One question about just intonation and sunvox synths

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El Nino
Posts: 299
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2013 11:54 am

One question about just intonation and sunvox synths

Post by El Nino »

I was hoping to tune some of the sunvox synthesizers to just intonation because I want to make a song that "reflects natural harmony in the universe" 8) lol...

Normal tuning has a little bit of 'wahwahwah' sound in chords.

I think I'll need to use the PR command which appears when recording live from the theremin.

This seems a little difficult and might take a while so I wanted to ask first does anyone know of a way to "retune" the keyboard rather than retune every note in the song one by one? maybe a sampler based instrument is the best way to go...

I think it would require several differently tuned keyboards if I wanted to do key changes in one song...
Last edited by El Nino on Sun May 26, 2013 9:34 am, edited 2 times in total.
gilzad
Posts: 92
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2012 6:46 am

Re: One question about just intonation and sunvox synths

Post by gilzad »

Hi El Nino,
there was recently a talk about this this going on here.

Suppose, you want to have the 3rd of a C to be tuned a bit lower for the minor key to avoid an accoustic beat (wah-wah):
To make it easy, we'll use 3 MultiSynths:

1) Multisynth 1 is simply attached to MultiSynth 2 and MutliSynth 3.
2) MultiSynth 2 covers all the all the notes of your Cmin except of the 3rd. You simply turn its velocity down to zero in the velocity map.
3) MultiSynth 3 has all the notes muted except of the 3rd of your Cmin.
4) MultiSynth 2 will be attached to your Synth/Sampler whose tuning remains unchanged.
5) MultiSynth 3 will be attached to another Synth/Sampler whose tuning (Finetune) is changed, e.g. to -30.
6) Now select MultiSynth 1 and play the C minor chord.

That's how you can create a pre-Barok tuned instrument. I'm excited about the musical results!
El Nino
Posts: 299
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2013 11:54 am

Re: One question about just intonation and sunvox synths

Post by El Nino »

Hey gilzad,

Thanks, thats a cool way to create a different tuning system in sunvox. three multisynths.
That way is much more efficient than what I was thinking of doing which was
using the absolute frequency command 'PR'?, recording each note one by one into a sampler.

I found this awesome series which explains how and why people have arrived at equal temperament (links below).
It will be a cool project to try and make some music that is based on 'physics' harmony.

its weird how most music is in equal temperament, sounds pleasing and yet is quite wrong when looking at the oscilloscope.
And how even just intonation can be wrong for some things. its confusing but interesting.
Thanks for the link and the solution to the tuning problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j-YXgXTpoA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZL5evNWD2M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io1G28wzYZo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEtWSda4J8Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdkL8o_SysQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O-mnTfqzGI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADmbyp2h0Ig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsCWmxoeCak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDEhWw6DjYU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofWAUa1h3c
jcage
Posts: 45
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2013 1:25 am

Re: One question about just intonation and sunvox synths

Post by jcage »

I would suggest to create 12 generators/samplers for each semitone and adjust the finetune by hand. A table for converting tunings (usually in Hz) to cents would be helpful. If you end up with a metamodule with an interesting tuning plz share. Of course, for each starting tone of a scale a new set has to be created.

Cheers!
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