If you've read any of my previous articles, you could see that my interest is very much peaked when the topic of note frequency comes up. I've been absolutely obsessed with it!
So, lets talk about tuning systems. We know that our harmonic series works in a linear trend (as a pose to just intonation which follows an exponential trend). I noticed one other pattern in the harmonic series, and that's how many notes per octave there were at different stages of the series. first there is one note per octave, then 2, then 4, then 8, then 16, then 32. It made me wonder why we choose to have 12 notes per octave in our standard tuning when 12 doesn't naturally occur in our series. Based on this realization i decided to create a tuning system with 16 notes per octave instead of 12, and i wanted to experiment with it a little bit! I actually had the idea for a little while, but i just lacked the insight on how i could achieve it, because building a midi instrument that has more then 12 tones is actually quite challenging. questions like How does it relate to a midi keyboard?, how do i get a synth to play in this tuning when most synths are built around the 12 tone chromatic scale? I delved into the internet in search for methods, but came up pretty dry. I tried a few programs but only got errors with the programs (god damn it scala). But then, as if from above, the idea came to me! Why don't you just record sine waves at the right frequencies into a drum rack? (i felt like a bit of an idiot for not realizing it sooner) It took a while to record the frequencies and sub them into a drum rack, but i compiled about two octaves (around 32 notes) based on the 16 tone scale that related to A being 440Hz. y=2^(x/16)*440 as i was recording i realized sine waves were too basic and didn't really sound that great! To add a little bit of flavour i put a "harmonic adder" on the sine tones. Once i had my scale, it was time to experiment with it to see how the notes related to one another. I realized that just like in our normal scale, there were certain notes that were dissonant and certain notes that were consonant. based on that, i built two scales, one major and one minor. I started writing little melodies that kinda sounded like fair music with a haunting nature. Eventually i used this scale in my "Line" assignment for uni, which was and assignment where we had to write a single melody with no accompaniment, no chords, and using compositional techniques! To hear the track with the tuning system in it, you can find it in the experimental section of my main page. The song is called Wash Away Marketplace. (because it sounds a bit like it could be played in a marketplace as background noise.
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AuthorMy name is Daniel Ohm and this section will include my research into music theory, experimental ideas, Mixing techniques and lessons learned from creative forums and musical endeavors. Archives
September 2022
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