Tune in Percent; How much is 1 st

Hey guys,

I'm using the sampler module often as a 128 (128 different samples in one sampler device spread over the keyboard range). Mostly that is good enough for me.
But sometimes I would also like to play different pitches of one of those samples.
Using the normal notes obviously doesn't work, as there would be a totally different sample on that note. So I use the Tune parameter of the Sampler module to change the pitch. That works nicely but is complicated by the fact that the Tune parameter when used in the Step sequencer is given in percent.
So a lot of time is wasted in tuning every sample by ear by slowly turning the knob till I hear the desired pitch.
It would be so much easier if the Tune parameter would either be directly in semi tones and cents (which would require an update by NI) or there were at least some kind of table available to look up what percentage value equals 1 st.

Does anyone know of a table like this and could maybe provide a link?

Thanks bunches,
Cheers Tom

 

Bump

So I guess nobody knows an answer to this?

My question I guess would be what does 100% mean when you talk about pitch. I guess it would be clear if we would be talking about something like the Drive parameter. Then 100% would be the maximum Drive level that the Maschine Sampler achieves.
But is it treated the same for Tune? So the maximum Tune is +/- 36st? So 1st= 2.77%?
But what if I tuned my Sampler already before going to the Step Sequencing part. Lets say I start at +24st as the Tune in Sampler. Is then +100% = 12st (the rest till +36st that are possible) and -100%= 60st (all the way from the +24st tuning to the -36st minimum)? That doesn't sound right.
Does anybody got an idea?

Cheers Tom

 

i'd just drag that sound to its own pad and let it automagically do all that stuff for you. math and music aren't the best of friends

 

I do not have the answer for you. but I would argue that math and music are indeed the best of friends...music is just math for the right side of the brain. I'll look into it though and see if I can dig up an answer

 

Yeah unfortunately this is not practical for what I want to do.
(I have 128s of single cycle waveforms, which makes Maschine into a great Hands-on Wavetable Synth - beautiful for sound design, but since I already used the key range for all the different waveforms I have to use the Tune parameter if I want to do any thing with melodies)

And besides, while you are partly right that math and music don't play well together (at least the part where you shouldn't over think things) I think the answer should be straight forward. NI did it one way or another and I just need to know which way it is.
(It would have been even better if they had used cents and semi tones as a scale instead of a totally meaningless percentage value )

 

fair enough, i agree!

if you have kontakt or traktor, you could route the audio or freeze the audio then use a midi keyboard to play in melodies. not sure if that would be applicable for what you're after.

 

Since you are willing to do all this to create a 128 sample sound, why not just take a sample adjust and use a known device to determine what factor that adjustment is equal to?

Once you have your reference you will have a workable perspective on what it's equal to.

Seems a lot easier than waiting for NI to implement a change that only a handful of people desire or need.

 

I think this is a very good idea.
But I guess the question then goes back to if it will be the same factor if I don't have 0 semi tones as the Tune factor in the sampler I start with. (Say +12 st )
Then +100% would be a different value (only spanning to +36st = 24st ) than -100% (spanning from +12st to -36st = 48st) And for every tuning value that I start with in the original sampler it would be different again. Right?

The freezing option, while workable, would really kill the purpose of what I want to do. It would feel like having a scalpel blade but having to use boxing gloves to operate them

You see, I start out with an assortment of many, many 128s - 25 000 wave forms in total (architect wave forms from galbanum, check 'em out they are the best)
So I might have a 128 of just slightly different sawtooth waves. This is what I start out with in my sound design. When I'm finished with what I wanted (wich is always as much chance as it is planed ) I have 128 ever so slight variations of my desired sound. This is such a (IMHO) creative way of varying my sound and it never gets boring. And I usually have 6 whole Groups in Maschine loaded with 16 of those 128s each (each wave form is just 4kb so RAM is no problem) And the beauty of it: in principle I still have the Tune parameter to access pitch - which leads straight back to my problem...
I did consider using Kontakt (there is already a thread of mine in the Kontakt forum concerning this) But for some reason you can not choose different samples in Kontakt with a Midi knob from Maschine so I'm left with the samples on different keys again...defeating the purpose. (The Ableton Live sampler could do it with its Chain selector - but it is not a vst and can therefore not be loaded into Maschine and its parameters controlled by Maschine. - And Maschine as a Midi Controller in Ableton to control many Samplers is not working (well) either...)

Yeah I'm not really expecting anything from NI here, I'm aware I'm a very small niche.
But the fact is, that it is actually possible, if I just had proper documentation of how the percentage values correspond to the same value on a semi tone scale. (Kinda like a table to transfer Celsius into Fahrenheit)

 

The biggest thing I would be after in your case would be just to achieve some useable reference.

I hate the way many values are displayed in Maschine, it's just not the best way to see the value of certain parameters.
Unfortunately it is what it is so I just tolerate what I can and avoid what I can't.

Doubt they have any plans to change this since they added VST support and Komplete integration without improving it.

 

Bump
Since my question still remains unanswered and I have not quite given up hope that someone might have an answer to an seemingly easy question.
Maybe even someone from NI could put in their 2 cents to what they know about what the percentages of the Tune parameter represent.

 

I'm curious to know an answer too. Sometimes I wish there was a fine tune, as x percent will be flat, y percent will be sharp, and the real tuning is somewhere around x.5%. And I also agree that math and music are best friends! That's my favorite thing about music, it's this perfect marriage of math, language and philosophy.

 

Use SHIFT

You could get the answer yourself by using a freeware spectrum analyser such as SPAN and seeing how percentage affects output hz. I'll stick it on my to-do list but it won't be that near the top

 

Exactly this, there's no way it'll be more work than you did getting the 128s together, it'll take you a couple of hours tops and you'll have your own conversion table.

To get you started an octave seems close to 16.5% and a fifth seems close to 9.5% on my Maschine. 2 octaves seems to be 33% and an octave plus a fifth seems to be 26%. So it seems like a linear relationship with a semitone being somewhere about 1.36-1.37. If you go through all the intervals carefully you should be able to come up with a close to precise result.

 

Thanks guys, I think this will be the approach to go. I will do so when i have a little more time on my hands than now

The first result I can point to, is that a percentage point relative to a given starting pitch seems to be constant. As seen by the fact that when i tried to pitch up something through the Tune parameter in the step sequencer that had been set up to a starting pitch of +36st, nothing happened pitch wise. (Even though the dial did go up to +100 percent)
So +/- 36 st seems to be the maximum either way. So I would guess that if i had started at 35 st, the remaining 1st would not have been divided by 100 (percentage) steps, but that the Tune would stop having an effect lets say at + 1.36%.