MICROTUNING AUDIO

saintmiskin's icon

can anyone help me if there is anything i can use to build an audio microtuner in max? i would like to play my guitar in alternate tuning systems, and the FM8 midi microtuner is pretty good (http://dubsahara.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/HIJAZ-MIDI.jpg), but it's not good for audio singnals, and i don't want to use midi pickup..
thanks for your help!

brendan mccloskey's icon

Hi
alternate tunings require splitting the guitar strings into discrete audio streams so they can be re-tuned individually, otherwise you would simply be transposing the entire range en masse. This is not trivial and would require either a hexaphonic or midi pickup. To process the monophonic audio signal purely in Max would be even trickier and certainly beyond me.

Brendan

saintmiskin's icon

no, it's not needed to split the guitar strings, it would be a simple monophonic pitch shifter, that would shift out of the equal temperament system

brendan mccloskey's icon

Hi
you will need to split the guitar strings to achieve what you are currently describing. If you simply wish to pitch shift a monophonic melody line (regardless of the instrument) then you should not refer to "alternate tunings". This is confusing. Monophonic pitch shifting is easy. Is this what you require?

Brendan

saintmiskin's icon

why not? it would be simply a melody line in for example just intonation, and that's not ET

brendan mccloskey's icon

Ok, now it's clear, you wish to re-tune individual pitches to reflect alternative monophonic tunings.

This isn't my area, but there have been several threads here on the use of alternative tuning systems; have you tried the search dialog above top right? "Equal temperament" might be a good query to start with, and see where it leads you.

HTH

Brendan

brendan mccloskey's icon
Peter McCulloch's icon

There is also ol.autotalent~ for auto tune effects. I forget if you can adjust the tunings individually.

Roman Thilenius's icon

you basically only need to translate the note values to frequencies for one octave, then you can * 0.5 and *2 the rest.

Tj Shredder's icon

Your approach to retune a string only works nice if you are significantly louder than the original sound of the guitar...;-)
ol-autotune~ would tune you to an equal-tempered scale. But out of the description of Thomas Baran (http://tombaran.info/autotalent.html). You can try to patch it together with fiddle~ and some pitch shifting...

And you should definitely look into the Magic Microtuner:

I would probably tune the open strings to harmonic thirds relative to your fundamental (the interval which is lowest compared to equal temperament) and bend all other pitches by ear... I know, its hard with chords...;-) Or get a fretless guitar... For sure it will sound better...