For Music Theory nerds
January 26, 2021 1:29 AM Subscribe
That's pretty fun! I recommend using a touch screen device for this.
posted by NotTheRedBaron at 1:39 AM on January 26, 2021
posted by NotTheRedBaron at 1:39 AM on January 26, 2021
Not making sound on my iPad. Could it be my ad blocker?
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:05 AM on January 26, 2021
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:05 AM on January 26, 2021
It's a neat tool, and surprisingly deep to explore! I just wish the notes didn't sound in such a jarring artificial synth tone.
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:43 AM on January 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:43 AM on January 26, 2021 [12 favorites]
It's an incredibly exciting time for music. Suddenly, music theory is becoming accessible. Tools like this, and the new scale integration coming in Ableton Live 11, and the physical instruments that are becoming possible that don't require users to learn scales, are going to change the music landscape profoundly.
Music is going to be easy. I can't help but think that's going to change the world for the better.
posted by MrVisible at 5:02 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Music is going to be easy. I can't help but think that's going to change the world for the better.
posted by MrVisible at 5:02 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
MrVisible: could you expand on the Live scales comment?
posted by signal at 5:06 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 5:06 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is going to be a fun teaching tool. The most exciting aspect for me personally though is the scale names feature, and the doors that opens to finding out what that scale means in multiple cultural contexts. Rabbit hole: opened.
posted by threecheesetrees at 5:17 AM on January 26, 2021
posted by threecheesetrees at 5:17 AM on January 26, 2021
I'm really excited for it.
posted by MrVisible at 5:18 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
MIDI Scale Mode and Fold to ScaleHere's a video demo.
Musical scales offer a guide to writing melodies and chords in any key, and now Ableton Live 11’s MIDI editor can show you the exact notes to use with this new feature. You can either have the scale in laid as a guide or fold the editor to only show you notes in a specific scale.
posted by MrVisible at 5:18 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Scale Mode looks cool!
Garage Band on the iPad has long seemed to me to be a good interface for starting to make music. You also choose a scale, and for instance one of the modes lets you strum a guitar, offering the root, 5th, 4th, minor 6th, etc., so it sounds good even if you don't understand the underlying theory.
posted by signal at 6:32 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Garage Band on the iPad has long seemed to me to be a good interface for starting to make music. You also choose a scale, and for instance one of the modes lets you strum a guitar, offering the root, 5th, 4th, minor 6th, etc., so it sounds good even if you don't understand the underlying theory.
posted by signal at 6:32 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Johnny Assay: It's a neat tool, and surprisingly deep to explore! I just wish the notes didn't sound in such a jarring artificial synth tone.
I wondered about this myself, because to my ears it sounds like a bad organ and in poking around to see if there was a way to change the tone found this in the FAQ:
Q:
Why does the linear keyboard sound different from the circular keyboard?
A:
The circular keyboard uses octave equivalence to place different pitches like C4 and C5 at the same position, refrring to them both simply as the note "C". To illustrate this concept auditorily, the circular keyboard uses a Shepard Tone for the sound which is also octave-independent, making it the perfect sound for this situation. The chord buttons use the same Shepard Tone as well. The linear keyboard, by contrast, has different buttons for C4 and C5, so it does not use a Shepard Tone.
posted by indexy at 6:45 AM on January 26, 2021
I wondered about this myself, because to my ears it sounds like a bad organ and in poking around to see if there was a way to change the tone found this in the FAQ:
Q:
Why does the linear keyboard sound different from the circular keyboard?
A:
The circular keyboard uses octave equivalence to place different pitches like C4 and C5 at the same position, refrring to them both simply as the note "C". To illustrate this concept auditorily, the circular keyboard uses a Shepard Tone for the sound which is also octave-independent, making it the perfect sound for this situation. The chord buttons use the same Shepard Tone as well. The linear keyboard, by contrast, has different buttons for C4 and C5, so it does not use a Shepard Tone.
posted by indexy at 6:45 AM on January 26, 2021
The linear keyboard sounds better, but still not great. It looks like it's just a sawtooth wave. Perhaps the lesson here is "don't make a Shepard tone out of sawtooth waves."
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:05 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:05 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
A friend of mine is part of the team developing the Arcontinuo, based on user research about the kind of movements musicians make when playing, it's a programmable 2-dimensional pressure sensitive surface controller, which aims to be equally accessible and interesting for absolute newbies and experienced musicians alike.
posted by signal at 8:28 AM on January 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by signal at 8:28 AM on January 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
the circular keyboard uses a Shepard Tone for the sound which is also octave-independent, making it the perfect sound for this situation
Wow! I've been sitting here for a few minutes wondering how it circles around and yet ends up on seemingly the same pitch that it started on, and I was actually having a hard time telling whether or not the G was lower or higher than the C. I'd never imagined that there'd be a real application for Shepard Tones or that they could be effectively implemented in such short bursts.
posted by treepour at 9:42 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wow! I've been sitting here for a few minutes wondering how it circles around and yet ends up on seemingly the same pitch that it started on, and I was actually having a hard time telling whether or not the G was lower or higher than the C. I'd never imagined that there'd be a real application for Shepard Tones or that they could be effectively implemented in such short bursts.
posted by treepour at 9:42 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
Suddenly, music theory is becoming accessible
I hope this benefits people who have been sort of scared away by the mystique around the subject. Really, understanding it to a pretty early intermediate level is all that most people will ever need (intervals, the major scale, triads, inversions of triads, diatonic chords (like the chords shown in the initial view that I get from the URL, the chords that are built from the major scale), maybe a little about how to throw in some non-diatonic chords too....). But I think even this can be intimidating, especially if you don't have any formal background at all and don't read notation. So yay for interactive tools like this.
posted by thelonius at 10:27 AM on January 26, 2021
I hope this benefits people who have been sort of scared away by the mystique around the subject. Really, understanding it to a pretty early intermediate level is all that most people will ever need (intervals, the major scale, triads, inversions of triads, diatonic chords (like the chords shown in the initial view that I get from the URL, the chords that are built from the major scale), maybe a little about how to throw in some non-diatonic chords too....). But I think even this can be intimidating, especially if you don't have any formal background at all and don't read notation. So yay for interactive tools like this.
posted by thelonius at 10:27 AM on January 26, 2021
all that most people will ever need
Of course people don't "need" to explicitly know this stuff to be songwriters or musicians. I mean, most bedroom musicians aren't writing counterpoint or something like that, and, if they decide that theory-ing up is going to be helpful to their music, there's a high payoff from the stuff in the first few chapters of a textbook.
posted by thelonius at 10:37 AM on January 26, 2021
Of course people don't "need" to explicitly know this stuff to be songwriters or musicians. I mean, most bedroom musicians aren't writing counterpoint or something like that, and, if they decide that theory-ing up is going to be helpful to their music, there's a high payoff from the stuff in the first few chapters of a textbook.
posted by thelonius at 10:37 AM on January 26, 2021
I've been playing guitar for 35 years, and only recently learned the basics that thelonius mentions. It's made a big difference to my playing, even to my mindless noodling.
posted by signal at 10:51 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 10:51 AM on January 26, 2021 [1 favorite]
At the risk of egregious self-linking, I just have to bring up my own musical project, an expressive, melodic instrument that plays any key or scale you like.
Using the system I developed with this one, you could create countless instruments in different form factors that require no musical knowledge or experience to play, but would be actual, functional, ergonomic, accessible and expressive instruments.
The future of music is getting really interesting.
posted by MrVisible at 11:16 AM on January 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Using the system I developed with this one, you could create countless instruments in different form factors that require no musical knowledge or experience to play, but would be actual, functional, ergonomic, accessible and expressive instruments.
The future of music is getting really interesting.
posted by MrVisible at 11:16 AM on January 26, 2021 [5 favorites]
Folding to specific scales is a great feature and I’m glad Live is adding it, but it’s more of a “missing feature” that they’re finally getting around to and that a lot of comparable programs have had for many years than a game-changer.
posted by w1nt3rmut3 at 8:19 PM on January 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by w1nt3rmut3 at 8:19 PM on January 26, 2021 [2 favorites]
« Older do the damn thing girl | Are we really engineers? Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by domdib at 1:36 AM on January 26, 2021 [2 favorites]