Ableton Live 12: Tuning Systems

Live 12’s new Tunings system is your invitation to explore alternative tunings and microtones.

Tunings are available from the Tunings menu and filterable by type; changes made in the table below the list can be saved and the ‘link’ button will take you to the online manual which will load extensive information about the selected tuning.With Live 12 came the ground‑breaking Tunings feature that has the potential to change the sound of modern music. A bold claim perhaps, but the ability to easily try different tuning systems means it’s now simple to experiment. Despite the ease of changing tunings, the feature can seem daunting at first and that can be off‑putting, which would be a shame, as in my opinion, alternative tunings lend themselves particularly well to electronic music.

It’s true that some artists have been doing this for years. I’ve always felt that one of Aphex Twin’s ‘secret sauces’ is his liberal use of detuned melodies, creating a frisson against more conventionally tuned elements. Experimental artists like Wendy Carlos, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young have also been composing in alternative tunings for decades. And users of vintage analogue synths have inadvertently been dabbling in microtones for many years!

To use the old cliché, the standard western tuning system is like the water we musical fish swim around in. We might notice when singers are ‘out of tune’, but we barely think about what that ‘in tune’ is referencing. In comparison to equal temperament (the western default), all of these new Live 12 tunings are ‘out of tune’... but if you immerse yourself in them, they can be as refreshing as a wild swim in new harmonic waters!

In this article I will outline the main categories of tunings available in Live 12, and the uses to which the creative musician might put them — from the simple‑but‑effective to the outright wild and bizarre. Perhaps the future of music may lie somewhere within these systems... and there’s only one way to find out!

Implementation & Use

Simply browse to the Tunings menu under ‘Library’, and double‑click on any one of the 152(!) different tunings available. Once selected, all MIDI parts will conform to that tuning system (and the ‘Scale Aware’ feature will disappear for those that are non‑compatible).

The ability to bypass the current Tuning and extended keyboard control settings are available in MIDI tracks.It must be said that 152 tuning options is completely overwhelming and one would be forgiven for simply giving up at this point! One saving grace is the fact that they are organised into 11 categories, which can be thought of as belonging to four main types as described below.

When rolled over with the mouse, each tuning comes with informative notes in the Help box, but if you don’t happen to know your quintal syntonic comma from your quarter comma meantone, I’m not sure it’s going to help you very much. In fact it may be even more off‑putting! It’s incredibly useful for the scholar of tunings, perhaps, less so for your average bedroom producer.

However, if you’re brave enough to select a tuning, each note of its scale is mapped to each MIDI note, and you can play them directly from a connected keyboard (or from a MIDI clip or arrangement part). There is an option for ‘Retune Set on Loading System’ which will move existing MIDI notes to the closest match in the new system — but be warned, notes can be removed if more than one are mapped to the same target note.

Also worth noting is you can exclude a MIDI track from a global Tuning setting by selecting Bypass Tuning. Beneath that button, the Custom Controller menu offers further options, including the ability to restrict notes to just the black or white keys if the scales happen to have only five or seven notes in them. Handy!

Advanced options include the option of restricting notes to just the black or white keys, for five or seven note scales.All Ableton Instruments work with alternate tunings, as does external hardware and third party VSTs. If they are MPE‑enabled and have their pitch‑bend range set to 48 semitones.

Equal Divisions Of The Octave (EDO)

All EDO tunings divide the octave into equal intervals, and the number in front of each EDO indicates how many notes the octave has been divided into. 12‑EDO is another name for equal temperament which has been the standard tuning system of western music for at least two hundred years. It’s what all synths, pianos and keyboards use.

EDO options that start with the numbers 19, 31, 41, 43, 55, and 72 contain the standard 12 notes of the octave, but they have additional microtones in between the semitones. Tip: use the Tuner to identify the ‘normal’ notes, and then the microtones in between, to help find your way around.

The EDOs that start with 5, 7, 11, 13, and 35, do not include a perfect fifth so tend to sound even less harmonic than the previous set. They are pleasingly referred to as ‘xenharmonic tunings’. Use for more exotic results! 

Fans of drone music might enjoy the beat‑frequencies that are generated with some of these unusual microtone intervals...

Wendy Carlos created EDOs that she named Alpha, Beta and Gamma. She has written that the ‘melodic motions of Alpha are amazingly exotic and fresh, like you’ve never heard before’. Her Beauty In The Beast (1980) uses it, and is a worth a good listen. The new tunings sound both odd and strangely familiar at the same time.

The Piano Roll updates according to the scale selected to help inform its use. Shown here from left to right: ‘Hijaz 2’, ‘24 Helmholtz’, ‘2 — Dastgah‑e Abuata’, and ‘11‑ED3_2 Wendy Carlos’.

European Historical

I imagine most of you are probably scoring a film about Henry VIII at this precise moment, so choose amongst this set of tunings for that fully authentic 1580 flavour! These historical examples include such things as the Tertial‑Quintal (Erlanger Traktat), which is close to 12‑EDO, but has what is called a ‘wolf interval’ between A‑E (play that as a fifth — and the wolf howls!). Another tuning system from 1545 has a name that wouldn’t be out of place in Harry Potter — the Henricus Grammateus!

There are 23 Meantone, Tertial, Helmholtz and Well Tempered tunings in this category and most are only very subtly different with slightly flattened or sharpened fifths and thirds. Use a simple synth tone like a sine or square wave to make it easier to hear the different ‘beat frequencies’ those intervals produce. It can indeed be very subtle. But you can try writing in them and see if you like the results.

Just Intonation & Rational Intonation

Another set of tunings are those built with the ratios of the harmonic series. Many composers have experimented with these and Live 12 includes the following sets: HS (Harmonic Series), Quintal, Tertial (different from the historical tertials), Undecimal, Bohlen, and also includes Sruti (an Indian system with 22 notes per octave). Some of these use 12 notes per octave, so those you can test using ‘normal’ melodies or chords to see how they work out. For the others... a more experimental approach is needed, ie. play some notes and see what appeals. Or use the techno method — use a random note generator to find a pleasing sequence.

Arabic, Persian & Gamelan Tunings

Another rich source of tuning systems is music from around the world. If you are a musician or composer with musical training from these regions, you can now tune your electronic music to match in a way that’s never been (easily) possible before. In my view this is a ground‑breaking development and Ableton should be fully commended.

There are many different tunings under the headings of Arabic Maqam, Turkish Makam and Persian Radif. As I’m unfamiliar with these musical traditions, my approach is to read the Help notes, and where it might describe, for example, Dastgāh‑e Bayāt‑e Esfahān as one of the ‘most poetic and romantic’ modes, I’ll load it up and see if that quality can be detected (to my untrained ears). Even if not, it provides a starting point for exploration.

Sudanese and Javan Gamelan tunings are extremely well represented (the categories of Degung, Pelog and Salendro), and the excellent online manual provides an extensive exploration of this fascinating family of instruments.

This global selection should be considered a starter‑pack — notable by their absence are tunings from India, China, Japan and more. But there are over 5000 global and microtone scales in the long‑established Scala format which can be imported directly into Live 12.

It’s also possible to make your own tuning systems. Again the excellent online manual takes you through a step by step guide, allowing you to easily export your files to Live 12.

Taking a plunge in the bracing waters of the adjacent tuning realities we so often overlook is well worth the effort.

There are many ways to engage in this new world of alternative tuning systems: pick one and simply start playing the keyboard; try your existing melodies in the many alternative ‘12 note per octave’ options; recreate accurate historical tunings for authentic mediaeval experiences; experiment with world music tunings; or even create your own tunings and work out a new theory of music yourself!

Either way, taking a plunge in the bracing waters of the adjacent tuning realities we so often overlook is well worth the effort. You might even change the face of music as we know it!