Key change/modulation
2005-12-23 by Charles Lucy
On 22 Dec 2005, at 21:38, Logic_Cafe@yahoogroups.com wrote:
Message: 2Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:59:38 ESTFrom: GAmoore@...Subject: Re: What microtuning is all about - well you did ask about how microtuning is used in "real life"?Sounds interesting. I understand the problem with equal temprement - the notso harmonious chords and slight dissonance even on perfect intervals.Does each tuning depend on a particular key? For example a F# in D might bedifferent than in B?
All pitches are calculated from the reference frequency of A=440Hz;
and the pitch of a named notes is always consistent.
e.g. D; Ab; G#; Fx; Bbb are always the same pitch for the same notename, regardless of key signature,
weather, number of Saturdays in the month, or other esoteric conditions/clauses/lemmas/commas/. .
You can modulate and transpose infinitely, and emulate any conceivable tuning, as it is derived from pi (irrational, transcendental π)
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Warning!!!
(Just Intonation, which uses diverse intervals sizes dependent upon the scale position of intervals.
JI aims to remove beating, by always attempting to only sound pitches in small integer frequency ratios). This results in inconsistent interval sizes.
For details see:
for more info. on other microtuning systems or
Encyclopedia of Microtonal Music Theory
There are a few very active yahoo lists on tuning which discuss these types of mathematical/philosophic/musical questions:
Beware! The numerology of microtuning has occupied many of the best minds on the planet for thousands of man years. e.g. Helmholtz, Mercator, Harrison, ........
If you get too involved in the details of the arithmetic etc.; it can become addictive and leave you no time to make music;-)
Unless you want to spend your time building equations and instruments for experimentation,
you're just gonna have to trust my word, when I say that LucyTuning works. (I have spent most of the past twenty years researching tuning systems.)
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And if so, then when the song modulates, you have tochange the key tuning?
Yes correct. (if you intend to use more than twelve different notenames in the song)
The way that microtuning is implemented in Logic limits users to twelve different notes per octave at any one time.
The way around this is to bounce the bars of the song which are "correct"; then change the tuning and bounce the "now in tune" bars; ad infinitum,
and then assemble the bounces as audio files before mixing.
This way you can use as many different notes per octave as you wish.
It would be more convenient if users could apply different tunings to different tracks, so that users would place different tunings in their own tracks;
nevertheless the work around that I explained does actually work very well,
For Western music which is not particularly harmonically sophisticated, you rarely need more than twelve notes per octave.
Maybe one day Logic designers will get around to upgrading the way that it works: in the meantime...... we just use the work around.
The current method is a great improvement of how you had to handle microtuning on Logic 6.
I hope this clarifies your query.
Have fun!
Charles Lucy - lucy@...
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