRAL]
[SUBMINOR]

then you let SUPERMAJOR send its signals to ROOT, SUPERMAJTHIRD and FIFTH, NEUTRAL sends to ROOT, NEUTTHIR an FIFTH, and so on.
If you need inversions and such, that makes a whole square of them. All the multisynths in the middle layer send signals to whatever synths you want. Then you only need to calculate the pitch bend for chord tones once plus once for each chord root you actually use.
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CoByX
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Joined: Wed May 30, 2012 1:10 pm

Re: Different tunings

Post by CoByX »

miekko wrote: I've been composing microtonal music using sunvox for about half a year. It is somewhat tedious but definitely doable.
It would be great to hear some music done this way, could you share it on souncloud/youtube or smth?
miekko
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Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 6:43 pm

Re: Different tunings

Post by miekko »

I will make a separate post with a few drafts of such pieces. However, I will probably need to write a short theoretical introduction to the ideas present in each of them and some kind of "justification" for the scales used, as well as descriptions of them.
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samrai katt kovboy
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Re: Different tunings

Post by samrai katt kovboy »

I am curious,,, Please post music and explanations.
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MANY CIRCLES
miekko
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Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2013 6:43 pm

Re: Different tunings

Post by miekko »

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