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The Broken Scales Of Wendy Carlos

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It's Wendy Carlos's birthday this week, so we're paying tribute to one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music. Her work is complex and varied, and her influence runs deep in modern music, but I'm a sucker for a good tuning system, and Wendy Carlos may have invented one of the coolest ones ever. She dared to ask a question most theorists hadn't even considered: Is the octave actually that big a deal? What can we do if we just... get rid of it? It turns out removing the octave gives you absurdly pure, beautiful sounds and, whether or not the trade-off is worth it, I think it's awesome that she even thought to ask.
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Опубликовано:

21 авг 2024

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Комментарии : 246

@12tone 6 лет назад

Just to make sure everyone's on the same page: I'm going to delete any comments that include Wendy Carlos's deadname. I don't care about the context, or how relevant it is to your point. She has a right to define her own identity and I intend to respect that. No exceptions.

@eljestLiv 6 лет назад

Huge respect for that, go 12tone! Just a heads up, many trans people don’t take very kindly to the term ”transgendered” (as in ”she is transgendered”), so expect some negative comments on that. Just leave out that last "d". Otherwise, huge props to you for spotlighting this!

@12tone 6 лет назад

Huh, I'd never heard that before. My apologies, and thanks for letting me know!

@12tone 6 лет назад

I edited it in the subtitles, but unfortunately I'm not sure I can do much about the audio. Again, my apologies.

@eljestLiv 6 лет назад

Don't worry about it. I personally think it's an okay term to use, but many people don't. When Christina DiEdoardo, a transgender woman, was asked how many out of 10 trans people would say they dislike the word transgendered, she answered "11"

@stardustinmotion1671 6 лет назад

bless u 12tone for standing up for this. endless love.

@celeste1823 4 года назад

I didn't understand anything because I'm not familiar enough with music theory but. I'm gonna leave a like just for my girl Wendy

@dankwarmouse6248 6 лет назад

Wendy Carlos is amazing! She also did a 'cover' of Beethoven's 9th Symphony for Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, which popularized the vocoder, the effect responsible for the 'robot talking' you'll hear in music such as Daft Punk. This may seem minor but it was the public's first real introduction to that sound and spawned many evolutions in music, for example, Kraftwerk's HUGELY influential album Autobahn, released in 1974, two years after A Clockwork Orange.

@Noone-of-your-Business 6 лет назад

I don't think Daft Punk use vocoders. Sounds more like cranked-to-the-limit AutoTune to me.

@vinylwrap5571 6 лет назад

None of your Business Yeah they do. They used it on Something about us.

@WilliamCroissant 6 лет назад

Daft Punk undoubtedly uses vocoders.

@tonybates7870 6 лет назад

I think even "mainstream" acts like ELO used vocoders.

@mournblade1066 5 лет назад

@@tonybates7870 Yeah, vocoders were all over the place from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Funky Town, Mister Roboto, The Best of Times, Let's Groove, etc.

@mikekelly9663 6 лет назад

Psst, Moog rhymes with vogue.

@mopippenger7373 6 лет назад

Mike Kelly Voog

@Johnboysmudge 6 лет назад

Bob himself (in the Moog documentary) said that his own family pronounce it both ways. I don't think he really minded how we pronounce it. Also I think it's a US Vs European way of saying it. Nearly every British, German, French person I've met say MOOg (moo like a cow) most Americans seem to pronounce it mogue (like vogue as you say) - as the name is originally European, maybe they are saying correctly after all....

@kourii 6 лет назад

+1980alsful the name is originally Dutch, and in Dutch 'oo' is pronounced like 'oh' (think 'Roosevelt'). I don't see what the British have got to do with it.

@jrpipik 6 лет назад

You are correct. Not Moo like a cow, Mo like a Stooge. Then a G.

@bryede 6 лет назад

Maybe Bob didn't care all that much, but if you look into it, you'll find that those who knew him and those who work for his company say "mogue" - long O.

@timbeaton5045 6 лет назад

Interesting video, my only slight problem is that the pace is so fast, that the actual tone examples are too quiet and brief to hear properly. Would be nice to let our ears taste these intervals a bit more. But, interesting and worth watching all the same. Have been a fan of Wendy, since i first bought Switched On Bach, on reel to reel tape(!) back in 1969. Still think her recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos are fantastic, and better (to my ears) than most "real" versions. Especially the 4th. final moment, the fugue. Will track down the Carlos album for a listen.

@jeffirwin7862 6 лет назад

Holy shit, that alpha triad. It didn't even sound weird to me, just sounded like a perfection that I never knew existed. Beauty in the Beast was interesting, but I'd like to hear more music in these tunings.

@markuskenel 5 лет назад

@Jeff Irwin I don't know if these specific tunings were used anywhere else, but there is a lot of music that was written before the equal temperament was becoming standard. in fact, i think every pianopiece before romantic era. maybe this is no news to you but i was astounished when i learned that :)

@purplealice 6 лет назад

Wendy Carlos' curiosity extends beyond music. Among other things, she's extremely well respected for her astronomical photography. What an amazing person!

@purplealice 6 лет назад

I was a hippie, and learning to be a sound technician, when _Switched-On Bach_ was released. It blew my mind - it sounded like the way sunlight sparkles on a brook that runs over rocks. I couldn't get enough of it! And to think that the person who created those sounds is so skilled in other fields as well!

@paneity2749 5 лет назад

Really enjoyable vid, love your style. Thanks for boosting Carlos's underrepresented profile! [One issue, which drives me nuts... single-cent pitch acuity (at 440 Hz) isn't impossible. It's uncommon, but I wasn't the only kid in my conservatorium who'd picked it 10/10 times during metrics testing, with higher-/lower-/identically-pitched test notes (e.g. your second "5-10" exemplar @ 2:34 is raised the full 10 cents). The Muscovian magi didn't test beyond 1-cent deviation, but at pitches ~1,000 Hz it gets difficult. IME, with comorbid "perfect" pitch: listening to most strings players/singers/etc. is rough, playing everyday/public pianos is painful, I won't ever sing well enough to feel satisfied, tuning most guitars is a Sisyphean nightmare, etc. It does nothing to help my limited musical creativity or technique; if anything, the opposite. It sucks the pleasure from listening to and creating casual music, it's a useless burd-sorry, I don't get to whinge about this often.] Anyway, something that actually matters: my ex remains the most glorious man I've ever had the privilege of knowing, and happens to be trans. Your stance on deadnaming and trans respect in general is music to my ears; prioritising this [woefully uncommon, basic human] decency is appreciated in the extreme. Thank you! ❤

@SendyTheEndless 6 лет назад

I actually tune many of my synths to have slightly flat or sharp octaves, simply by routing keyfollow to oscillator pitch. It can just do something for wide parts like strings and pads that makes things sound more exotic and expansive.

@jacobcrowley8207 6 лет назад

Thank you so much, I tried using her Beta scale the morning after watching this and it was amazing. It was such a different way of thinking about things, just focusing on pure intervals and ratios rather than memories of chords and visual spaces between them on the piano roll on my DAW. I've been using the VST softsynths IVOR2 and Xen-FMTS-2 which support microtuning on top of being genuinely good synths, and come with her 3 scales. Trying to get cozy beachside vibes out of it has been tricky but I've done a Black Hole Sun clone with an Indian-esque portamento solo which was fun to write.

@spiderstheythem 5 лет назад

switched on bach is probably one of the most significant pieces of music in human history, & without it the last half century of musical culture (& just culture in general) would be radically different. she took the synthesizer from being seen as a novelty to being seen as a real, serious instrument, and i appreciate her so much for that

@6midlan 6 лет назад

"You need a difference of 5-10 cents before you can really hear a difference." *plays the same note twice* God my ear is shit.

@12tone 6 лет назад

I wouldn't worry about it, it's still pretty much the absolute bottom range of human perception. It's not supposed to sound very different at all.

@gonzoengineering4894 6 лет назад

It takes a sensitive ear to even notice that. I've seen untrained ears miss steps of over 30 cents! It gets even harder in musical context. Walter Piston pointed out in his book on orchestration that the best musicians in the world can drift as far as a quarter tone out of equal temperament without ruffling any ears -even their own!

@buttsbutts7858 6 лет назад

It's easier to notice if you play full, but simple chords. Using a 'brighter'/'rougher' timbre helps too. Try playing 12-edo tempered major and minor chords with clipping (distortion) of some kind, and then try the pure, or nearly pure ones.

@MisterAppleEsq 6 лет назад

I hope the album costs the sum of all the intervals in its melodies, converted to monetary cents.

@Misack8 6 лет назад

You are going too far, m8.

@MisterAppleEsq 6 лет назад

Well, art is priceless...

@MisterAppleEsq 6 лет назад

Whatever cents you want.

@MuzikBike 6 лет назад

If I could, I would build a piano with 12 different keyboards based off of a single familiar note each, and the intervals would be perfect relating to the note on its specific keyboard.

@dushdy7160 6 лет назад

Great Video! People like Wendy Carlos and Isao Tomita did so many great things with synths I recently got myself Korgs Monologue Synthesizer, which has a built-in microtuning feature. It lets you create you own microtunings in the context of octaves AND even over the whole keyboard. Despite being a monophonic synth it is a very good tool to get a feeling for different tuning systems. Pure major, minor, slendro tunings and some others are even included by default. I've then recreated the overtone series in an user octave of my own, and found it seems to be the same as the included "pure major" tuning, and to me it really really really makes a big difference when I'm playing major sounds and chords with this tuning. It may feel like a subtle change at first, but comparing longer sequences in major between Equal Temperament and Pure Major/Overtone Tuning really showed me the difference. It's so much more pure and it's heavenly listening to a major chord playing out without the slightest sense of beating, if you've never heard it before. I'm greatly enjoying content about tunings and wish I had more synths and tools that are able to stuff like this, especially in a polyphonic way. :)

@12tone 6 лет назад

That sounds amazing! I'd love to play around with something like that... I'll have to look into it, thanks!

@Johnboysmudge 6 лет назад

Yeah the monologue is awesome! Aphex Twin had a big input to the synth design, especially the micro tubing aspect. It makes sequences sound awesome when flipping through the microtuned scales

@dushdy7160 6 лет назад

Agreed! Aphex's Microtunings are very weird of course, and it mostly seemed to me like he spread the octave over 2 or more octaves and I've heard exactly this sound in some of his latest releases (Syro probably?). Some tunings were more like shrunk under one octave You can even download Korgs "Sound Librarian" from where you can export Aphexs Tunings as Scala Files to use them in other Synths or DAWs, but I haven't tried it yet. I'm more interested in just pure major and minor and maybe creating some own tunings

@The1stMrJohn 6 лет назад

a clockwork orange was my first hearing of her work, which I haven't listened to for a couple of decades! ;~) you have prompted me to explore the work again. Your videos always have tons on interesting information.. John in England

@dcashley303 5 лет назад

Beauty In The Beast is so good! Love 'Poem for Bali', at times it sounds like Aphex Twin 20 years early.

@TyKats34 6 лет назад

Very interesting stuff. Your terminology "breaking the octave" made me think of scales generated by Xenakis' sieve structures. I think sieve theory is a topic seldom found on RU-vid. I'd love to hear your take on it.

@stavats 6 лет назад

This video is great, but I think you could've made this video about non-octave repeating scales in general, and not just Wendy Carlos's scales (for example, the fascinating Bohlen-Pierce scale which divides the tritave (an octave and a fifth, i.e., a 3:1 ratio) into 13 equal (or sometimes justly-tuned) parts). Albeit, I've discovered this album just recently, and I think it's fantastic. Very glad you made a video about it.

@12tone 6 лет назад

I'm definitely planning to talk about the Bohlen-Pierce scale too! But that's a whole different topic and I figured each one could be a video on its own. But yeah, Bohlen-Pierce is one of my favorite things I've ever found.

@Syncopator 4 года назад

It does make me wonder what these more "pure" intervals end up doing to beat frequencies, which is part of what makes a chord interesting I would think.

@LarsonPercussion 6 лет назад

Since about last year, I've been really interested in microtonal and experimental music, thank you for opening me up to another wonderful artist!

@Lainer1 6 лет назад

I recall when Wendy Carlos came out with Switched on Bach. I had to buy a copy right away. She was a genius and of course, Moog (and now) was very popular back then as well. Love your drawings!

@laserfloyd 6 лет назад

I have a suggestion for a video. At the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the scene where they're talking to the ship with music is amazing. We hear a lot of terms that aren't commonly heard as they try to learn the 'language'. I'm just wondering if John Williams specifically made that piece different from the rest due to the fact it was not of this world. I'd be interested to see if there's anything unique about it. If not, it's still one of my favorite pieces of his. Your videos are quite informative. :)

@boomerhippie 6 лет назад

If you refering to terms like quaver and semi-quaver, then those are well known, but not in America. In England those are the terms used for quarter note and eighth note.

@laserfloyd 6 лет назад

Ah, that's interesting that it's not related to pitch like I assumed. Thanks!

@charliebarber7682 6 лет назад

Yeah, in England we are taught those definitions in school, annoyingly. Adam Neely did a great video effectively explaining their redundancy, owing in part due to inconsistent etymological origins and also due to the fact that one ends up using the term 'hemidemisemiquaver' for what could so easily be described as a '64th note'!

@saintsaens21 6 лет назад

Nice, but narrated so fast!

@FubukiShiromiya 6 лет назад

Thank you for this great information. I'm curious about microtonal music but have a hard time getting used to the sound. 12-TET seems to be so ingrained that your example with the correctly tuned 7th sounded really out of tune to me. I'd certainly like to be exposed to more of this music and see how that changes my perception.

@mercurialcreations5750 5 лет назад

Beauty in the Beast on vinyl with a good set of headphones is borderline panic-attack material.. its one of the most powerful records alive! :D

@bearmichael9327 4 года назад

Hey just as an informational comment- the proper term is transgender, 'she is transgender" not 'transgendered'. Being trans is a state of being rather than an action done to you as 'transgendred' implies.

@alsatusmd1A13 6 лет назад

Is the octave a big deal? Probably not since not two common Arabic maqamat (the extended form of Maqam Saba [www.maqamworld.com/maqamat/saba.html] and Maqam Bastanikar [www.maqamworld.com/maqamat/sikah.html#bastanikar]), the Persian Dastgāh-e Māhur (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dastg%C4%81h-e_M%C4%81hur) and the standard pitch set of the Obikhod (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obikhod) do not end on it by definition (three of these end afterwards). But is something about the octave a big deal? If anything, how big it is definitely at least seems to be judging from these traditional precedents to Wendy's idea (the outlier of the set ends short of it, but not by very far). Also, that it, in a certain sense, makes the harmonic series complete (after all, Wendy still wanted to observe more complex ratios involving even numbers even if she did by coincidence end up essentially throwing out the octave itself).

@Kaiveran 6 лет назад

The octave is really just another interval.

@nunchucktaylor3488 6 лет назад

Fun fact: I learned in a documentary, from his lips himself, that Moog’s name is actually pronounced to rhyme with ‘vogue’

@stardustinmotion1671 6 лет назад

432 views..... THE TRUE FREQUENCIES OF THE UNIVERSE HAVE COMBINED IN AN ETHEREAL DEFIANCE OF MODERN CULTURE... TODAY IS THE DAY OF REVOLUTION!! TUNE YOUR INSTRUMENTS!!

@dliessmgg 6 лет назад

lol wrong channel, it's Adam Neely you gotta rage at ;)

@SleepSoul 6 лет назад

C h a k r a s

@gonzoengineering4894 6 лет назад

I've been working with these scales for the better part of two years now, Beta in particular, and they never fall to blow my mind. The missing octave makes it very easy to get lost in improvisation, but it's a wholly different experience than getting lost in any EDO system. The fifth is such a strong anchor that wrong notes don't really seem to exist and the affect becomes trully pantonal. The scales also have rich tertiary harmony, stacking alternating major or minor thirds yeilds some lush chords that naturally extend well beyond our usual 13th chords -the minor 19th and major 17th in Beta are my favorites and I could just listen to the ring out for hours.

@12tone 6 лет назад

Oh wow, I never even considered the chord tension implications! That's amazing, I'll have to try it out!

@poisednoise 6 лет назад

Ok, but here’s what I don’t get. Ultimately, all our tuning systems are based around the octave and the fifth, because those are the two strongest harmonics, being the first and second. No system which ignores either of those intervals is ever going to sound musically satisfying to us, because we are bound by the physics of harmony. Just as the relationships between the various transformations of a tone row in serialism are never really going to be heard in the same way as we hear the relationships between keys, so any music created using any of these EDO systems is unlikely to work for our ears if the octave is not pure. There’s a reason why no temperament ever tried to dispose of the octave (and it’s not just because it would not have been possible to tune in the Baroque era that accurately). I say we just accept the Pythagorean comma, and equal temperament as a very rough, but acceptable compromise. :)

@jumpinjake58 6 лет назад

Am I the only person who has to slow his videos down to at least 0.75 to catch most of the concepts or is it actually just me? The edit is so fast paced I have no time to digest any of it- even for subject matter I have a lot of experience with. I'll continue to slow the videos down to view them, but it would make your content that much more useful to me as a tool for myself and for my students if you just let yourself breathe a little between concepts. Like, maybe even just that. A breath. It might do wonders. Thanks!

@AlexKnauth 6 лет назад

Jacob Hastick For these types of videos I often have to watch them multiple times before I fully get it. I like the style because when I finally get it it feels like I get it much deeper.

@timbeaton5045 6 лет назад

Yes. Have to agree... as i commented above, the pace would be better served if there was a bit more space for the audio examples. I find this fascinating, but the examples fly by so quickly that i don't get to savour the (very) subtle differences in the examples given. Maybe it's just me getting old, but i find a number of RU-vidrs tend to make videos at to ask a pace. This is my only criticism of this, BTW, I like the presentation with the handwritten visual puns rather appealing, and the content is excellent, and thought provoking... just let us hear a bit more clearly. As i said this is subtle stuff, so needs a bit of aural space! Liked and subscribed, BTW.

@BertGrink 5 лет назад

Sorry to say, I had no problems following the narrative, and i'm not even a native English speaker.

@Cassia-Aurea 6 лет назад

Hi! ..and speaking of sacriiing the octave -- how about evenly tempered tritave systems?

@AnonymousFreakYT 6 лет назад

I don't know squat about the types of music theory you cover here, but you cover it amazingly well. Just discovered your channel today, became a Patreon supporter after watching a couple videos; now after this one, I'm going up that pledge.

@MattCCurtis 6 лет назад

Listen to Wendy Carlos's fascinating adventures in alternate tunings - Beauty In The Beast. (Actually 1986. The link says 1968.) soundcloud.com/roberto-la-forgia/sets/beauty-in-the-beast-by-wendy-carlos-1968

@OnlyARide 6 лет назад

Slight correction: the Alpha/Beta/Gamma scales don't "basically nail" the perfect fifth. Mathematically they are (or at least can be) derived by dividing the Just Perfect Fifth equally the same way we divide the Octave equally. You might call them EDFs rather than EDOs.

@12tone 6 лет назад

That's the interpretation I encountered first, but if you read her original article (www.wendycarlos.com/resources/pitch.html ) it's clear that dividing the fifth is not her actual goal, just a consequence. And, based on the step values provided, none of them quite make it either: An exact, just perfect fifth is 701.955 cents, while 9 alpha steps (78 cents each) is 702 cents, as is 20 gamma steps (35.1 cents each) and 11 beta steps (63.8 cents each) is 701.8 cents. they're all within .2 cents of the just perfect fifth, well below anything the human ear can perceive, but none of them are actually mathematically precise perfect fifths. They're all approximations, just really, _really_ good ones.

@OnlyARide 6 лет назад

Is that not a result of rounding a logarithmic unit of measurement based on the octave rather than an actual intentional difference? Is there any reason, whether practical or theoretical, not to consider the scale an equal division of the fifth, apart from Carlos' method of discovery?

@12tone 6 лет назад

There's certainly no practical reason, but from a mathematical standpoint I'd argue that any difference at all means it's not literally derivable, hence why I used the "basically nails it" phrasing instead of direct, derivational attribution. For all practical purposes they can be viewed as subdivisions of the perfect 5th, and if you _were_ to derive a set of scales in that fashion they would be, to the human ear, completely identical to these, but if you measured the frequencies precisely enough, you'd find slight variations between the two. So, much like any circle a human being can draw is only an approximation of the actual mathematical construct, Alpha/Beta/Gamma are not actually, structurally derivable from the perfect fifth in a strict mathematical sense.

@ornleifs 6 лет назад

Yes the album is on her website but when you look at the discography page all the albums have links to amazon and all are out of print and the last update on her website is from 2009 - she used to be very active on her website but the site is basically dead by now and you never see or hear from her anywhere. I have no Idea what happened but my guess is that she is suffering from some illness.

@timothystephens3909 6 лет назад

In the intro, why are you writing with your right hand, but in every video you use your left?

@rickc2102 6 лет назад

Good eye. Hadn't noticed that, myself.

@NickHoad 6 лет назад

Timothy Stephens I could be wrong but I think this series used to have a different, right-handed host, and the intro video hasn’t changed

@joemaffei 6 лет назад

Wendy Carlos’s scales are nice experiments, but our ears are very sensitive to flat octaves. Sharp octaves, on the other hand, are much easier to overlook. In fact, pianos are tuned just like that - look up “stretch tuning”.

@mgscheue 6 лет назад

Yay! Very timely for me. I recently got a quantizer module for my Eurorack system that can do the Carlos alpha, beta, and gamma scales, among a lot of other things.

@eleftheriosberdelis9819 6 лет назад

Hey 12tone what is your opinion about deviding the octave in 72 equal steps?

@fizzylimon 6 лет назад

I know so little about microtonal systems that this really blew my mind. I think what is most fascinating to me is that every time you played a 2nd it sounded /terrible/ to my ear, because I've been trained to recognize the normal chromatic scale in a completely different way. It literally sounded like the timbre changed because my brain is used to associating different tunings with broken instruments. But man, those pure thirds and fifths. Wowee. Now I gotta check out how she used them! Also thanks for the shoutout! A small thing on terminology, though - the term is "transgender" or "trans;" "transgendered" carries the implication that it was something done to her rather than something that she is innately, which is an important distinction to make when a lot of people still have outdated assumptions about the necessity of surgery to be "really" trans. But still, props for your commitment to diversity on the channel regardless :)

@12tone 6 лет назад

Yeah, someone else mentioned the terminology thing. I was unaware, and unfortunately can't fix the audio but I changed the subtitles to match the correct term. And yeah, I highly recommend checking out Beauty In The Beast, it sounds absolutely lovely.

@fizzylimon 6 лет назад

12tone hey, I totally understand. The important thing is that we all keep learning! And really I do appreciate your commitment to diversity. Our field super needs it.

@fizzylimon 6 лет назад

(as evidenced by the fact that someone just commented on my Wendy video "you look Jewish. Explain your degeneracy" which I promptly deleted after a HEAVY eye roll)

@abrahamreyes1462 6 лет назад

If you are interested in learning more about microtonal systems, I recommend you to look up for Julian Carrillo, a Mexican composer from late 1800s/early 1900s, he invented the “Sonido 13” (the name is symbolic, he could produce up to 96 “sounds”).

@12tone 6 лет назад

Yeah I got "accused" of being jewish on my Bad Music video because I said that white supremacy is a garbage philosophy. Isn't the internet fun?

@rhandhom1 6 лет назад

Really interesting. You've introduced me to something new to me in the music world and that's valuable. I've been trying to expand my musical horizons.

@BertGrink 5 лет назад

What a highly interesting and informative video! Also, I love your doodles; they made me think of the math/science channel Vihart.

@kirby_craft 6 лет назад

I'm a huge fan of the production work on Joao Gilberto's 1973 s/t album, Carlos is awesome!! Great vid as usual

@BrunoWiebelt 6 лет назад

as coming from the analog synth-side this pretty turns me on ...I will digg deeper and try to realise thank you

@MinnenMusic 6 лет назад

Dang I didn't realize ya girl Wendy was this intensely experimental. The shout out to Wendy for her birthday is much appreciated. Trans influence on history is so underrepresented! Any chance you can make videos on concepts that are easier for a theory noob to understand? Thanks!

@12tone 6 лет назад

Thanks! We actually cover a lot of different levels of topics, but if you're interested we have a series called Building Blocks that really focuses on the basics and builds up from there: ru-vid.com/group/PLMvVESrbjBWplAcg3pG0TesncGT7qvO06

@vixapphire 6 лет назад

Fabulous video; thanks for posting!

@KronoMuzik 6 лет назад

Thank you

@sihplak 6 лет назад

Why not used these given scales but with corrected octaves? I.e. use the Alpha/Beta/Gamma scales, but instead of leaving the octave flat, why not raise its pitch to be unequal to the other tuning divisions but to be a perfect octave?

@12tone 6 лет назад

You can definitely do that! In fact, Wendy's article talked briefly about that possibility although I think her intent was to lower the next pitch, leaving the flat octave as an option but also introducing the real one. I'm not sure, though, she didn't go into much detail on it and besides, the version without them is more mathematically pure!

@jacobcrowley8207 6 лет назад

Alright 12tone, enough joking around. How do I use 19tone in ways that really take advantage of these 19 tones? So far I'm either aimlessly meandering about until it sounds good, or I'm just about ignoring all the extra notes and using it like 12 equal temperament. Let's get crazy.

@12tone 6 лет назад

The main point of 19EDO is that it approximates important notes well, so to start I'd just try to use the major scale with it. Then you can get into chromatics: Unlike 12EDO, a lot of scale steps actually have two notes in between them, so you can do interesting chromatic sweeps through them, or use asymmetric approach tones. You can also of course do atonal stuff with it, but the reason it's such a favorite is how well it carries tonal implications.

@jacobcrowley8207 6 лет назад

Oh, just using the usual 12 tone scales adapted for 19 is normal for the most part? That simplifies things. Thanks!

@abrahamreyes1462 6 лет назад

Your videos are so good! :) I would love you to do a video about Julian Carrillo and the microtonal system of “Sonido 13”.

@12tone 6 лет назад

I'm not familiar, I'll have to look it up!

@abrahamreyes1462 6 лет назад

Yeah, dude! He's totally amazing! :) He developed "Sonido 13" system around 1880, then he lived his life, traveling around the world, learning from the best musicians of his time, and then, in 1920, when a French journal published an article asking for someone to develop a theory on microtones, he decided to make his work public, cancelled all his other duties and came back to his hometown - San Luis Potosí, also my hometown - to work on the theory and form musicians, design and build instruments, set up a complete orchestra and he also founded a journal to spread his work, he was very known and respected in Europe, and his system very celebrated, but it never got to stick, I don't know why :/ Thanks for replying! :)

@andrewgordnier8266 6 лет назад

Hi 12tone! Love your videos, I have a couple questions that are completely unrelated to the topic of the video but I still want to know about. 1. Is there any way to tune a piano approximately to the harmonic series? I am aware that it is infinite, but what if we just took the ratios for one octave and used them over and over? Would that result in a similar thing? 2. Is there any online resource that gives you the approximate Hz values of each note based on the harmonic series and not 12-ET? 3. What software do you use for the actual music in your videos? Thank you for taking the time to read and answer my (possibly dumb) questions, and I can't wait for the next video!

@timbeaton5045 6 лет назад

OK, been looking through your back catalogue of videos...Wow, so glad i discovered your channel... just looked at the Diablo's video as recommended in you Vox Pop video... just brilliant. What a great concept! But overall, In one morning i have found more to musically delight and challenge me here on your channel, than i have for the last year. At least. Now i'll throw one at you from (slightly) left field..how's about a vid about the Tristan Chord? I know there are other vid on this seemingly endlessly debated topic, but would be really interested to see your take on it! Always thought that the opening chord of the Jazz standard "Close your Eyes" could be a variation on this.

@ToadInTheWoods 6 лет назад

Back in the day I had some of her albums on CD, Sonic Seasonings and Beauty In The Beast, can't remember what else; I lost them somewhere along the way and I'll never hear them again, I guess. She enforces her copyright so extremely--which is her right, of course--that her music doesn't get heard. It's not on iTunes or Spotify or anywhere else, except for that Tron thing. You want to hear her music, you have to pay for it first or have a friend hook you up; I can't imagine many people bother--again, her profit margin, her choice.

@fcardenas184 6 лет назад

Love your channel!!! A video on James Taylor's approximation to guitar tunning would be awesome!!!

@BATTIS94 6 лет назад

I also recomend checking Juhan Puhm's Meantone Suite V in D Minor, in which he uses 43Et EMT. It has clear harmonies while being easy on the ear (many microtonal composers forget about that).

@dliessmgg 6 лет назад

I'm currently messing around with creating modes of 10 notes selected from 17edo, with a similar distribution how the western modes select 7 notes from 12edo, and I think I have the basics figured out soon. I kind of want to make a video about it but I have no idea how to do it well. Do you have some advice for me?

@12tone 6 лет назад

Best advice I can give on video-making is that audio is the most important thing. Poor video quality is a lot easier to ignore than poor audio quality, so try to get your hands on a good mic. Also, keep in mind that reading from a script tends to drain your voice of a lot of energy, so if anything overcommit to what you're saying. You're passionate about what you're talking about, make sure that comes across. I actually have a whole list of advice for starting video creators, although not all of it applies if you're just planning to make one. Still, though, send me an email and I'd be happy to forward it!

@dliessmgg 6 лет назад

Thanks, I will send one!

@beatrixwickson8477 6 лет назад

I've been wanting to experiment with this stuff but don't have a synth. I want to try a heptatonic scale of 171 cent intervals. Any suggestions?

@12tone 6 лет назад

I do mine in Reason, with a rack extension called Microtune. It can be hard to manage 'cause it only accepts one note at a time but you can work around that by having multiple tracks. It's not perfect but it does what I need it to do most of the time, and if you're comfortable with digital instruments might be worth looking into.

@beatrixwickson8477 6 лет назад

12tone Thanks mate!

@reveriefullstreams6969 6 лет назад

yo 12tone, just wanna say i hella appreciate you guys for not being weird about the trans thing or making a huge deal out of it. love this channel

@noamw3841 5 лет назад

Didn't know about the EDO system, very interesting video!

@voltaire3001 6 лет назад

AWESOME ! THANK YOU !

@CameronSharpPottery 6 лет назад

Fascinating. Thanks.

@tristanyokom1542 6 лет назад

Wouldn't electronic music be able to use the concept of just intonation? I know that a lot of wind instruments can.

@filipkastl9899 6 лет назад

1:46 - Is that a reference to Discworld?

@RMoribayashi 6 лет назад

The last time I checked all of Wendy Carlos' works have been out of print for around a decade. Amazon prices range from about $20 for lesser known albums to $90+ for the series she personally remastered. Only her Tron soundtrack is availble digitally.

@OoyayUbetay 5 лет назад

apparently she's got her catalog locked up tight www.wendycarlos.com/discs.html

@PlayTheGuitarra 6 лет назад

Interesting, what program do you use to change the tuning of semitones by cents? I would love to experiment with microtonal shifts in chords. Cheers from Argentina. Matias

@12tone 6 лет назад

I use Reason 8 and a rack extension called Microtune. It's not perfect but it's cheap and most of its problems are easy enough to work around.

@hifijohn 6 лет назад

Everyone is always trying make a better mouse trap, if the equal tempered system is so bad it would have been abandoned generations ago.

@TribalScience 6 лет назад

Shout-outs to the Feynman diagram at 5:45. You're a proper nerd, Mister 12tone.

@tinypapercube 5 лет назад

I loved when she regularly updated her site, I read her updates avidly through high school and college. I wonder what she's been up to. Beauty In the Beast is out of print and used copies are going for upwards of $70. You'd think she'd be into hi-res digital distribution. Maybe she is, and she's been remastering everything (yet again). Hopefully she'll hire somebody else to do the album art though, does anybody remember her own very liberal use of heavy drop-shadows on everything?

@goitegi 6 лет назад

I just noticed that the “big chinned face” is actually an ELEPHANT???!?!!!!

@patrickpankratz6077 6 лет назад

Do you have any recommendations for reading if someone wanted to do more research on alternative tunings including but not limited to this and reasons for their existence?

@timbeaton5045 6 лет назад

And how's about looking at some Stevie Wonder? He does some interesting stuff harmonically. One of my favourite songs of his, and apparently not so well known, is "We didn't Know" a seemingly unlikely duo with Whitney Huston, of all people. A song with an extensive use of one of my favourite chords, the minor major. With that lovely feel of vagueness of where the root chord of the song is, until it gets resolved right at the end of the chorus. I do love music where the cadence gets delayed and delayed... For which see Wagner! The master of leaving resolutions dangling for, in his writing, absolutely ages! Keeps that tension going, and means that resolution gains so much more power when it (finally!) comes. There you go, an unlikely link between Wagner and Stevie Wonder. Any thoughts?

@nevets0910 6 лет назад

Wow this is so interesting! Gotta really check out her stuff beyond A Clockwork Orange and Switched On Bach :D

@stevebadachmusic 6 лет назад

do you actually talk that fast or have you sped up the audio? Sometimes I have a bit of trouble understanding you.

@gingercore69 6 лет назад

Can you make a video about quartertones vs halfsteps?

@12tone 6 лет назад

I'm not sure this fits exactly what you're looking for, but we did do a video on quarter-tones a while back: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bWG6CGKMnNA.html

@gingercore69 6 лет назад

12tone thanks, i remember watching it a while ago, im thinking about getting a new guitar, either in meantone, 19tet or 24 tet... I know the bass player will not change her bass tho... So i need something that allows me to create more expresive melodies and chords but will not sound out of tune with a regular bass

@gingercore69 6 лет назад

12tone so i was wondering if it would be better to get a 24tet maybe... Altho i like the near perfect thirds more... Maybe kick out the bass player and get someone who do play at leaat a fretless

@12tone 6 лет назад

Yeah, if your bass player is gonna be playing in 12TET then 24's your only option that doesn't risk sounding gross. I'd probably stay away from meantone 'cause it locks you into a single key, but a fretless might be a good option for yourself too: You can make sure that whatever note the bass is playing is in tune with you but then build just chords on top of it. It's harder to play, of course, but if you're comfortable with it it might be worth trying.

@gingercore69 6 лет назад

12tone might be a good idea, maybe i can convince her of playing fretless and i get the 19tet so i can have better third intervals... Might be easier than convincing her of getting a 19tet bass

@enumoni2252 6 лет назад

I've always been a fan of her switched on Bach and Handel, but I never knew she was into microtuning. I must find these!

@andercert70 6 лет назад

Not to be obtuse, but couldn't one just take one of these more perfect systems and add the proper octave back in. Much like people add notes to minor scales to get the dominate feel they are used to.

@Sevish 6 лет назад

Yes you can do that.

@kickthetragedydropnineteens 6 лет назад

Every experiment has its own worth in art, but having a tuning with a flat octave is just not good enough to be adopted by musicians and the audience

@chipsnegativeharmonyrips7187 6 лет назад

look for the girl with the broken scale

@StanAlter 6 лет назад

She did Tron and A Clockwork Orange. That's all that really matters too me cause they were great.

@saltyorangejuice 6 лет назад

Awesome! Queens of the Stone Age next!?

@victortrying 6 лет назад

Gabriel Gomez That'd be cool. They said themselves they've been hugely influenced by Wendy Carlos on their latest albums

@rickc2102 6 лет назад

👍👍

@PaulMabley 6 лет назад

Very interesting.Aren't these type of interval used in traditional Indian music too?

@chicolofi 5 лет назад

This is the future of music.

@CaptChaos1960 4 года назад

Bob Moog. Pronounced same as "Vogue" Dutch name? :-)

@rose52152 6 лет назад

Does anyone know of a way to play with these scales? Like a program out there. I would love to play with them.

@jacobcrowley8207 6 лет назад

The Xenharmonic wiki has a page for different software you can use, down to DAWs and softsynths.

@CuzicanAerospace 6 лет назад

I know this might be a bit tricky, but would you at all consider discussing Giacinto Scelsi? It'd mean talking mostly about timbre and microtonality and harmonics, and very little about conventional melody or harmony. But -- if we're going to talk about unconventional composers, he seems fair game to me.

@rhandhom1 6 лет назад

Also, I have been meaning to watch A Clockwork Orange. Now, I must see it.

@nickdrexler-art 6 лет назад

NEAT!

@timothystamm3200 5 лет назад

Don't musicians playing instruments where you can bend pitch at will usually instructed to bend the pitch into the proper interval if they are playing the third or fifth of a chord and so on? That certainly seems to be the practice in North Texas when we have enough time to rehearse such things. Isn't this only a problem for piano, harp, harpsichord, organ, fretted string instruments and synthesizers?

@bigfootpegrande 4 года назад

I wish you could teach genetics or ecology like that, you could talk about the great Joan Roughgarden!

@CarlScripter 6 лет назад

HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE 5:37 IS A MANDELBROT FRACTAL.

@paxwallacejazz 6 лет назад

Ok look the human ear/listening aperatus is a relentless resolution machine. I remember working in clattery factory full of much metalic cacophony. Eventually I started hearing little tonal motifs. The point is that; sure if you choose a different tunning system and, raise a generation of human lab rats listening to music based on that system, they will hear that as normal, ok yeah so what? The critics of our modern universally accepted (imperfect) tunning system seem to forget something.(not implying you're one necessarily). That being that, this is the system that allows for 12 equal keys! Out of this very important fact comes the possibilty of massive infiltration/integration of subversive little notes from other keys! AKA advanced harmony! We are talking the freedom to Modulate to any other key as well as chromatic melodic constructions both structural and/or ornamental and last but not least chromatically altered harmonies! This is the imperfect system that allowed for that composer driven high speed power dive into higher and higher levels of chromatic density untill a sturation point was reached (called the 20th century crisis in tonality) : Otherwise known as the history of Eruopean Art Music since Bach...There is no parallel in human history. Look besides, there is no one (who loves music) whos gonna complain about listening to an in tune well regulated Steinway D being played by (insert favorite pianist) End of story.

@andretimpa 6 лет назад

Nice penguin diagram

@schmetterling2169 6 лет назад

the whole video i was so confused like who is carlos i thought we were talking about wendy!!

@miguelfernandezmillan2829 6 лет назад

left handed? what have I lost?

@iii-ei5cv 6 лет назад

XANGELIX!!!

@jeim376 5 лет назад

If math doesn’t work out for tuning different intervals the same way, why don’t we just tune each note based on the frequency of the last note played? (For electronic music, of course)

@user-ft1cs6sj9x 6 лет назад

Hi 12tone, just a suggestion: can you analyze the music theory/studio recording aspects of the song "1979" by The Smashing Pumpkins?

@user-ft1cs6sj9x 6 лет назад

I think there's alot of stuff to cover there, despite the simplicity of the song. There's definitely alot of layers involved and either way the tune was quite iconic in the 90's.