43edo fun with A, Bbb, Cbbb

Поділитися
Вставка
  • Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
  • I'd sent this to some people on Discord a while back while talking about theory, felt like uploading some more bits and pieces to my channel.

КОМЕНТАРІ • 64

  • @ShilohJanowick
    @ShilohJanowick Рік тому +69

    watching the video you can really tell just how familiar and intimate you are with this instrument/midi controller, your motion is so fluid and intentional! i love it!!

    • @Ronkz
      @Ronkz Рік тому +3

      this instrument is the lumatone, lots of microtonal artists use it

    • @acshuley
      @acshuley Рік тому +4

      @@Ronkzi looked at the price of it and i died inside

    • @Ronkz
      @Ronkz Рік тому +2

      @@acshuley yeah it's a hell of a price, shows how dedicated are the people that own one

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +20

      @@Ronkz On the one hand, yes, it's annoying that the price makes it quite a big investment for most people. But it also depends on how much you value your own time.
      With the ordinary piano layout, you might know how to play something in E minor, but then if you want to transpose it into Bb minor because the context calls for it, now your fingers have to do something a little different. Eventually, you'll want to learn all your chords and scales and many other musical objects in each key. The asymmetry of the keyboard means that this takes a bunch of extra time and effort.
      An isomorphic keyboard like the Lumatone cuts this out: you don't learn to play an Amaj9#11 chord separately from a Cmaj9#11 chord separately from a Bbmaj9#11 chord. You learn to play a maj9#11 chord, and then just put that shape wherever you need it. Not just chords and chord voicings, every scale, arpeggio, melodic phrase, you save time building muscle memory for all the transpositions of everything. So it's like 12 times easier to get good at, really.
      I think after the first day I had it, I was already better at expressing myself musically than I'd ever gotten struggling with the usual piano keyboard -- I'm no pianist, but I've had a keyboard of some description around the house for most of my life, and had bounced off of it after a few weeks of trying several times. (Usually frustrated with this very asymmetry I'm talking about.)
      The fact that everything you learn is so much more valuable also gets you to the fun part of making music so much faster in my experience as well. My preferred Wicki-Hayden layout is particularly fun for this -- I haven't had too many people over to see my keyboard yet, but seeing non-musicians' eyes light up when they hit a few keys close together and accidentally play something that sounds good (because it was probably in key) is a lot of fun. There are layouts that are more piano-like, and they have their advantages as well, but Wicki-Hayden does a really nice job of balancing harmony and melody.
      Of course, the time savings becomes way larger in a microtonal tuning like 43 equal divisions of the octave. (Who wants to learn 43 different major scales, one for each key? It would be impossibly tedious.) But instead, you can build an analogous layout and have basically all your muscle memory transpose from 12 to 31 to 43 equal divisions of the octave (and many others).
      It was really the time savings that sold me on the instrument, the microtonality sort of came along for the ride -- but I'm really glad it did, it's a huge universe of new harmonic and musical ideas to explore.

    • @NebulonRanger
      @NebulonRanger Рік тому +3

      @@cgibbard I looked into the cost of one of these myself, and it's honestly a matter of "less than I thought, more than you think" for me.
      Then again, I'm a bass player by first love, so I'm well used to expensive high-end instruments!
      For anyone else reading this thread, a Lumatone will run you about US$4000.

  • @ethantheenigma5513
    @ethantheenigma5513 Рік тому +19

    Those microtones really embed a sense of mystique. This is a really cool demo.

  • @Lucius_Chiaraviglio
    @Lucius_Chiaraviglio Рік тому +45

    I thought of 43-EDO several years ago as a way to close the circle of 5ths, but the favorites that get talked about seem to be 31-EDO and to a lesser extent 41-EDO and 53-EDO, so I thought maybe I had made a mistake in my calculations, but here is 43-EDO and it sounds good after all.

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +20

      All large-ish EDOs will do a reasonably good job of representing things, but have different tradeoffs. I tend to play the ones where four steps up the circle of fifths gets you your major third (i.e. tunings which temper the syntonic comma), because the muscle memory for these is basically the same from one to another, and they tend to have nice ergonomic isomorphic layouts.
      However, others do work beautifully also, you mentioned 53edo and 41edo, which don't have this property, but are capable of a high level of consonance. I also really like 22edo as something which has a fair degree of consonance, but rather than tempering out the syntonic comma, stretches it to basically a quarter tone. The major and minor scales in such tunings are no longer contiguous segments of the circle of fifths, and the chords in them are different (you no longer really have a ii minor chord in your major scale for example), which makes things strange, but there's a lot of new possibilities out there.

    • @Lucius_Chiaraviglio
      @Lucius_Chiaraviglio Рік тому +4

      ​@@cgibbard That sounds like a good explanation of why 53-EDO is both described as 1/314-comma meantone and not a meantone -- it has an extremely slight tempering of the syntonic comma and thereby makes the fifths flat by an extremely small amount while achieving extremely close to pure major (and minor) thirds, but if you go around the circle of fifths, you kick yourself off the major scale pretty quickly (and the optimally defined whole tones for a major scale are not all the same size; I haven't finished doing the calculations, but I think they are also not the same size as the corresponding optimal whole tones for a Dorian scale like the Xenharmonic Wiki seems to like to use).

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +3

      @@Lucius_Chiaraviglio Yeah, rather than tempering out the syntonic comma, 53edo just does a rather good job of approximating it with a single step, at the same time as having an exceptionally accurate perfect fifth. So, the best major third for C in 53edo, if you use the usual trick of getting the circle of fifths to name all the notes, is not E, but unfortunately Fb. But in a situation like this, you'd typically introduce some notation for stepping up/down a syntonic comma, so you could write something like Ev or Eb^ for the major and minor thirds of C.

    • @Lucius_Chiaraviglio
      @Lucius_Chiaraviglio Рік тому +1

      @@cgibbard You're stuck between something like that (I prefer some kind of comma notation or something like these people do for 72-EDO(*)), or you have to define the whole tone notes at unequal spacing (which makes them no longer interleave as expected in the circle of fifths).
      (*)In the opening screen of ua-cam.com/video/eA8S746K9_A/v-deo.html&pp=gAQBiAQB -- I don't know if this is some kind of standard, but if it isn't, it looks like a good candidate for one.

    • @Lucius_Chiaraviglio
      @Lucius_Chiaraviglio Рік тому +2

      @@cgibbard Had another thought: The EDO that comes closest to approximating the syntonic comma is 56-EDO, but that one is one of those inconveniently superpythagorean temperaments that gives a lousy diatonic scale . . . but the next closest one is 55-EDO, which is close to 1/6-comma meantone, so now I'm thinking it might be worth taking that out for a spin (although 43-EDO is close to 1/5-comma meantone, so it might not sound all that different unless you're doing something prominent with chords that one is good at and the other is bad at). While I'm at it, the EDO that comes closest to approximating the Pythagorean comma is 51-EDO, but that is 3 times 17-EDO, which is superpythagorean (although at least usable), and the next closest EDO is 50-EDO, which is close to 2/7-comma meantone, and which you have taken out for a spin a few times to very good effect.

  • @music-zv6je
    @music-zv6je Рік тому +9

    beautiful stuff, sounds exotic yet very natural

  • @icedtease1973
    @icedtease1973 Рік тому +21

    I have no idea what that thing is and prpbably wouldn't understand even if you explained it to me, but that looks and sounds incredible. I hope you have a very successful career in music, if that is what you do for a living.

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +20

      Thanks! I'm a software developer by day and have just been improvising, playing mostly for myself a little bit each night over the past few years. It's not something I ever expect to try to make money at, just something that I do because it's good for my own mental health. I do hope that I can help spread the ideas and music theory that this instrument embodies though.
      The keyboard is a Lumatone (lumatone.io is their website). Despite the daunting appearance due to having so many keys, I feel like this type of keyboard is actually much, much easier to learn than the usual piano. You don't waste any time re-learning muscle memory for how to play the same scales and chords in each of 12 (or 43...) different key signatures / roots -- you just move your hands and start in a different spot to get a different tonic.
      So playing something in one key counts as practice for every key, which is a huge multiplier. I think after the first day or two I was already more musically capable with it than I'd ever gotten with the normal piano layout, though that's not really saying all that much -- I'd only gotten a few weeks into practising the piano a few times in my life, and bounced off it precisely because I was frustrated by the asymmetry and having to re-learn to play musical objects I already had muscle memory for on a different root note.
      It is fairly expensive, and I really hope they manage to produce more affordable models so that this kind of keyboard can really start to take over the world, but in any case, it's well worth the money in time savings, especially if you don't have 8-12 hours a day to practice.

    • @khakicampbell6640
      @khakicampbell6640 Рік тому

      @@cgibbard Awesome in-depth response! Thanks!
      (Beautiful playing too btw ;)

  • @CamelliaFlingert
    @CamelliaFlingert Рік тому +11

    imagine to make those hexagons bigger and turn your floor into this thing

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +8

      Hahaha! I've thought about getting Nanoleaf hexagon lights on my wall to fit the theme.

  • @matheuscastello6554
    @matheuscastello6554 9 місяців тому

    this is gorgeous... whoa! i think it's my first time hearing a piece in 43edo

  • @not_estains
    @not_estains Рік тому +2

    nobody:
    space ship controls in Hollywood movies:

    • @ts3y
      @ts3y 10 місяців тому

      lmao

  • @abysssalyn
    @abysssalyn Рік тому

    I could unironically listen to someone just doing this for an hour straight lol

  • @commentor5479
    @commentor5479 Рік тому +11

    Why does that sound so consonant? It's really captivating.

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +20

      43edo makes a really brilliant compromise between the accuracy of its major third and perfect fifth -- both are only about 4 cents out, and its 16/15 diatonic semitone is only about 0.1 cents off, making it more harmonically consonant than the usual semitone in 12 that is overworked trying to be both the 16/15 diatonic semitone and the 25/24 chromatic semitone at the same time. Because of that, it kind of feels like some of the usual can't-go-wrong pentatonic magic that the black keys have on a normal piano gets extended to the white keys also. :) The major seventh chords also benefit greatly.

    • @yetresa
      @yetresa Рік тому +3

      bro i play the piano but never learned musical theory, its 3am, i found your video and other, you all seems to speak japanese to me. should i study music theory more to understand what yo'ure talking about ? looks fascinating@@cgibbard

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +4

      @@yetresaMaybe! Specifically a lot of the stuff we talk about is tuning theory specifically, or stuff about microtonality, rather than general music theory.
      Most of the music theory you'll see out there tends to assume that the octave is divided into 12 equal parts which is a decent compromise that enables the construction of instruments that all play reasonably nicely together without needing very many keys or frets. But there are lots of other possible notes in between those and systems for naming and thinking about more pitches than that, and it can be fun to explore how things from normal music theory can still find homes in these larger tuning systems, and also what new concepts become possible.
      Looking up information about just intonation can be helpful because even if you're using a tempered system, understanding how it approximates justly tuned intervals can be a helpful guide to figuring out harmony.
      In this video, I'm subdividing the octave into 43 equal parts. If you've ever heard of the circle of fifths in ordinary music theory, it turns out that 43 equal has a single circle of fifths as well, and that the best approximations to the major/minor scales are still contiguous segments of seven notes on that circle of fifths. So the music theory of 43 equal behaves a lot like that for 12 equal, only with many more keys (as in key signatures) you could reach out into, as well as to a reasonable approximation some new types of consonant harmony and dissonance that aren't on the usual piano keyboard.

  • @MrMemes21
    @MrMemes21 Рік тому

    Really moving and out of this world music

  • @Chris-sv8ty
    @Chris-sv8ty 8 місяців тому

    The future of music

  • @DJazium
    @DJazium 11 місяців тому

    Damn this a pretty interesting use of microtonality. very cool

  • @samuelleeuwenburg
    @samuelleeuwenburg Рік тому

    Absolutely amazing!

  • @saitom2762
    @saitom2762 Рік тому +1

    great!

  • @benyamind
    @benyamind Рік тому +1

    Moody, very nice

  • @fulldenisx4669
    @fulldenisx4669 Рік тому

    1:57 sounds like the weezer riff lol

  • @Pablovds
    @Pablovds Рік тому +3

    is there music like this on spotify or something?

  • @g-ray7121
    @g-ray7121 6 місяців тому

    what soundfont did you use 4 this

  • @RHace-v7l
    @RHace-v7l День тому

    😃What kind of instrument is that???

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  День тому

      It's a Lumatone (www.lumatone.io) midi controller hooked up to my computer running PianoTeq.

  • @acshuley
    @acshuley Рік тому +1

    i love the notes at 1:07

  • @108Rudi
    @108Rudi Рік тому +2

    Make more please

  • @immalogg
    @immalogg Рік тому +1

    i am not a fan of microtonal melodies, as i am unfamiliar with them. i understand theory well in 12 tet and know how it can translate to 24 tet, 31 tet, 53 tet and beyond (as well as non-bachian rational octaves that arent even equal temperment). music is music afterall and transitioning theory knowledge is more about putting yourself in a new creative headspace than battling to digest something uncomfortable.

  • @goldenfurniture123
    @goldenfurniture123 Рік тому +1

    what is that i love it

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +3

      It's a Lumatone MIDI controller plugged into my computer which is running Pianoteq, and set to one of the felt piano models (not sure I remember which one). The keyboard layout is Wicki-Hayden, so perfect fifths ascend along the / diagonals, perfect fourths along the \ diagonals, and whole tones along the shallow rising left to right diagonals. This makes each key signature a nice solid block of the keyboard like the white keys in the middle. The tuning system divides the octave into 43 equal parts instead of the usual 12, which is why there are so many different colours of key. The white keys in the middle are naturals, gold is flats, orange is double flat, red is triple flat, and then on the other side of white, the light blue is sharps, and darker blue is double sharps (and then there's one purple note left over which is either F triple sharp or B quadruple flat).

  • @LukePalmer
    @LukePalmer Рік тому

    You don't happen to be the same Cale Gibbard from the Haskell world do you?

  • @psykomatic0
    @psykomatic0 Рік тому +1

    what daw/app did you use to change the edo?

    • @psykomatic0
      @psykomatic0 Рік тому

      i dont think i phrased this correctly but i dont really know how to ask this question so it makes sense, i hope you understood

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +2

      I'm using PianoTeq, which has a tuning editor that lets you add as many notes per octave as you want, pretty much. Under the "Temperament" dropdown, you can pick "Make equal temperament..." and type in a number to make any equal division of the octave you like. Under "Keyboard Mapping", I have it set to "Extended layout for up to 16*128 notes -> Multi-channel MIDI layout", which puts each octave on its own channel using MIDI note numbers 0 through 42 (or whatever), but where Channel 2 is an octave above Channel 1, etc.
      I also helped contribute this feature to Surge, which is a freely available synth, as its "Use MIDI channel for octave shift" setting, with a compatible convention for which octave goes on which channel.
      The Lumatone is then set up to produce those notes on multiple channels in a corresponding way.
      There are other approaches, but so far, this is the easiest to set up. I have some scripts for the Moony.lv2 plugin that will convert channel-per-octave MIDI into MPE, but they're not perfect about how they do it (I didn't yet bother implementing pitch bend or other global controllers).
      For these videos I'm mostly not using a DAW, and just capturing output from the standalone PianoTeq, but in cases where I am, it mostly doesn't require special setup. Actually editing the resulting MIDI can be kind of annoying at times though, because my DAW doesn't know that notes in different channels are an octave apart and stacks them on top of each other. :P
      If you were editing the MIDI by hand, it would probably be good to split channels out onto their own tracks, and maybe to combine some channels together, putting 2 or 3 octaves per channel depending on which EDO (3 octaves just barely doesn't fit on one channel for 43edo, sadly), but so far I've avoided doing much editing.
      If you'd like any more specifics about getting this stuff set up, feel free to ask further. Also have a look at Sevish's blog, which has lots of good content related to microtonal production.

    • @psykomatic0
      @psykomatic0 Рік тому +1

      @@cgibbard oh wow, thats actually super interesting. ive heard good things about pianoteq but i didnt know it was this good, i havent seen basically any other vst have temperament options. maybe im just missing out. ill be sure to check it out, ive only really recently got into microtonal music and even though it still blows my mind and seems incredibly difficult to write i'd certainly like to have a try at it. thank you!

  • @ts3y
    @ts3y 10 місяців тому +2

    Cbbbbbbbbbbb

  • @ryandixon8202
    @ryandixon8202 Рік тому

    can i sample this? just for fun :p

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +3

      Sure!

    • @ikwenmusic
      @ikwenmusic Рік тому +1

      Good luck working with microtonal

    • @ryandixon8202
      @ryandixon8202 Рік тому +3

      @@ikwenmusic it’s not too bad, just chopped bits and added effects to make it a cool ambient sort of thing

  • @holidaytrout5174
    @holidaytrout5174 Рік тому +1

    That's pretty. What's your midi called?

    • @cgibbard
      @cgibbard  Рік тому +2

      The keyboard is called a Lumatone, and the program on my computer making the sounds is PianoTeq.