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Different Key Sounds (pg. 2)
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| PutBoy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Derivative
you are kidding right?
pitch = a property of sound in the similar way that phase is also one property of sound.
instead of telling me im wrong about proving to me that a bass drum does not have a pitch? that sounds absurd. why do drummer's tune their drum kits then? |
hmmm... You're right about that last bit.
But for all I know a kick drum is not keyed whatev, in the same way an instrument is.
Because... Well, as the sound of the kick proggesses the pitch really bends down doesn't it? :S |
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| Derivative |
| quote: | | Because... Well, as the sound of the kick proggesses the pitch really bends down doesn't it? |
yea? and?
the pitch is modulated over a very short time. a split second. so the pitch bend is really really fast. its not that hard to tell that a kick drum has a pitch - ive tuned acoustic bass drums as well as tuned all of the synth percussion i use in my tracks - to not do so just seems crazy. similarly, you can set an LFO to modulate the pitch on a supersaw sound. you can set it so its practically out of tune but it still has a discernable pitch.
and a 909 kick drum does not sound like a bassy smudge either. well, you can make it sound like a smudge but it depends on the slope of the pitch bend. i think you are thinking of the classic 808 kick sound - you can make kick drums on a 909 that sound quite solid. a 909 kick sounds most cliche with a gentle exponential shaped slope. the pitch dives very sharply early on but as it levels out it sounds like a flat even sine wave. this is the bulk of the kick drum anyway. (the part where the pitch dives hard is mostly the click part of the kick drum)
and i assure you - it does have a frequency. and subsequently it does have a pitch. whether your ear can discern it or not. |
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| PutBoy |
Alright you win ;D
But is it really necessary to pitch it to the key you're using. Seems a little too farfetched to me... |
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| Derivative |
you dont have to pitch it to the key of your bassline. i mean - its music. you can make anything work if you really think about it.
its not really far fetched to tune all of your percussion. most dance songs i hear have percussion that is tuned (not necessarily all to the same key). it depends on what kind of sound you want.
think of your drums as instruments. you mean you have been making tunes and half of your instruments could be out of tune?! argh! |
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| PutBoy |
Never really thought about it ;D Besides I could never pitch a percussion anyway. I don't have that kind of ear. I can't even tell the key of a tune.
And yepp, still I make music ;D |
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| Derivative |
just compare it to a piano (thats in tune of course).
some sounds you wont be able to tell the pitch of easily in some frequency ranges. a typical 808 kick sound is difficult to tell because its mostly sub bass. so load it into a sample and start pressing keys 2 octaves up where it'll sound completely different (more like a short laser sound). all you need to do is roughly match it to the root key of your track. once its close to the mark, fine tune it. then go back down 2 octaves and play it again.
you can tune it to whatever key you think will work with the instruments you have. although i mostly like to have my kick tuned to the roughly the same key as my bassline.
there are no hard and fast rules really. but you should at least be aware of what tuning all of your sounds are in.
for stuff like high hats you dont want them all keyed to the root. that would be boring. its also hard to tell the key of many hihat samples because they are built out of white noise. and white noise is all frequencies at the same time, at the same amplitude (no fundamental). that said, even if you cant get it down to key, you can at least tune it until it sounds 'right' with the rest of your track. |
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| Thois |
| if it sounds right, it's ok, isnt it? i am asking this because i hate these tuning stuff and music theory, it is bad for my creativity and i lose fun in making music |
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| DigiNut |
I'm not going to delve into this rambling pointless argument.
You can circomlocute all you like, but I will reiterate once again:
Pitch is defined by a fundamental frequency plus harmonics.
If there is no identifiable fundamental, there is no identifiable pitch. This is coming from a musician and an engineer, so don't try to chalk this up as something "subjective".
The mere ability to tune a bass drum "up" or "down" does not give it pitch. You can tune white noise up or down too, but I think everyone here will agree that white noise does not have pitch. Tuning in the digital domain is simply resampling a waveform at a lower or higher speed to alter its frequency range; *IF* the original sound has pitch then you are altering its pitch. If the original sound does not have pitch then you are merely altering its spectrum. |
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| Derivative |
christ. you build kick drums out of sine waves. and sine waves consist of 1 frequency. the fundamental frequency. in many cases, kick drums are built from composite sounds, some of which are not percussive and do have identifiable pitch - one example is alphazone's kick drums. on the vengeance cds they are even arranged in keys for easy insertion into tracks.
further to this, the part of the kick where the pitch dive is almost vertical in a bog standard 909 kick, is only the initial transient. after that comes the thump and the tail off which levels into a flat 60 hz sine wave - too low to really discern the pitch of it. but stick it up an octave in a sampler and you can do it then.
this however all depends on the shape of the slope with regards to pitch over time. but sine waves do have a fundamental frequency and thats how 808, 909 and DIY soundforge/cooledit/any synthesizer that can be set to oscillate along a sine wave and can modulate its pitch.
i already mentioned this. i also mentioned that you cant do it with sounds built from white noise because white noise is all frequencies, at the same time. at the same level. and thus has no discernable fundamental frequency.
why can you can generate sine waves in soundforge then modulate the pitch of that sine wave over time using the pitch bend tool? is this some feature born out of lack of 'expertise' on the parts of sonic foundary/sony? instead of rubbishing all of this because of your 'professional' status why not provide something concrete? all in the name of clearing this little confusion up of course.
you may be a class act 'musician' and 'engineer' but you still need to put your reading glasses on. |
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| DigiNut |
You say white noise is "all frequencies", but do you know what that means? White noise is not literally a perfect and equal spectrum of every single frequency - it's what you get with a random waveform, which results in a broad (usually Gaussian) distribution across the spectrum.
At the same time, most kicks are also a broad spectrum but only in the bass area. Good kicks are very rarely a simple sum of sine waves - if they are generated from sine waves at all, they are often descending or modulated sines.
Maybe some kicks have "pitch" - lousy ones which are strung together in a hurry and without much thought. But even then, the pitch may not be identifiable to any particular key - if you combine three sines with equal amplitude, one at 60 Hz, another at 75 Hz and another at 90 Hz, you'll have a pretty hard time identifying the overall pitch.
I'm sorry, but you just don't know what you're talking about. You can write whatever else you want in this thread, but as far as I'm concerned this conversation is over. |
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| Derivative |
what? you mean some 'lousy' kicks might have a pitch but good ones dont? eh? what do you mean by lousy and good?
and as for this:
| quote: | | if you combine three sines with equal amplitude, one at 60 Hz, another at 75 Hz and another at 90 Hz, you'll have a pretty hard time identifying the overall pitch. |
this is like saying, 'pluck 3 guitar strings at the same time - bet you dont know what key you're playing in.'
the only reason you would be hard pressed to tell the overall pitch of 3 sine waves at 60, 75 and 90 hz intervals is because all 3 are so low that they are pretty much on the bottom end of human hearing, where pitch is almost impossible to discern. pitch the sound up 2 octaves and you would get something with a definite pitch although, the other sines could make it sound slightly out of tune.
by the way, i like how you discredit my arguement by quoting rote learned text book spiel. then saying i dont know what im talking about. good way to prove your point is that.
heavy sarcasm here i come. |
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| Thois |
| this is like two mad scientists arguing over a formula, very entertaining |
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