I’m trying to find a way to efficiently detune each voice slightly for some advanced harmony and distortion stuff, for example, tracking a power chord to midi and then being able to detune only the fifth by 1.96 cents. Currently my only real option is to use the Velocity control, but I don’t want to sacrifice it if I don’t have to.
Maybe use a tunings file?
I was thinking about that, but if the tuning works like I think it does then it wouldn’t work very well. “Just” tuning basically only works the way I need it to around a single note (A to E would be a perfect ratio, but B to F# wouldn’t) , so I’d have to change something for every note anyway. My current solution for now is to just have multiple instances of Vital and use automation to retune them if I need to. I’m pretty much just trying to make it so every chord I play is a perfect ratio so that I can get more creative with distortion.
Your first and foremost limiting factor is that Vital tunes per-oscillator or per-patch if you’re not using a tuning file, not per-voice. This is prohibitive for achieving your goal with modulators. …edit: okay I was wrong, osc tuning is calculated per-voice for envs, lfos, pressure and velocity at least, I’ve used these before and I knew this doh. What threw me off is that modulating LFO’s starting phase with f.ex. note jumps all running per-voice LFOs relating their running phase to the new starting phase. It’s a bit unintuitive.
Then again that would be impossible to do anyway - your end result would produce ambiguous pitch class frequencies. Like, which note of a double stop should be treated as a reference, and in what tuning and harmonic context should a frequency be chosen for your reference pitch class.
This could be impossible to do, but if you’re going to attempt, I suggest you define your goal more precisely.
Yeah, I assume that doing what I’m asking easily and natively would be impossible, unless somehow modifying the tuning files would allow you to get really complex with note relationships, which I doubt. My purpose in trying to find a way to do this was to find a way to create “just intervals” on the fly while playing chords. This would allow me, for example, to play a root and perfect fifth and then immediately follow it up with a root and major third, all while under heavy distortion, and still retain a clean distortion tone and have the root notes follow 12tet. Without being able to retune each voice individually, I would either have to: A. Abandon 12tet and not be able to use anything besides the root note for distorted chords, B. Use a fixed interval and lose an oscillator and the ability to play more than one chord, or C. Use multiple instances of Vital under one distortion bus and use DAW automation to retune each voice as needed. So far C is a better but painful solution.
Thinking about it did make me curious about how in theory you could make something similar in a synthesizer. In theory one could design a soft synth that only moves in just intervals, which isn’t possible on any other instrument, maybe besides the human voice. It would probably sound really weird since unless you backtracked you’d never be able to replay a section in the exact same pitch twice.
You’d need a right kinda dynamic midi data generator and you’d be all set with poly aftertouch and some mod remapping. The hard part is to get the midi data to react conditionally.