Ableton’s newMicrotuner pluginexpands that number into the infinite.
Microtuner lets musicians use custom scales with any musical interval between the notes.
Scales
Remember in school you’d sing Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do?
Soundtrap / Unsplash
Those are the eight white keys on a piano keyboard.
Now, Ableton’s Microtuner rig lets you use alternate tuning schemes with all your regular software instruments.
you’re able to also create two different scales and morph between them.
Ableton Live
The implementation is pretty great too.
There’s even a tool to automatically randomize the size of the slices.
The result is that it is now absurdly easy to work in alternative scales.
This opens up a whole new world of musical possibilities.
It’s both daunting and exciting.
But not everybody is happy.
Falling Flat
Technically, Abletons new machine is superb.
You really can dial in anything you want.
But it ignores a large part of what makes microtuning interesting: the cultural aspect.
And this aspect is missing from Microtuner.
On the other hand, if you strive to be culturally inclusive, then you risk leaving people out.
