Hey, just a question about La Monte Young's Piano tuning in Aalto and Kaivo - I am copying it into my modular synthesizer to have a play with - I know I should really do some more research but, the sharp/flat keys produce frequencies that are slightly higher than the next note to the right - is this correct or is it supposed to cover a change over octaves or something? I have a lovely patch in Kaivo that I want to be able to play along to with my modular system :)
You can look at the .scl file in ~/Music/Madrona Labs/Scales to see what the actual ratios are, and reorder them if you like. if there is no .kbm file A is defined as 1/1. Then the ratios in the scale are in order as intervals up from that. So in this file the 567/512 is the minor second or A#.
Checking with my calculator, indeed 1323/1024 is a little less than 21/16. I don't know from any other source if this is the way LaMonte Young played it!
Did you use this site? http://www.kylegann.com/wtp.html I might try working it out in Max/MSP. I did get some really nice stuff going between Kaivo and my modular system - I have two modules that can record and store CV with non-volatile memory so I am building stuff around that at the minute. Should get some recordings down!
Ah yeah - that site does actually say "note the scale does not uniformly ascend"
Also, from playing with it today, it makes much more sense musically if you omit Ab and Db as the page suggests :) I just built a simple max patch to generate random 3 part chords to listen to the harmonic relationship - now I know why my initial experiments sounded so weird!!
Is it possible to edit or add to the scales included with Aalto/Kaivo?
Edit: so I just looked at the .scl file - I guess the easiest way to modify would be to copy the file:
! young-lm_piano.scl
!
LaMonte Young's Well-Tempered Piano
12
!
567/512
9/8
147/128
21/16
1323/1024
189/128
3/2
49/32
7/4
441/256
63/32
2/1
I guess that the (12) indicates the number of notes per octave, so if I made that 10 and took out the intervals that don't sound so good then that would do it? Otherwise I will just filter the midi data somehow
Well I tried it a couple of ways and can't seem to get it to work, is it possible to modify / add to the .scl files?
Creating a new .scl appeared in the instruments, but doesn't seem to work properly.
You can just edit the scl files. You could also make a .kbm file to specify how the notes in the scale map to MIDI notes. without a kbm file Aalto / Kaivo use a default mapping with A440 as the tonic 1/1. Full docs are on the Scala Home Page.
You may have to close and reopen Aalto after the files are changed. I'll have a look at this.
I tried editing the .scl files - I did this but it didn't work (sorry they don't display very well):
! young-lm_piano.scl
!
LaMonte Young's Well-Tempered Piano
10
!
567/512
9/8
147/128
21/16
189/128
3/2
49/32
7/4
63/32
2/1
and this:
! young-lm_piano.scl
!
LaMonte Young's Well-Tempered Piano
12
!
567/512
9/8
147/128
21/16
21/16
189/128
3/2
49/32
7/4
7/4
63/32
2/1
I will try the .kbm route next
You may be editing files in the wrong location. Aalto 1.6 and up are using ~/Music. Previous versions use ~/Library/Plug-Ins/Presets...
Just try a simpler test first, make a new .scl file and see if it shows up in the menu.
Yeah I have the file appearing - I am trying to edit with Scala now, before I was just editing the text file.
I think I have it because this sounds right(er) now - I just copied over the flat notes with the previous note in Scala - I will learn how to do things properly in Scala at some point!! https://soundcloud.com/aidanrichardtaylor/kaivo-tuning-experiment
Next problem to fix is that weird "ping" I get in my Kaivo patch hehe