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Not sure this is close to what @Qmishery had in mind but attended some Sufi performances which sounded like this:
Rumi was one of the best-known Sufi poets. His work has often been put to music (and is often known by Europeans for its references to wine; Sufism is quite a complex part of Islam and while some of those references are symbolic, it’s quite likely that Sufi mystics did imbibe on special occasions).
(There’s also the whole thing about “whirling dervishes”, which gets quite popular in Europe.)
Otherwise, many YouTube videos are about a kind of ney-infused relaxing music.
As for Indonesian gamelan, there’s probably an app out there which can make sense in such a context. Maybe Patterning? After all, Balinese gamelan is all about cycles (as have been many aspects of that cultural context, at least at the time anthropologists got so obsessed with Bali). And the diverse instruments which make up a gamelan ensemble could probably be laid out in something equivalent to a “drum kit”. In this case, you would probably have a better time with samples of differently-pitched gongs than using any kind of tuning in the app itself.
Oh? Fair enough but what makes MPE scary?
Guess part of my point is that 12TET is the non-traditional tuning system! ;-)
The inertia is itself interesting because of the technological context. We hear a lot of talk about “disruptive technology” yet most innovation occurs along frequently-visited grooves. People like Everett Rogers and Clayton Christensen have a lot to say about these things. But so do Michael Schrage and Eric von Hippel: much of it happens through usage.
People often say that music technology is more traditional than other parts. Some musicians are really very conventional in their thinking. But part of the cool thing about tuning systems is that this sort of thing needs not be a niche.
Sure! A lot of dance music around the world does deviate from 12TET. And much of it isn’t in 4/4 with straight sixteenths.
But, yeah, much of the electronic side of dance music (Techno, EDM, Trap, etc.) got quantized. Not that it’s inherently “more danceable”, of course.
It takes time to master any scale on an instrument or MIDI keyboard though people who are used to using the 12 tone scale have a leg up as most keyboards and stringed instruments use it although in many countries this isn't the case for their traditional instruments and there are certainly apps which emulate these instruments too.
I would like to have more apps with the ability to support alternative scales and an app like Wilsonic that would be able to play them via MIDI with a surface designed to support each scale. GeoShred does this for quite a few scales too.
That's an important point. ET only became popular in the early 20th century, less than a hundred years ago. It's great for music that modulates a lot. But most electronic musicians stick to a single key and often a single chord throughout a piece, and thus have no need for ET. Their stuff would sound so much better in some flavor of just intonation.
The new-ish PolySynth by DesignByPaul has microtonal tuning
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/polysynth/id1316231714?mt=8
Thanks. I will add that to the list, and probably buy myself a copy also. I will also add Wotja to the list, although it requires some manipulation to retune.
Here's the classic work on the relationship between tuning and timbre:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1852337974/ref=ox_sc_mini_detail?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
Was also thinking about timbre, pitch being a function of spectrum.
But that still doesn’t tell me much about how noticeable sub-cent differences in F0 may be, unless it’s with rather straightforward harmonic content.
Again, not saying that there can’t be any benefit in having an iOS synth with a tuning resolution at a fraction of a cent, but it made me wonder how big of a deal it might be. Will check Sethares’s book more deeply but he talks about the fact that “the JND can be as small as two or three cents” (Sethares 2005: 44) and that being much smaller than the critical band. He also says that “[a]lthough the ear can resolve very small frequency changes in a single sine wave, there is a much larger “critical bandwidth” that character- izes the smallest difference between partials that the ear can “hear out” in a more complex sound” (Sethares 2005: 39).
In fact, this might be a distinction between two versions of “microtuning” and “microtonality”.
The world’s musical traditions are filled with examples of tuning systems which make practical use of diverse pitch relationships which aren’t captured appropriately by 12TET. In contexts where at least some instruments are stuck in 12TET, musicians have adapted their tuning in diverse ways, either by “quantizing” to it, by using pitchbend, or by tolerating the differences between the 12TET instruments and the others. In part because most of these instruments produce complex sounds, with lots of transients and pitch fluctuations, these accommodations may work quite well. And they’ve become pretty much automatic, despite their awkwardness. Even something as commonplace as “the Blues scale” is a bit of a kludge that relatively few people ever think about.
Playing “in tune” with instruments from all of these traditions (including the Blues guitar, say) requires a shift into “microtuning”. In this case, 12TET really is the exception but it’s so dominant that everything else is associated to “edge cases” and manufacturers dismiss those rather readily.
Then there’s the other side, about thorough explorations of minute pitch relationships. Spent enough time in classes with electroacoustic composers to appreciate this type of work. As Schaeffer pointed out 51 years ago (Schaeffer 1966 «Traité des objets musicaux: essai interdisciplines»), there are interesting relationships between this work and theoretical work in music. In some ways, Schaeffer was more pragmatic than much of the work which has been done since then. Again, nothing wrong with that. But it wouldn’t be a stretch to call that kind of work a “niche“. In fact, many of these musickers create their own setups to accomplish the things they heard in their heads and have never been heard “in nature”. In such a case, manufacturers would probably do best to not get involved too much, unless it’s about providing a kind of “toolbox” (as is the case with all the modular systems, from zMors and Reaktor to Eurorack and Max).
To my mind, this latter side of the “microtuning” equation might care about sub-cent tuning. Whether or not it makes a noticeable difference in practical musicking may be besides the point. It’s about exploration and there might be ways to create complex sounds which really become amazing when used with extremely fine tuning. If so, the toolbox needs to include extremely precise tools for the production of “hyper-tuned” sounds. The market may be small, but it’s dedicated, knowledgeable, and forward-listening.
The former group, that of existing musical diversity, mostly care about differences of several cents. They readily use instruments which already exist and mostly want things to sound the way they’re used to hearing. It’s potentially a tremendously big market but it’s mostly made of people who “make do” with whatever’s available.
Great post.
I experience myself also a thing i heard about but was not sure if that is just bla bla.
But it became true in my case.
It was a thing about that some scales/tunings might sound very weird and out of tune for our ear when we are used to mostly equal 12 note tunings but if you play for longer with it it become more interesting and some harmonics seems to get really fantastic while it sounded a bit weird when i heard it the first time.
There is so much to explore in general.
Now i start to do some stuff with microtonal arps. I do love it.
A.I. also could replace us completly. No one needs humans in the future
We are just too simply to can enjoy that
But call me crazy. If we ever evolve in such a way A.I. will make everything.
I even think that if there would be ever aliens to have the technology to visit us it would be not an organic lifeform since A.I. could evolve so much faster than we (kohlenstoffbasierte Lebensform) ever could.
But it also could really beside a third world war the end of mankind.
Apple, Google, Cyberdyne.........
“The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.”
– FZ
Early days. A brain is just a super computer.....with bugs.
Emotions........just biochemical reactions.
Just leave the listening to the AI machines too. Problem solved.
it often sounds weird if one applies microtuning to a musical piece that was written for equal temperament. The thing is, if one is interested in microtuning, one has to compose for microtuning, choosing the tonal intervals that sound good, avoiding tonal intervals that sound ugly. But I don't think microtonal composition is more difficult than equal temperament composition. After one has chosen a certain microtonal scale, the melodies and intervals appear automatically in the composer's mind. And it doesn't mean to avoid weird sounding parts completely. As in 'normal' composition, dissonances are an important part to bring dramatic tension into the music, which can be resolved afterwards with a harmonic interval/chord.
It is good to study traditional music that incorporates microtuning which was implemented naturally. Where instruments, players, and composition fit together.
And it's true, if one listens to microtonal music, traditional or more recent or self composed, one adapts more and more to its tonality, it becomes familiar.
Enkerli, spending a lot of time tuning reed organs and making music with JI intervals that are held out for long durations - sometimes many hours per chord, changed things for me.
I don't have perfect pitch, but I have decent relative pitch. and a fair amount of time spent with a harmonic tuning allows a microscopic dive into the relationships between tones. (not so different than the study of polyrhythms. In fact I would argue that it's the exact same thing, just sped up a bit)
An accidental discovery of just intonation took which happened while I was trying to save money by tuning an electric organ myself instead of taking it to a pro took me from aspiring to be a shredder at the organ, to approaching music extremely slowly and with an entirely new sense of awe and wonder. It was like I'd been using greyscale my whole musical life and suddenly discovered the color spectrum.
I wish I was near my studio, I'd make some audio examples of very slight cent differences that are clearly audible to the average listener but if you're interested, you can try an experiment for yourself. Try importing a scale from the scala page into Thumbjam with an interval above the 5 limit and then try tuning the same scale with the tuner available within the app. It will not be the same. The import allows finer resolution than the sliders with 1 cent steps. Consider what a cent is - It's a completely arbitrary increment. 100 parts of a half step? A half step of what? Of an irrational system where steps are based on the 12th root of 2. So to imagine that one hundredth of a "step" should be a good starting place for creating scales that are not equally tempered would be like building a watch spring based on the measurement of the average length of 1000 virgins' eyelashes.
Clearly, for tuning something like a western unequal temperament, or an equal temperament with 33 tones or something that doesn't focus on small frequency ratios, the cent division is most likely acceptable.
Try tuning Partch's 43 tone scale with cent divisions and you will find difficulty in tuning even something like a pure 7/8 (seventh harmonic), Or perhaps even simpler, using a saw or square wave tune a perfect 3/2 and just listen to it for a while. Listen closely.. There will be a slow, discernable beating because it's out of tune. And of course to the average person tuning in 5 limit 12 tone scales this doesn't matter at all, especially if the music is bustling along. But try tuning a scale with hundreds of divisions, as with the systems used by ben johnston or lamonte young. Listen to the stunning, micro-resolutions In Ben Johnston's string quartet above (starting in the 2nd movement) and you start to hear how divisions smaller than a cent are necessary for some applications) Suddenly a fraction of a cent matters a whole lot.
So while I realize I'm in an extreme minority, tuning resolution is very important for the music I'm working toward.
I've included links to the Bach clavichord pieces, because weirdly, people seem to forget that this is microtonal music ((also, I just want more people to hear these incredible interpretations using the instrument of the day rather than a fucking piano, which might be something like listening to a Skrillex cover of the Beatles and thinking you're hearing what was intended to be heard)) Pianos didn't exist yet and clavichords, organs, harpsichords etc sound awful in equal temperament. Equal temperament was well known, but wasn't used because people didn't care for the sound of it. Unless you're modulating through all 12 keys -as became the fad by the early 20th century, then why detune all the scales equally when you could have some that are really nicely in tune? A lot of detail is lost when translating microtonal music to ET without considering what that means. Try playing along in ET (or use pitch to midi) on a raga or a string quartet, or gamelan or balofon music. It bugs the hell out of me how every app has a list of japanese and raga scales. This is simply false advertising. It is not the scale it claims to be if it's in equal temperament! There is no raga scale that is equally tempered.
I would go as far as to argue that all music before the invention of the electric tuner is microtonal. The best piano tuners in the world tune by ear for a reason. Justly tuned scales can be easily tuned by ear, whereas equal temperament is nearly impossible to do so, as the ear doesn't do well with irrational frequency relationships. So a nicely tuned acoustic instrument is almost never truly equally tuned because the human ear gravitates toward consonance (thus small frequency ratios).
Mmhhhhh.....but to the topic.....where are all the apps which support it.
Zeeon.....helloooooo?
I spent four decades playing jazz guitar in ET. I got really good with jazz harmony, as you do when you spend that much time on something.
About seven months ago I started taking singing lessons in Indian classical music. Since then the guitar bores me. It is too melodically limited, and I have lost most interest in harmony. A supple melody line that can portamento between notes has all the harmony I need for right now. But ET is out of tune for ragas, and so I need apps that will tune.
I've been updating the list in the first post every time someone posts a suggestion in this thread. Come on Zeeon--give us MPE and Scala. I wish Ripplemaker would too, but I doubt he will.
I really wish iOS would be that innovative thing but not as long as synths don´t let me import .tun files and just load them, save them as part of a preset etc. which works since years with many VST.
C´mon. Time for iOS to grow up. I really want to give it another chance. My finger hovers over an iPad 12.9" to buy button.....maybe if i´m drunken later i will be surprised some days later.....or better said, next year