Just Intonation in DP7?

[braves11]

I've recently come across La Monte Young's "Well-Tuned Piano", played on a special Bosendorfer piano tuned to his specifications and the effect really intrigues me. He tuned the piano using "just intonation", also called perfect or pythagorean tuning which uses small whole number ratios instead of the current equal temperament tuning system. I'm curious, is there a way to operate instrument tracks like this so that the tuning can be had with any sound?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

That would be a function of the VI or kbd/module. So no.

[BKK-OZ]

There are many (most?) VI's that offer alternative tunings.
Absynth, all of LinPlug's products, many others...

[Shooshie]

Just intonation sounds intriguing, all right, until you get further than a fifth away from tonic. The diatonic triads will each have a certain flavor, but they'll sound all right. When you modulate to another key -- especially a key that's, say, a fifth away from the V chord (D, in the key of C), you'll start hearing very troubling pitches. Once you get as far from tonic as you can get -- the tritone (F# in the key of C) -- it will be unbearable. The pitches will sound like someone detuned all your notes.

Just intonation is "just" only for the key in which it is tuned. In order to get all the other keys working for you, you have to make compromises. We're pretty used to Equal Temperament, so it doesn't sound terribly out of tune to us, but it's a set of compromises which cause the least troubling triads and tetrads. If you are comfortable with music that never strays to a secondary dominant, then Just Intonation may be your ball of wax. It sounds incredibly lush and sonorous for those first diatonic triads and sevenths.

Sooner or later, most people find themselves craving to use a little more of the keyboard. Various tunings make it possible to use more and more of the keyboard with less and less ear-curdling cacophony. Most people eventually find themselves back where J.S. Bach found himself 300-odd years ago: equal temperament offers the best compromise between musical freedom and pitch. It's a pleasing mathematical relationship between notes: they all sound proportionately the same distance from their surrounding notes. You won't have those flattened thirds and sixths that resonate consonantly with their tonic, but they'll sound ok.

Pitch turns out to be a very complicated set of relationships. If you want absolute control over them, you must play a woodwind, brass, or stringed instrument that offers you the ability to adjust every single note you play. Learning where to put each note, and gaining the skill to do it, is another matter. This takes years of careful study and repetition. It becomes 2nd nature, without a thought given to "where" the pitch should be; you simply put it where your ear expects to hear it. Quite doable, but it requires very concentrated efforts to learn how. Conservatories generally do not allow their students to play with anyone outside the conservatory until they have mastered this, because playing with people who do not know how to do this will set back their training through negative feedback. An individual's best bet is to play scales, patterns, and music with a sounding pitch for the tonic note, and change it as the reference note changes in the music. Troublesome, but it gets easier and easier in time. Once you experience the absolute certainty of relative pitch, you will never regret it.

Keyboardists, unfortunately, have to be satisfied with equal temperament, at least until some amazing artificial intelligence is programmed to predict the next harmony and set the next pitch accordingly, as you play, without so much as a few milliseconds of adjustment time.

Sorry for the lengthy explanation. It's a complicated subject, and those who haven't been there rarely understand what goes into playing "in tune." It's not something a meter can tell you. It's something you develop over years of careful training, such that you prehear each note and nail the pitch as you play it, adjusting within two or three vibrations, so that nobody really knows that you're constantly moving that pitch. It's a skill that requires constant practice to keep it in shape.

Just Intonation, on the other hand, is a set of simple mathematical relationships (small whole number ratios) that make for great harmony, but which do not allow for much music. As the music moves around the circle of 5ths, the pitch has to be adjusted by ear so that those small-whole-number ratios are possible for any intervals with any note. The key words are "music moves." Temperaments don't.

Shooshie

[cuttime]

A wonderful freebie AU that will play .tun files:

HERE

.tun files can be found all over the internet, and while the versions of diatonic scales have been around for centuries, there are many other microtonal scales to explore.

[mikehalloran]

The neat thing about the digital age is that you can play with things like just or mean tone - or even perfect intonation if you want to.

As has been pointed out, these work in one key only.

My Bösendorfer gets tuned equal temperament, thank you. My wife (she with the Masters in Piano Performance) has been looking for a new technician since the one we used for the last 32 years suffered a stroke like I did. She hasn't really liked any of the others we have used.

My non-virtual piano (Vega and ODE banjos optional). It's an early 1920s Model 200.

[braves11]

First off, thanks cuttime for the great synth link! Extremely helpful! And Shooshie I learned a ton in your post!

On the subject of only being able to stay in one key. What really actually attracts me to the older system is that our ears aren't used to it any more, and that seems to change how most people perceive pieces written in it.
Nearly everybody can sense when something is "out of tune" or when something "doesn't belong", when it's written in equal temperament, because the rules of harmony and progression have been so established in the western world's ear that most structures are completely impermeable. Is this a bad thing? Not really. It helps those who aren't trained easily latch on to the music.

To me though, it is a huge limiting factor because those rules lend themselves to letting people harshly judge the subjective nature of "beauty" in a work when they're broken. And a substantial portion of my work just simply doesn't use them. I write fairly atonally (not in a 12 tone row sense, but using sets and vectors), and my writing goals are always to look for new textures, sounds, and harmonies. I've found that the less this work resembles traditional western harmonies, the less people judge the work based on preconceived notions of how music should sound. So using a completely different intonation system not only opens up a new world of sounds, but also further distances itself. Staying in key shouldn't be a problem when there isn't one

[FMiguelez]

I write fairly atonally (not in a 12 tone row sense, but using sets and vectors)...

Vectors?
You mean that as in Hindemith's suggested techniques (or analysis), or are you referring to something else? Please elaborate on that a little... You got me curious now

[braves11]

I wish I could answer your question with complete certainty, but my teacher hasn't quite explained the history behind sets and vectors. I believe you're right in mentioning Hindemith, he is definitely an inspiration in the way I work, but it's also close to Shostakovich's later music (especially his string quartets and 2nd piano sonata).

but here's how I do it. It all starts with a change in perspective from lettered pitches, to numbers (called pitch classes). C=0, C#/Db=1, etc... B=11.

Then I build a set of pitch classes by thinking about the intervals it contains, depending on the character of the piece I have in mind.
For example:
A really dissonant set - 0,1,2,6,11 (contains many minor and major 2nds, a tritone etc)
A really consonant set - 1,2,5,6,9 (appears to have a tonic and dominant, a major 6th, whole steps etc)

Then I write out all the ways that set can be transposed:
Original - 1,2,5,6,9
1st - 2,3,6,7,10
2nd - 3,4,7,8,11 and so on.

In a simple ABA form, this original set and it's transpositions will form the basis of the A sections.

The B section is formed from the theoretical opposite (inverse) of the original set and its transpositions, which can be done by subtracting each pitch class in the set from the number 11 to find the new pitch classes

Original - 1,2,5,7,9
Inverse - 10,9,6,4,2

Melodies and harmonies are typically formed from one set using all the included pitch classes, but unlike a 12-tone row you are free to use it however you want without worrying about order or repetition. The point of this all this is trying to find new harmonies and soundscapes while giving them an accurate descriptor by defining the relationships between pitches in a non-traditional setting. Those relationships (intervals) are are known as vectors.

I understand how theoretical and bland or random this method sounds haha, but it's actually a great way to break into new worlds that are difficult to imagine when we all have an ingrained sense of harmony!

[FMiguelez]

Thanks for the reply, Braves11.

I totally see what you are saying. It's also similar to some of Bartok's cells approach.

This works so well when one wants total freedom of counterpoint lines, which can be quite adventurous, as Shostakovich clearly shows us.
Schoenberg is another master at this, and his journey into developing his 12 Tone Row is not only illustrative, but fascinating.

Like you say, the key thing is to use whatever method gets you closer to getting nice harmony, texture and color.

I remember one of the most enjoyable lessons I took at college... it was a Film Scoring class that dealt with ways of creating (or easing) tension as you went... sort of a priori decisions based on tension relationships between pitches.

The point was to come up with a skeleton of vertical progressions that gave you the framework to elaborate and ornament as needed based on the desired dissonance/consonance.
It is a great way to get ideas rolling, especially when the muses are busy elsewhere.

[KenNickels]

/*
Keyboardists, unfortunately, have to be satisfied with equal temperament, at least until some amazing artificial intelligence is programmed to predict the next harmony and set the next pitch accordingly, as you play, without so much as a few milliseconds of adjustment time.
*/

Shooshie, maybe there's a workaround short of artificial intelligence. What if you could send a MIDI note to your just-intoned synth, sort of like an articulation switch, to change the key and realign the frequencies for each key. For example, going from C to G gives less "off-notes" than C to D. By telling the synth "Now you're in D, starting ... Now!" you could mitigate the off notes. It wouldn't be perfect because the composer would be limited in the complexity of the modulations and would have to conform to this limited system. As I said, it's workaround. But if you really want those sweet thirds and perfect fifths, then this is the price you pay. Everything's a trade-off.

[stubbsonic]

I remember playing around with Logic's "Hermode Tuning" which attempts to tune chords as you play (with it's native VI's). It worked ok for single keys, and adjusted for some tonal shifts. However, if I played a non-key-specific progression, it would reach a point where it would max out it's compensation and the resulting "pinning" could be heard.

There are quite a number of VI's that allow one to load tuning maps. Pianoteq-- which might be useful for the OP's original example--has this capability. On the synth side, Rhino (I believe) also has this ability. I think there's a bunch of them.

[KenNickels]

The neat thing about the digital age is that you can play with things like just or mean tone - or even perfect intonation if you want to.

As has been pointed out, these work in one key only.

My Bösendorfer gets tuned equal temperament, thank you. My wife (she with the Masters in Piano Performance) has been looking for a new technician since the one we used for the last 32 years suffered a stroke like I did. She hasn't really liked any of the others we have used.

My non-virtual piano (Vega and ODE banjos optional). It's an early 1920s Model 200.

Mike, your photo here is amusing, like a minimalist version of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma album cover. Little ole banjo ...

[Kubi]

Kontakt is great for retuning quickly, just open the hood, instantiate a script, and voila.

I will often use some of these tunings as colors, even in an equal temperament environment. Used judiciously and on the right sounds, they can turn quickly into a "timbre feature" of sorts. It's great fun, and can often make for far more interesting pieces. Go for it.