Recommend a detuneable keyboard

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

Moderators: drumsound, tomb

Post Reply
User avatar
Snarl 12/8
cryogenically thawing
Posts: 3510
Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:01 pm
Location: Right Cheer
Contact:

Recommend a detuneable keyboard

Post by Snarl 12/8 » Wed Feb 01, 2012 1:27 am

Hey,

My daughter hates playing keyboards, I think she said once it's because the tuning is too perfect. Is there a fairly cheap keyboard that has an out of tune piano sound? Like, not just tunable down a half step, but notes out of tune slightly with each other in weird ways, so chords are more dissonant, etc. I guess that's the opposite of what most people want, but I figured if anyone knew of one they'd be on this board. I feel like an asshole because this is all probably because I've been too cheap and lazy to get the piano she's been learning on tuned properly.

Also, I guess this would be a separate question, but I don't know much at all about keyboards. What would you people that know about keyboards think the bare minimum keyboard for someone that was just learning the piano would be? Something to practice on. Is weighted keys important so they learn good feel? Or is anything with fairly normal sized keys just fine? I ask this because I'm a big believer that a practice instrument should be fairly rewarding to play, but I don't know what that really means when it comes to keyboards.

For both questions I'm talking good piano sound, hopefully with some other decent sounds as a bonus.

She's 17 if you think that matters. Not a kid really anymore.

Thanks,

ck
Carl Keil

Almost forgot: Please steal my drum tracks. and more.

percussion boy
carpal tunnel
Posts: 1512
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 5:51 pm
Location: Bay Area

Post by percussion boy » Wed Feb 01, 2012 2:54 am

Re the detuning thing, a digital piano with a honky-tonk preset would work, wouldn't it? Some of 'em have that.

Re the rest of it: It depends.

If your daughter wants to end up a pianist, it really helps to practice on a piano. The way a real piano responds to different touches and the way the pedal affects this sound isn't really duplicated completely by digital pianos -- at least, digital pianos $1,000 and less, I dunno about the expensive stuff.

If buying or renting an upright isn't practical, I've found it definitely helps to get a digital with a piano-like action -- not just weighted keys, some synths have those, but an action that's really trying to mimic a piano's. It also helps if the keys aren't too shallow, because when you move from one acoustic piano to another the depth of the key is sometimes greater than on a typical electric keyboard, and this can throw you off a little -- particularly since getting to the "bottom of the key" on an acoustic piano is an important part of the sound.

If your daughter is studying piano but ultimately has no big interest in playing heavy-duty jazz or classical stuff, then the second option seems like it would be fine. You could also ask the teacher.

Yamaha is the big player in this market, but Casio also makes some decent cheaper digital pianos if you don't care about the action. I have a Korg SP250 that I like -- sounds good but not great, but feels closer to a piano than other instruments I tried in that price range ($700).

Hope this helps. I'm speaking as an adult piano student, not an expert, see what other people think ...
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
.
.
.
.

trevord
gettin' sounds
Posts: 128
Joined: Thu Jun 12, 2003 2:20 pm
Location: San Jose, CA

Post by trevord » Wed Feb 01, 2012 5:57 am

Not sure what keyboards are being played
but almost all decent keyboards have that feature.

Although the ease of access of the feature varies greatly.

Here is a quote from the Korg micro-arranger
PAGE 5 - TUNING
This page lets you program the alternative scale for the
selected tracks (see ?Scale Mode? on page 51). The
remaining tracks use the Scale set in the Global mode
(see ?Scale? on page 125).

Scale
Selected scale. See ?Scales? on page 227 for a list of the
available scales.

Key
Parameter required for some Scales, when you should
select a preferred key.

Note
Note in edit, to be detuned. This parameter can be
accessed when a User Scale is selected.

Detune
Note detune, relative to the standard Equal tuning. This
parameter can be accessed when a User Scale is selected.

This has been around for years so any older (cheaper) keyboard should have it.

kslight
mixes from purgatory
Posts: 2968
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 7:40 pm

Post by kslight » Wed Feb 01, 2012 4:45 pm

Define cheap?


That said, why not get an upright off Craigslist? Many people are giving them away in exchange for moving them...that seems like the cheapest way to go and the most bang for buck if you want realism... Shouldn't be terribly difficult to tune it, and you're good to go?

As far as what to learn on... Of course full size keys. If she wants to play "piano" then weighted keys make sense. If she just wants to learn to play "keyboard" then semi-weighted would be fine, but synth action also an option. I learned to play on synth action keyboards and I don't have trouble going to a heavier keybed, but I also don't really play much piano... And IMHO having a keyboard that is "fun" and "inspiring" is important to the learning experience, whether that means a piano that really responds like she wants or a keyboard that is a little more flexible.

User avatar
ubertar
ears didn't survive the freeze
Posts: 3775
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 7:20 pm
Location: mid-Atlantic US
Contact:

Post by ubertar » Wed Feb 01, 2012 6:20 pm


Tyler
audio school graduate
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:07 pm

Post by Tyler » Thu Feb 02, 2012 11:21 pm

I wonder if she just doesn't like the sampled sounds of whatever keyboard(s) she has played, and attributing the dislike to the perfect tune, rather than an imperfect sample/tone/something else... it can be hard to pin down what rubs one the wrong way....

User avatar
Dakota
re-cappin' neve
Posts: 740
Joined: Sun Sep 02, 2007 10:14 am
Location: West of Boston
Contact:

Post by Dakota » Fri Feb 03, 2012 10:54 am

What's funny is that as a kid, one of the first musical instruments I messed with was keyboard organ. No lessons, just playing combinations of notes and seeing what I liked. I knew absolutely no music theory, but was a somewhat texture-obsessive painter and visual artist.

The tuning bugged me a lot. Not that it was too perfect - rather, it was stubbornly and obviously imperfect or wrong somehow. On some note combinations.

The organ was not at all out of tune - it was tuned totally normally to 12 tone equal temperament. Octaves, 5ths, 4ths, and to some degree 9ths sounded great, and all of the other intervals sounded like they were drastically rattling and shaking in texture, like an unbalanced washing machine but sped up. Doesn't everyone hear these intervals as sounding wrong? Turned me off from getting into learning music a bit.

Years later I learn that I'd wanted to hear the just intonation versions of the other intervals, which are as right sounding as 5ths and 4ths. Consonances should really be consonant. Like a string quartet or acapella group.

And there are lots more interesting flavors of excellent dissonance than equal temperament provides, as well. All the colors.

So how does a kid hear? What do they hear? It's probably different than what you and I hear now.

User avatar
ubertar
ears didn't survive the freeze
Posts: 3775
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2004 7:20 pm
Location: mid-Atlantic US
Contact:

Post by ubertar » Fri Feb 03, 2012 5:33 pm

Dakota, I think maybe your later experience and knowledge has colored your memory of your childhood experience-- you say you didn't know any theory, yet you distinguish between intervals that sounded right because they're closer to just intonation and ones that sounded wrong because they were further off, though you wouldn't have known about fifths or fourths, etc. at the time, but only looking back, much later.

I think the just intonation enthusiasts make too much of consonance. Studies have shown that kids are open as far as tuning until a certain point, and then the brain "wiring" becomes fixed-- not for just intonation (unless that's what's in that kid's environment), but for whatever the kid has been exposed to. After that, everything outside of the system the kid is acculturated to will sound "off"-- even the "perfect" consonances of just intonation.

Why did you experience that organ the way you did? There could be any number of reasons, which could be related to the timbre of that instrument, some weird mechanical resonances (a loose screw inside that vibrated with certain pitches) or who knows what. We'll never know.

I've been teaching microtonal music to kids for about a decade, and my experience is that kids are totally open to different tunings and scales until somewhere around puberty, unless they've had formal musical training (in which case they're less likely to be open). They will have no qualms about composing a piece in 13 tone equal temperament, for example, which is much further off from just intonation than 12-equal. Young kids don't seem to have a concept of "out-of-tune" that's absolute, but only one that's contextual-- an interval can be perceived as out of tune for a particular piece, but by itself, it's just a sound.

There's a lot of woo surrounding just intonation, that goes back at least as far as Kepler (the music of the spheres) not to mention Pythagoras and Ptolemy, so it's no surprise that, like astrology, it endures. Play a piece for the average American, in a major scale, first in 12-equal, then in just intonation, and I'd bet the vast majority will hear the first version as correct and the second as "off". The brain gets "hard-wired" to what you're exposed to, no matter what that is. Luckily that wiring isn't really so permanent-- you can recondition yourself by listening to other things.

Sorry for the long post, and I'm not accusing anyone here of engaging in "woo"... this is just a subject (tuning) I'm pretty deeply involved in.

trevord
gettin' sounds
Posts: 128
Joined: Thu Jun 12, 2003 2:20 pm
Location: San Jose, CA

Post by trevord » Fri Feb 03, 2012 7:00 pm

A few things to keep in mind (as far electronic keyboards)
1) Samples vs physical modelling
those that are sampled based tend to really screw the pooch as far as micro-tonality is concerned.
That is they process the existing sample to produce different notes and thus introduce different harmonics. These harmonics may not be apparent by themselves but mixed with more processed samples produce sounds which are further and further from reality.
Physical modeling on the other hand generates the fundamental and harmonics for the specified frequency and thus tend to blend together better (or with a more natural sound)

2) Some instruments are better suited to micro-tonal variation when playing - for example piano vs some non-fretted instrument. When playing electronic keyboards emulating existing instruments - avoid grand pianos/harps with pitch-bend etc. The programs may not be designed to do that and thus produce strange interactions of harmonics.

3) In spite of (2) above. In sometimes sounds really cool to play the electronic keyboards entirely with the pitch-bend control. There are couple way to do this.
a) set the pitch bend to a narrow range (+/- a semitone) and have them play with along with some other instrument while adjusting the pb slightly to produce that pleasant effect.
b) set the pb range to a full 2 octaves and use the pb to select the notes - this forces the user to listen and play the note which sounds most pleasing with the accompanying instrument

The above is suited for electronic instruments - it is relatively easy to build some koto like instrument to help understand the relationship of length and tension to frequency. And might probably be more fun to build. Although a straight voltage controlled oscillator is just as much fun (it was to me anyway) and as easy to build.
Depends on the kid I guess.
But I agree whole heartedly - the age of "standard" music has stopped us using our ears to listen to music and produce frequencies which blend well with what we hear rather than what a committee somewhere says sounds good. A lot of standard music rules are compromises based on economics of instrument manufacture than what sounds good.
Its strange to see a band where each member has their own tuner instead of one member listening to the other and adjusting to make a pleasant sound

User avatar
Snarl 12/8
cryogenically thawing
Posts: 3510
Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:01 pm
Location: Right Cheer
Contact:

Post by Snarl 12/8 » Sat Feb 04, 2012 7:41 pm

Thanks for the discussion. Good stuff to think about. The kid is 17 though, so we're on that line between pedagogy and andragogy.
Carl Keil

Almost forgot: Please steal my drum tracks. and more.

kayagum
ghost haunting audio students
Posts: 3490
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 11:11 pm
Location: Saint Paul, MN

Post by kayagum » Mon Feb 06, 2012 8:33 am

I grew up as a classical trained pianist, so I guess that makes me slightly more qualified on this topic than most of the other topics I comment on :)

...and as someone who couldn't get away from classical training fast enough may be able to offer some advice on this topic.

I believe that it's absolutely valuable if a musician has experience with both ends of the spectrum. For piano (for instance), there's no greater thrill to play a nine foot concert grand in a performance hall. But many pianists turn up their noses on junk uprights and keyboards, even though they may have its own sonic merits. Flexibility is important, especially for touch. It's a jump to go either direction, and it takes some time to adjust. But the faster a player can make the switch, the more versatile and (hopefully) valuable player he or she is to a group or project.

I think the same is absolutely true for any instrument- particularly guitars and drums. A good player can adapt (or instantly switch) between instruments.

This flexibility helps sonically, and in both directions. A perfectionist classically trained musician can often sound too spot on (and expressionless and overly precious), and a home-grown musician could often use a little help with intonation and rhythm discipline.

Going back to the keyboard discussion, I think getting a hand-me-down upright and/or a decent keyboard with full weighted action would be great, if you can't find or afford a grand piano. I play on a Yamaha P80 for theater gigs, and it has served me well both sonically and having the touch being reasonably close to a good grand piano. Plus with a MIDI out, you can patch any module you want.

User avatar
Snarl 12/8
cryogenically thawing
Posts: 3510
Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:01 pm
Location: Right Cheer
Contact:

Post by Snarl 12/8 » Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:59 am

Oh, crap. One other thing I meant to add is that we already have an upright piano. One I'm determined to get tuned after we move.

I'm trying to find a keyboard both to expand her palette of sounds and feels (without fucking up what she's already got going on) and to allow her to either/both practice silently with headphones and practice at other locations (namely the playhouse in the backyard) when we're going nuts with her playing in the dining room. I hate having to tell her she needs to stop practicing, but sometimes you just have to when the piano is in the middle of everyone else's lives.
Carl Keil

Almost forgot: Please steal my drum tracks. and more.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 44 guests