Global Tuning

[jairbair]

Hi All

Can anyone tell me how I can get more accurate adjustments in the Global Tuning settings? I am trying to tune down 432. I can only get 431.9 or 432.4. I am using Notion in conjunction with entrainment software and I need to be more accurate. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

take care,
Gerry

[Surfwhammy]

Hi All

Can anyone tell me how I can get more accurate adjustments in the Global Tuning settings? I am trying to tune down 432. I can only get 431.9 or 432.4. I am using Notion in conjunction with entrainment software and I need to be more accurate. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

take care,
Gerry

I do everything on the Mac here in the sound isolation studio, and I looked everywhere that appeared to be a possibility with Xcode and UltraEdit, as well as examining all the various items in the Mac OS X application package, and I did not find anything that indicated precisely where the Global Tuning value is stored, but it is stored somewhere, plus as I discovered after doing some experiments, when you use VSTi virtual instruments the NOTION 4 Global Tuning setting probably does not matter and only applies to the NOTION 4 Bundled and Expansion Sounds Instruments, although at present this latter observation mostly is an educated guess, as explained later in this post . . .

On a Windows machine, I would browse the System Registry (if there continues to be one), since a lot of these types of parameters typically are (or were) stored in the System Registry . . .

In NOTION 4 Preferences I have the same results (431.9 or 432.4), but I also can set it to 432.2 if I move the slider enough times . . .

THOUGHTS

This is one of the annoying aspects of the way some numeric values are set on the Mac, and it depends primarily on the way the applications are designed and programmed. I think the problem is the granularity of the slider control, and it happens frequently with VST effects plug-ins that only allow slider input for certain parameters.

However, some VST effects plug-ins like the ones from FabFilter Software Instruments have two ways to input numeric values when there is a slider control, where one way causes an editable text field to appear when you double-click on the displayed value, at which time you can enter a numeric value via the keyboard rather than by using the slider. This is more precise, and it is the reason I prefer being able to enter numeric values via editable text fields rather than by using sliders . . .

I did a few experiments, and one of them was to set the global tuning pitch to 432 in Logic Pro 9 (Apple), which took a bit of tweaking but can be done, where in addition to the large value in Hertz, there also is a fine-tune field for Cents, which is editable by inputting numbers rather than by using up and down arrows. However, this appears to have no affect on NOTION 4 or Addictive Keys (XLN Audio). . .

Nevertheless, I noticed that Addictive Keys allows setting the reference tuning pitch, and you can set it to 432 . . .

As best as I can determine, the value set in Addictive Keys for the selected piano is the value that is used by NOTION 4 and by Logic Pro 9, regardless of the Global Tuning settings for NOTION 4 and Logic Pro 9, so this might be a clue to a solution, where after doing a few more experiments I think this is a solution . . .

SOLUTION FOR MAC COMPOSERS

I did another set of experiments using Logic Pro 9 (Apple) on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) with 20GB of memory, running Mac OS X 10.8.4 (Mountain Lion), here in the sound isolation studio, and in this experiment I used a grand piano from Addictive Keys (XLN Audio); a grand piano from MachFive 3 (MOTU); and a string ensemble and harp from Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments), all in a ReWire 2 session where Logic Pro 9 is the ReWire 2 host controller and NOTION 4 is the ReWire 2 slave, where everything is running in 64-bit mode, as shown in the following YouTube video that I created to demonstrate the technique . . .

Global Tuning with VSTi Virtual Instruments in NOTION 4 -- YouTube video

The VSTi virtual instruments (Addictive Keys, Kontakt 5, and MachFive 3) have reference tuning pitch controls, and the value you set for each one overrides whatever is set as the Global Tuning pitch for Logic Pro 9 and NOTION 4, which I verified by turning the knobs while a section of notes was playing, and it is easy to hear the pitch change . . .

Hence, if (a) you are doing digital music production on the Mac (a personal favorite); (b) you have a nice assortment of VSTi virtual instruments, each of which has a reference pitch tuning control; and (c) you have a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application like Logic Pro 9, then you can use VSTi virtual instruments and set the reference tuning pitch for each individual instrument to 432-Hz and then do your work in NOTION 4 but via ReWire 2, where the primary difference is that you will need to send the NOTION 4 generated audio to the DAW application, which you do by setting the NOTION 4 Mixer output(s) to ReWire 2 channel pairs, where one way is to send only the NOTION 4 Master stereo output via ReWire 2 to the DAW application, but another way is to send each individual instrument . . .

Doing this in Logic Pro 9 is relatively straightforward, and I have posted links to a few videos that show how to do it. I have not tested this with Digital Peformer 8 (MOTU), but I expect it will work the same and might be easier, since I have more "stick time" with Digital Performer 8 than with Logic Pro 9 or Ableton Live 9, although lately I am quite intrigued by Ableton Live 9 on the Mac, since it also does ReWire 2 very smoothly and accurately, but it is a bit outside my current budget, so I am experimenting with the free demo version . . .

One might suppose that in Utopia you can do this on a Windows computer, but I have no way to determine whether everything works in the Windows universe, but it might, so if you are doing digital music production on a Windows computer, then give it a try . . .

And for reference, you do not need to do the ReWire 2 session, since the aforementioned VSTi virtual instruments override the Global Tuning pitch set in NOTION 4 Preferences . . .

I like ReWire 2, so I usually do an experiment to verify that everything is working nicely in ReWire 2 sessions, as well, and I was curious to discover whether Logic Pro 9 would override the NOTION 4 Global Tuning setting, hence another reason to do the Logic Pro 9 part of the experiments . . .

Summarizing, this is one way to do what you need to do, and it includes everything, since you also can set the reference tuning pitch in Reason 7 (Propellerhead Software), and you should be able to tune professional quality real instruments and keyboard synthesizers to a specific custom reference tuning pitch, hence when combined with a suitable DAW application, NOTION 4, Reason 7, MIDI, microphones, external signal processors, and so forth, this maps to being able to do everything, which is fabulous

Fabulous!

[jairbair]

Thanks Surfwhammy for the info, I'll experiment further.