MicroTuner by Tobybear: Expanding Musical Horizons Through Microtones
In the world of music, we often perceive the standard 12-tone equal temperament as the only possible reality. It dominates most modern Western musical genres, from popular music to classical and electronic music. This tuning has its advantages, primarily in the convenience of modulation and playing instruments with fixed pitches, such as the piano. However, it is only one of many ways to adjust the intervals between notes. There is a vast universe of microtonal music, where the distances between sounds can be less than a semitone, opening up completely new sound palettes and expressive possibilities.
Microtonal tunings have long existed in various musical cultures around the world – from traditional Indian and Arabic music to Byzantine chants and some forms of blues. In modern academic and experimental music, microtones also play an important role, allowing composers to explore new harmonies, melodic lines and sound textures that are impossible in standard tuning. Using microtones can add unusual expressiveness, emotional depth, and originality to music.
What is MicroTuner?
MicroTuner by Tobybear is a powerful and extremely flexible VST plugin designed specifically to open the door to the world of microtonal music for any musician or sound designer working in a digital audio workstation (DAW). It acts as an intermediary between your DAW/MIDI keyboard and a virtual instrument (VSTi) or external synthesizer module, allowing you to play music in any desired tuning, not just the standard 12-tone.
How it Works
Unlike plugins that simply change the pitch of a note by a few cents (a hundredth of a semitone), MicroTuner allows you to completely redefine the entire scale. It works using MIDI pitch bend messages. The key feature of MicroTuner is that it can send these messages independently for each MIDI channel. This means that if your target synthesizer or VSTi supports receiving independent pitch bend on all of its MIDI channels (which is standard for many modern instruments), MicroTuner can precisely tune the pitch of each individual note, even if they sound simultaneously.
Thus, each key on your MIDI keyboard can be associated with an absolutely arbitrary frequency, which goes far beyond the usual semitones. You can create intervals of any size, realizing the boldest musical ideas.
Support for Standard Tuning Formats
One of the biggest advantages of MicroTuner is its integration with widely used tuning file formats. The plugin has a built-in loader with drag-and-drop support, which can directly read and apply tuning files in the following formats:
- Scala (.scl): The most extensive format used by thousands of microtonal musicians and researchers. The Scala database contains over 5000 different tunings, from historical and ethnic to experimental.
- VAZ (.tun): The format used by the VAZ Modular synthesizer.
- Anamark (.tun): The format associated with Anamark software.
This feature greatly simplifies working with microtones, as you can easily download ready-made tunings from online resources or create your own in compatible editors and import them into MicroTuner. You do not need to manually adjust each note, although this possibility also exists.
Areas of Application
MicroTuner opens up limitless possibilities for creativity:
- Ethnic and World Music: Accurate reproduction of traditional tunings used in the music of the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and other regions.
- Historical Music: Performing music from the Baroque, Renaissance or medieval periods in their authentic historical tunings (e.g., different types of unequal temperament).
- Experimental Music and Sound Design: Creating new, unusual harmonies, melodies and textures for avant-garde music, electronic experiments or sound design.
- Educational Purposes: Demonstrating and studying different musical tunings and their impact on the perception of harmony and melody.
Technical Details
MicroTuner is a VST plugin and is compatible with most DAWs that support this plugin format on the Windows operating system (Win32). It is important to remember that for correct operation with a VSTi or an external synthesizer, the target instrument must be able to receive independent pitchbend messages on multiple MIDI channels simultaneously. Most modern synthesizers and high-quality VSTis have this functionality, which makes MicroTuner a versatile tool.
Conclusion
MicroTuner by Tobybear is an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to go beyond the usual 12-tone tuning and explore the richness of microtonal music. Thanks to its flexibility, support for standard tuning file formats, and intuitive interface (with drag-and-drop functionality), it makes working with microtones accessible and exciting. Don’t limit yourself to standard frameworks – let MicroTuner open up a world of new sounds and expressive possibilities for you in your musical creativity!
