Infinitone Microtonal Saxophone | Hacker News Reader

Infinitone Microtonal Saxophone

xerocraft.org

55 pointsbrudgers46 comments

Composition for the Infinitone here, https://youtu.be/56fLizLEn6Y?si=o20KmVemkuHid2RX

Hey all, Subhraag, the inventor of the Infinitone, here. A friend of mine just saw this and told me about the thread. I'm happy to answer any questions..... The advantage of the Infinitone is that it can play ANY microtonal scale instantly (with little to no practice). The scale in this composition, posted earlier, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56fLizLEn6Y, is 128 harmonics within an octave. I basically "sight read" it for this recording (though the motors were triggered by MIDI). Try THAT on any other instrument :) We are about to release a software instrument called InfinitoneDMT... which gives instant, inspiring, dynamic access to a multiverse of vibrant new tonal possibilities using notes not available on a standard keyboard (https://infinitone.com). It will be coming out soon, hopefully this summer!

Hrrm. Looking at the electronics apparently it's an array of servos mounted to a tapered rectangular prism base geometry sheet metal chassis held together through welding. Listening to the recording they seem to 'click' audibly when closing off holes. I wonder if it would be feasible to introduce a non-clicky approach and/or a non-servo approach, for example by integrating on-PCB linear actuation and some form of non-metallic seal contact. Non-servo would also have the benefit of greatly reducing instrument weight. On-PCB would also have the benefit of greatly reducing cost, assuming a working mechanism can be found with adequate torque. Happy to offer what assistance I can if there's a contact point.

Subhraag, the inventor of the Infinitone here! A friend of mine just told me about this thread. Please write to me at subhraag (at) infinitone.com. I made this instrument the way I did because it was within my skill set (and budget) to do so. I am absolutely open to collaboration to improve it.

Cool project, I've reached out.

I’m surprised not to see any mention of the Otamatone, a Japanese toy instrument with a bit of a cult following. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otamatone)

>But you may be surprised to learn that the twelve musical tones that shape our very understanding of Western music today is extremely narrow.

Grammar aside, the twelve musical tones that comprise Western music are, well, the good ones. It's not like there are thousands of notes out there and we randomly picked 12 and didn't think about the rest. We picked the 12 best ones.

I find it a bit reductive to say equal temperament has 'the good [tones]'. I think 'the least bad tones' would probably be more accurate, in the sense that no matter what you are playing (i.e. which note(s)/scale(s) the piece is centered on), it'll sound fairly OK, even though some intervals are not what they should be.

It sounds pleasant to the ear because that's what most people hear all day. Other cultures have developed a slightly different relationship with harmony, leading to them considering other tones 'good'.

For a cheeky example of what I mean with 'the least bad tones', feel free to check this short demo by Jacob Collier[1], about just how out of tune equal temperament is.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGDWXe2u9kw

The fact that equal temperament is imperfect is a bit of a side issue. The 12 tone scale was settled well before that came along.

The fact that our 12 tones, which are mostly made of simple ratios of frequencies, sound good is not a coincidence.

Interesting, see also the glissotar (https://glissonic.com/) for a purely analog variation. That one is more analogous to a fretless guitar (if the linked sax is more analogous to a guitar with adjustable frets).

Wild that they may have come to basically the same design as the Moe[0].

It seems they reached out to Bart Hopkin when they were trying to patent it[1].

[0] https://barthopkin.com/instrumentarium/moe/

[1] https://barthopkin.com/more-moe/

Oh very neat, I didn't know about that! Thanks!

I was running to the comments to post this too. The Ininitone is an impressive mechanical achievement, but I think the glissotar has much more potential to catch on.

I made a web app to play microtonal music with touchscreens: https://slidesynth.com/

Cool. One issue: not all wave shapes play at the same volume.

That's due to clipping. For a sine or a triangle, you'll hear clipping at a volume where a sawtooth or square still sounds fine.

OK, but imho for the interface it would be better if they all had the same subjective volume.

I've updated this, so that the gain is the same for all waveforms now (before it was half for sine and triangle).

However, sawtooth and square are still louder because they're made of three osillators (spread based on touch surface).

Another reason for the difference between waveforms is multitouch, this is also something that sounds different for different waveforms.

If you switch from sine to square or sawtooth the change in volume is jarring.

Waveforms having the same amplitude doesn't mean the ear hears it at the same volume. There's more frequencies contained in different waveforms and the ear is more sensitive to certain ranges.

A smoother representation of the waveforms might contain the first 5 - 10 frequencies of Fourier series but even then you need to compensate with a change in amplitude.

It's not a DAW, it's a web app, and the users will appreciate the favor.

Wilsonic is a microtonal tool by Ervin Wilson, https://wilsonic.co/

needs some mouse love too! very trippy!

> There are twelve semitones in every octave and they make up just about all the music we hear in the West today.

Is it just me, or is this strict division into semitones making e.g. piano music sound like it's slightly off-key at times?

HN discussion of "The Saddest Thing I know about the Integers"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8682782

Original article is offline, it seems :-(

EDIT: archive.org to the rescue!

https://web.archive.org/web/20240123154411/https://blogs.sci...

Is there a video that demonstrates the difference?

It's not short, but I was introduced to the concept in a video series on FLOSS Linux audio tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdPPPeq82hw&list=PLf_MTToSAx...

Specifically, you can play with it yourself with a tool like ZynAddSubFX's (https://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.io/) virtual keyboard, where you can enable microtonal under scale settings and tweak to whatever tuning you want (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdPPPeq82hw&t=669s for where the video above starts showing this).

A simpler and shorter video discussing the history of just intonation and equal temperament, with examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCYcS57eCqs

Yep. There are many different ways to tune a piano, none of them perfect. A tuning that is just right for one key will leave real howlers in others. (Literally "howlers"; it's called a "wolf tone")

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_(music)

Actual pianos are usually tuned in a way that sounds pretty good most of the time, without ever sounding perfect.

“Well-tempered” (yes, like the clavier).

Pianos are tuned differently, they use stretch tuning and will be pretty out of tune with other instruments at both lowest and highest notes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_tuning#/media/File:Rails...)

It's the other instruments that are out of tune.

You have a good ear, you are hearing the small errors inherent in "twelve-tone equal temperament"[1] which is a compromise between numerical ideals and practical instrument-making.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_equal_temperament

Equal temperament is used to allow playing in arbitrary keys without retuning…for example D and E flat are equally in (and out of tune) with equal temperament. With Pythagorean or Just tuning, instruments are tuned to a specific key (or set of related keys).

Which is to say historically, equal temperament is mostly a result of compositional and performance concerns rather than manufacturing limitations.

This seems like a lot of effort to go to to avoid buying a trombone.

(Former HS trombone player. Go ahead with the jokes, I love them because I've lived them)

As soon as I got a few lines in I was like,

"So, a trombone... with extra steps"

(Also if you want to slide, any fretless instrument is good! )

As a current semi-pro trombonist, I had the same reaction.

Relevant aside: Alan Kaplan has been recording Jacob Collier transcriptions for his YouTube channel. Check out “Moon River”.

Playing a trombone usually does not mean playing microtones in tune.

Imagine a greater-than-twelve-tone chromatic scale.

Or go listen to some Harry Partch. Partch's compositions sound to me more like gamelan than someone noodling on a trombone.

https://www.harrypartch.com/bio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQGvmaH-ce0

Partch is a good recommendation -- with a fairly large focus on microtonal percussion -- but you do dismiss the trained trombonists who actually train and perform microtonal works. It isn't necessary to disparage a viable microtonal instrument to make your point.

The infinitone appears to be more like a dynamically scaled instrument, unlike the trombone, which is influenced by electronic instruments such as the Kaossilator and Cosmovox.

There have been a couple types of slide saxes made but for whatever reason they haven't really caught on..

This one has keys that are actuated by the slide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJU9Rm-KviI (The last third of the video has a narrative in French describing the instrument, photobombed by a set of four serpents hanging on the wall behind the speaker. A serpent is a instrument that is sort of the opposite of a slide sax: it combines a brass-style mouthpiece with woodwind-like fingerholes).

This one looks mechanically simpler but it's not conical bore like a real saxophone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjnrM3GZMS8

Sounds like pulling teeth.

You can bend notes on a normal sax if you want. Maybe it's just my perception, the tune in the article and those linked here would be better if they just stuck to normal 12 notes.

In general I think microtonal music takes a bit of getting used to, and that most of it isn’t that good anyways because most of the good composers are on other stuff.

Why would one want that kind of acquired taste?

You don't need to get used to Bach (or so I think), you know the good stuff on sight.

You spent your entire childhood getting used to western composition (assuming that’s dominant in your area); even nursery rhymes introduce basic melodic structures and harmony, so you’re acclimated to the 12 tones with slight pitch irregularities away from equal temperament. I’d say good stuff can be made in any medium, it’s down to whether good artists are working with it. When you grow up in a culture that uses a tuning system, its a bad career move to make music outside of it. I think microtones are worth exploring for their novelty and for the exploration of different vibes, to see if there’s something cool in there that could be brought into mainstream music. I’m a musician so I probably find that more interesting than most people do.

12 tones are not arbitrary, and it's no wonder pretty much any other note system mostly fits in. Musicians all over the world mostly made the bad career move and migrated to the western note system.

There seems to be just one sort of vibe in microtonal music for me, the discomfort vibe.

From what I know, it’s about providing for the simplest harmonies between sine waves, but that doesn’t mean non-simple harmonies have no place or utility, and it’s not possible to experiment with them in normal tuning.

The word saxophone comes from the Middle English sax, "knife", and the Ancient Greek phónos, "murder".

The word comes from the surname of the inventor, Sax, and phono, sound.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Sax

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