Topic: Pure major scale temperment

[mhack]

“Pure Major, Pure Minor: These tunings preserve the pure mathematical intervals of each scale, espe- cially for triad chords (root, third, fifth). You can hear this best in actual vocal harmonies—such as choirs and a cappella singing.”
How would this work with VH as Choir voices? Page 42, Reference manual. Anyone tried this, SX900?
Thanks
Mike

[DrakeM]

Hello Mike

I am not sure what you are looking for exactly. I play by ear and not sure what Major or Minor scales or triad chords are.

I use the chorus VH with a setup I made to do a couple tunes by Alabama

Here is a link to Mountain Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvXAUcomMWA

I also have posted a video of their song The Closer You Get.

I have also worked up a harmony to do the Beach Boys song Help Me Rhonda and Kokomo. I have not made a video of those songs yet.

Maybe those are examples of what you are wanting to do with the Vocal Harmonizer.

Regards
Drake

[ckobu]

Hi Mike
it sounds great and can be adjusted as follows.
https://youtu.be/wqkjiaiZYHc?t=301
activate subtitle

[mikf]

Drake- what he is talking about is completely different. He is referring to equal temperament tuning. If you google it you can read about it, although I warn this is a quite complex subject.
There are different ways to set the relationship between notes, all based on some compromise of the physics and mathematics of sound. It is really nothing to do with the basic understanding of scales or triads, and most of us would never delve into this level. It’s too complex and lengthy  for me to describe the detail of equal temperament tuning here but the essence is that it results in slight flatness between intervals other than an octave.
The keyboard is already tuned using equal temperament as a factory default because that is standard on keyboard instruments (although I think it maybe can be changed) so I don’t fully grasp the OP question. But I assume from his question the VH may not give equal temperament tuning. I have never given this any thought before and I have never seen it raised before. It’s an interesting if somewhat esoteric subject.
Mike

[mikf]

I read the post again and now understand that the OP wants to experiment with pure or perfect intervals for vocal harmony, rather than the conventional imperfect intervals that result from equal temperament tuning. It can be done and the triads would be pure but of course the consequence would be that the octaves would then be out. That would sound pretty bad so can’t see that being a good idea for most keyboard playing, but to each their own.
Mike

[mhack]

Thanks to Drake, Casper, and Mike for their comments. Casper put me on the trail with his video. Not all that esoteric. I understand that the voices in VH can be tuned quite easily (Formant) and used in
A cappella and Choir voices for clarity. Mike, what does OP stand for? Page 42 in reference manual.
Thanks,
Mike (mhack)

[mikf]

OP - original post in a thread.
I say esoteric because although interesting and not that difficult, the vast majority of even quite accomplished musicians will  go through life without ever dealing with or needing to get involved in the various theories and details of scale tuning, Pythagorean commas and the like. They might even be completely unaware of them.
Mike

PS …. here’s some fairly useless information  ……. It was apparently Pythagorus who discovered it was mathematically impossible to tune both intervals and octaves exactly, it requires compromise. It’s referred to as the Pythagorean Comma.

[GregB]

Scale tuning (temperament) can be fun to fiddle with just for experimenting, but you probably won't actually use it unless you're playing along with a small ensemble that is using a different scale tuning and if the song allows for it.  An example might be a string quartet.

The basic idea is that when using equal temperament, your intervals (and thus chords) sound decent, but the harmonics are not perfectly aligned.  The math just doesn't work out ideally, but it comes really close.   So any scale tuning is a compromise somewhere (or, a little bit everywhere...).

And, yes, whenever you change the tuning of an instrument's scale degree to make the harmonics exact for a particular interval, you usually make another interval sound worse.  Really bad ones end up being called "wolf intervals".  Yeah they howl.  A string quartet or vocal ensemble can adjust the tuning of a scale degree on-the-fly to prevent this, but a keyboard cannot do so as easily, so in some cases you may find yourself just sticking to equal temperament even then.

- Greg