Digital software instruments give you opportunities to explore new sounds and timbres, so why not add tuning to the list? Kore@CDM contributor and sound designer Eoin Rossney helps us navigate the potentially intimidating world of microtuning. Microtonal sound simply refers, generally, to tunings beyond the now-standard 12-Tone Equal Temperament we find on modern pianos. First off, microtuning doesn’t have to sound dissonant or “out of tune” - like other choices with synthesis, it can simply give you some new sonic abilities. Native Instruments’ synths are well-suited to the task, as many having tuning capabilities built-in. If you’re using plug-ins to assist your microtonal voyage, Kore is a natural with its plug-in hosting capabilities. But the most important thing is just to dive in somewhere and see what happens - with no physical instrument to retune, it’s something anyone can do.

We’ve got a massive set of resources here to get started. It’s a bit stream-of-consciousness, but take a browse; there’s surely something in here to get you started. We’ll follow up with some specific microtuned instrument examples. Enjoy! -PK

Introducing Microtonal Sound

Before we begin, there are one or two things you should know:

Forcing incoming midi to a scale isn’t necessarily microtuning. Ableton Live’s Scale plugin, for example, maps incoming notes to a scale, but that scale will still have only 12 intervals per octave: Microtonal scales have notes between the western 12 note-per-octave pitches.

Microtonal doesn’t necessarily mean dissonant. In fact, in classical music, some ’subtle’ or meantone tunings can sound more “in tune” than conventional tunings. Ed.: That’s because composers in previous centuries didn’t use the 12-Tone Equal Tempered tuning we generally use on pianos today - on the contrary, many of them would likely think your Steinway grand sounds out of tune. -PK Depending on how you play the scale, some harmonies can sound beautifully pure, but hit a wrong note and things get nasty.

Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. Going through some of the available tunings out there, results can vary from making sound almost inaudible to making your instrument sound quite “alive”, with pitches changing depending on what notes are held.

Quick Tip: Instant Microtuning on PC

To get started, here’s a quick hack for trying out microtonal sound. The easiest way by far to retune your Windows synths is to grab Tobybear’s MicroTuner.  This basic VST allows you to load Scala .scl tunings by drag and drop and then imposes them on your synth. (Scala is the standard format for tuning tables.) This is more of a hack than a proper retuning, but it works.

Here’s how it’s done:
Step 1: Download/install the Tobybear Midibag plugins
Step 2: Download/extract the Scala scale library
Step 3: Place Microtuner in front of your instrument
Step 4: Drag the .scl file onto the GUI
Step 4: Olé!

Here’s a case study for you - the M1 modular synth, built in Reaktor which is arguably a modular synth in itself. So why build a modular synth in a modular synth? Patch cables!

Yes, using Reaktor’s Multi Display, along with a lot of frighteningly clever programming, Herwig Krass has built what looks like a rack of hardware synth modules that you program by clicking connection  points between the modules right on the front panel of the GUI. Granted, they’re not physically modeled cables that flex and sway in a lifelike manner, but they do give you an immediate visual indication of how a patch is structured.

So is this a gimmicky ensemble whose only strong point is the cabled GUI? Not at all. Listen to some of the snapshots, especially the random snaps in bank 3 and the pseudo random snaps in bank 4 (did I mention it comes with 6 banks of snaps?). These are sounds I usually associate with hardware modular systems (cue sound of purists clucking their tongues that nothing can ever replace a hardware modular).

This is not an ensemble for old or underpowered systems. It takes a few extra seconds to load and eats a fair bit of CPU. Two near-effortless things you can do to reduce CPU consumption are to reduce the voice count from the default of 8, and turn off the nice sounding but processor hungry internal reverb module. Reducing the voice count, incidentally, also increases the volume of each voice.

An instrument this complex needs documentation and Herwig has provided it, in English and German PDF flavors. It’s not only a guide to this particular instrument, but an introduction to modular synthesis itself. Additionally, the first bank of snaps is devoted to simpler tutorial snapshots designed to illustrate a particular feature or concept. In the epilogue to the manual, Herwig says:

Dear Modular-infected user, I know that reading the tutorial is one of the most annoying duties of a software user. Some of what I’ve explained in these basic tutorials, might also seem trivial to some hardware users. But my aim was to make modular synthesis accessible for “green” users as well. The modular has reached a high level of complexity through the last years and cannot be grasped by just a quick look at the surface.

There’s certainly a lot going on beneath the surface of this ensemble, and I’ll be digging into it for some time to come.

From the how not to use Reaktor, some lovely finds:

I love the creative abuse of tools, and the warping of software for expressive ends. sonictwist on the Reaktor forum has posted a wild gallery of images made entirely with Reaktor. Reaktor, of course, isn’t remotely intended for this kind of generative visuals, but the results are gorgeous. The gallery of Reaktor interfaces we got going was simply to be focused on UIs – in this case, apparently partially inspired by that effort, the results are purely aesthetic. sonictwist explains:

After some years playing with multi/poly displays, I decided that it might be interesting to make a gallery with visual stuff made ONLY with R5. Ofcourse its very far from Jitter or vvvv, but we all understand that r5 wasnt designed for such purposes at all, and its even kinda fun when you realise it and try to make some decent pictures.

So, just tell what you think about this idea, post your own stuff etc… Please note that the idea is not a duplicate of Peter Kirn’s gallery, so try to post only artworks made with md/pd and maybe xy modules…

I attached some generative artworks made with multidisplay based on a pseudorandom sets of rules to showcase what I’m talking about.

Reaktor based Visual Art [NI User Forums > REAKTOR]

While these are simply for visual effect, I could imagine them being used in a strange musical interface, too. I’ll be sure to post when sonictwist uploads an ensemble.

Peter Dines adds, No one should be surprised that he’s come up with that given his skill at creating polished GUI interfaces like this:

I also enjoy the glitched-out image at right. It’s actually not intentional – it’s occurs when you import 16-color BMP files into Reaktor – but since I’m always looking for sources for digitally-distorted images, I may even use this trick. (Hmmm… cheap way of making an interface for your glitch effects Ensemble, perhaps?)

Back to using Reaktor as a sound tool, as intended, Suryummy assembled this fantastic, sci-fi cooking motion graphic with a brilliant soundtrack. Suryummy did both visuals and sound. No, that’s not Reaktor generating the visuals; that would be Maya and Particular, lest you thought he got his hands on a very different Reaktor 6. But the wonderful soundscape comes courtesy of Reaktor and Absynth, generating the distinctive timbres you hear in the track. It’s really inspiring to me to see people working across sonic and visual media in this way – and may suggest that your next Reaktor/Absynth track really needs accompanying visuals for the full effect. As seen on our sister site, Create Digital Motion.

Interstellar Sugar - Suryummy from Suryummy on Vimeo.

Fans of the tracker/music production tool Renoise wanted to make use of Gustavo Bravetti’s free FM drum kit on their tool of choice, too. Renoise is a unique environment for music making, a modern take on an alternative generation of sequencing applications called “trackers,” as can be seen from the interface above. It should be a lovely match for some FM8 synthesized drum sounds. Torben, a reader of this site and member of the Renoise forum, went ahead and did the work of porting Gustavo’s instruments to Renoise:

Free Fm8 Drumkit For Renoise, Gustavo Bravetti Exclusive Drumkit for FM8 [Renoise forum]

Being such a friendly guy, I copied the arrangement from Live into Renoise - setting up the 9 instances of FM8 with the drum-patches and the example drumloop.
For info on the drumkit check this link: http://kore.noisepages.com/2008/07/24/free…stavo-bravetti/
For downloading my Renoise-file, get it here: http://vibrants.scene.org/gustavo_bravetti…_1_renoise.xrns
And here’s how the drumkit sounds (in Ableton Live). http://media.createdigitalmedia.net/kore/s…ries/fm8kit.mp3
FM is lovely indeed
Cheers,
- Torben.

Thanks, Torben! Hope this is of use to some people. (And maybe it’ll give you an excuse to try out Renoise.)

Part of the appeal of Kore, of course, is to be able to move a sound setup from one host to another, so you could easily switch between Ableton Live and Renoise.I’ll be getting the Koresound version and straight FM8 preset out this week — I promise. And I’m especially curious to try pairing up Kore with Renoise as a host. That said, there are also times when some my prefer to drop an instrument directly into their host, minus Kore. Gustavo’s choice of Live was entirely personal; he likes dropping the different FM8’s directly into Live tracks for assembling beats. So, when I release that Koresound, perhaps we’ll compare how these different workflows function.

Got another host to request? Say so in comments. (Obviously, FM8 presets will work in any host, but I’m curious to know how you like to work.)

FM8 is a really brilliant tool for synthesizing electronic drum kits. And because it’s using live synthesis, you can make all kinds of variations in the sound easily in ways that don’t work with sampled kits. Our friend Gustavo Bravetti is a huge fan of FM8 and has added it to his workflow in Ableton Live.

Gustavo’s such a big FM8 fan, in fact, that he’s made up a special FM8 drum kit setup exclusively for CDM, to share with y’all. Because Gustavo works in Ableton Live, he’s set them up in that environment:

The sounds are contained on an Ableton Live dj set, also there is a demo clip for each instrument.
Instruments are copyright free, clips are only intended to preview the instruments.
Let me know your thoughts about the FM8 electronic drum kit 1

File download: (zipped Live ALS file with presets; we’ll have a Koresound soon)

bravetti_fm8drums_1_als.zip

Here’s what it sounds like:

fm8kit.mp3

And just to demonstrate how much change you can extract from synth parameters, here’s a quickie "messed-up" demo I made just by changing synth and effects options in FM8:

fm8kit_2.mp3

Be sure to check out Gustavo Bravetti himself, too. He did an interview for CDM in which he shares all his tricks for using unusual alternative controllers, gestural gloves, and gaming devices for music making. He also talks about the scene in his native Uruguay. Liz McLean Knight did the interview:

Interview: Gustavo Bravetti, Playing Music with Light and Interactive Gloves

How can you make the most of this FM8 kit? Here are some quick ideas, which I’ll follow up in the coming days:

Ugo Audio has released a set of 15 free presets for Massive. There are a couple of very nice physically modeled bowed and plucked sounds in there making use of Massive’s comb filters, and two representative examples of the atmospheric and sequenced patches that Massive excels at:

I’ll be posting some more material on Massive shortly. Stay tuned!