Sevish

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Leimma & Apotome: two new web tools for microtonal music

Two new tools have just appeared that will interest people working with microtonal scales and tunings: Leimma and Apotome. These tools were launched as part of CTM Festival 2021 and were created by Khyam Allami and Counterpoint.

Leimma

Leimma is a browser-based tool for exploring, creating, hearing, and playing microtonal tuning systems.

Apotome

Apotome is a browser-based generative music environment based on octave-repeating microtonal tuning systems and their subsets (scales/modes).

Inharmonic Strings and the Hyperpiano

Vibrating strings produce (more or less) harmonic overtones. If two strings are tuned in some simple frequency ratio such as 3/2, 4/3 or 5/3, then those harmonic overtones match up nicely and avoid roughness. But if the two strings are tuned in some haphazard fashion then the overtones of each string won’t match up, causing the overtones to clash with each other.

We can actually plot out a graph which shows the interval between two strings and the corresponding dissonance. This is called a dissonance curve, and for a normal string it looks something like this:

So what.

Well, imagine a weird kind of string that produces inharmonic overtones, such that the dissonance curve looks different to the one above. Because the dissonance curve is different, you couldn’t play Air on the G String and expect it to sound good. You could however write new music that would fit with the novel dissonance curve.

Today, such a string is more than just a mathematical curiosity. It exists in the physical world.

Inharmonic Strings and the Hyperpiano” (by Kevin Hobby and William Sethares) is a paper published in Applied Acoustics. The strings in their hyperpiano have a stretched out dissonance curve where the double-octave sounds most consonant and the octave becomes dissonant. Okay so maybe it’s not going to be used on every new pop record, but this kind of freaky instrument can produce game-changing new tonalities.

Since the dissonance curve is stretched out to the double-octave or “hyperoctave”, Kevin Hobby suggests we might try tuning a hyperpiano instrument to 12 equal divisions of the hyperoctave. Wait, isn’t that just 6-EDO – a whole tone scale? Actually, it isn’t! They may be identical tunings, but the octave is considered a dissonant interval on the hyperpiano, analogous to the tritone on a normal piano. So it makes a lot more sense to describe this tuning as 12 equal divisions of the hyperoctave. Really.

The ringing of the strange hyperpiano sounds like a death bell for the unwavering cult-like belief in pure ratios and true frequencies. Tuning and timbre are deeply linked. If we’re willing to experiment with new timbres then we can uncover new musical vocabulary for the future to come.

The next step is to explore all this for yourself – download the sampled hyperpiano and give it a play.

Stereo Panning in Ableton Live

Just wanted to share a super simple Ableton Live effects rack. Despite its simplicity, this is the rack I use the most (in fact it’s my default rack preset). It’s a stereo pan. Download it.

Stereo Pan effect rack for Ableton Live

You see, Ableton Live strangely omits stereo panning while other DAWs such as Logic Pro and Pro Tools sensibly include it.

That thing that looks like a pan pot on the channel strip? Yeah that’s a balance control. It doesn’t actually let you manipulate a stereo signal, it just makes the left or right channel quieter. Stereo panning is different; it allows you to pan the left and right channel independently to any part of the stereo image.

I use this effects rack to tightly control the stereo image of my tracks and busses. And I never use Live’s balance control unless it’s on a mono track.

Installing the Stereo Pan effects rack

  1. Download Stereo Pan.
  2. Unzip the adg file.
  3. Drag the adg file on to an effects chain and Ableton will place the rack for you.

Example usage

  1. Instead of setting the balance control to 10 o’clock, try panning the left channel to 8 o’clock and the right channel to 12 o’clock.
  2. Create a return track with a stereo ping pong delay. Usually these delayed signals are hard left and hard right. Place the Stereo Pan rack after the delay to position the two delayed signals wherever you like in the stereo field.

If you’re interested, check out some of my sounds.

Sleep Deprived Cooked Alive remix stems

Sleep Deprived Cooked Alive is a drum & bass track from my album Rhythm and Xen. It’s written in 14-EDO (a microtonal tuning). It’s definitely one of the more popular tracks, so I’ve decided to release the remix stems for free.

Download the Sleep Deprived Cooked Alive remix stems pack

The pack includes audio stems, MIDI parts and tuning files to help you tune your synthesizers to 14-EDO. Refer to your synth’s manual to see if it supports these files. This should be enough to get a good remix going, or just to study my work if you’re learning microtonal music.

If you make anything with these stems then let me know! I would love to check it out.

Creative Commons Licence
Sleep Deprived Cooked Alive (stems pack) by Sevish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://sevish.bandcamp.com/track/sleep-deprived-cooked-alive.

Sevish in the studio, live stream starts in 12 hours

Just for fun I’ll will be live streaming my next music making session. Tune in here:
http://www.twitch.tv/sevishmusic/
Sunday 2:30am UTC

There will be live chat so we can discuss approaches to microtonal composition, sound design, audio engineering etc. Just follow the link to start watching. You’ll need to sign up for a free Twitch.tv account to get on the chat, and I hope you’ll do that so I can have some company while making noises.

I’ll be working on some new stuff, and maybe also creating some synth sound designs to be used later. I’m happy to load up the songs from Rhythm and Xen if you want to see how they were made. Never tried anything like this before so let’s do something new!