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Show HN: Microtonal Piano

An a similar but also not similar note, today in the morning I and chatgpt tried to create a new kind of musical instrument

https://franzelio.franzai.com/

sadly no uptick on HN

2 years agofranze

you posted it 3 days ago, i don't understand your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41561647

2 years agocroisillon

Look that the timestamp, friend. This is likely a “second chance” for this submission.

2 years agohug

ah, i see it now, ok!

2 years agocroisillon

I'm going to bug report something very strange: once I started trying to make music with your instrument, _both_ of my dogs reacted with serious concern for me. I don't know what they heard in your samples, but something that made them worry. You should test with more dogs. ;)

2 years agoClaraForm

After three lines and probably 15 balls it started screeching at me.

2 years agoLoughla

I knew a musician who once clicked on a "ring for customer service" bell at the service counter of a laundromat, and then told the arriving attendant "Your bell is a quarter-tone flat."

2 years agojjslocum3

Stuff like that always bugs me because since it's not immediately verifiable it just feels like flexing for no reason

2 years agoryanmcbride

Showing off their ear for detail in a way

2 years agointerludead

But what if it was designed to be a quarter tone flat by another flexing musician?

2 years agoBLKNSLVR

or what if it's 2 full tones and one quarter semitone flat? that's what I'm saying the dude flexing his perfect pitch doesn't know what the original intent was. Maybe that brand of bell is well known for that specific microtonal pitch

2 years agoryanmcbride

440 or 442Hz?

2 years agoYlpertnodi

Obligatory reference to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's album "Flying Microtonal Banana"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Microtonal_Banana

Excerpt: "the album is recorded in quarter tone tuning, where an octave is divided into 24 (logarithmically) equal-distanced quarter tones; it was originally conceived to play on a baglama, so the band members used instruments specifically modified for microtonal tuning, as well as other Middle-Eastern instruments like the zurna."

Billabong Valley live at KEXP: https://youtu.be/bvtF2Ie90m0

2 years agoBLKNSLVR

How is the pitch determined? It would make sense if it was based on line length, but that doesn't seem to be it.

2 years agorecursive

Doesn't seem to work on iOS 17.6.1 (can't hear anything when I press a key).

2 years agoapeescape

No 19edo? I think with 24edo it's the only scheme that could outplay 12.

2 years agocrdrost

> Can you hear the difference?

I can't. Is there an example that makes it clearer?

2 years agojstanley

I'd be interested in a hardware keyboard with this capability.

2 years agoeth0up

What capability? The fundamental thing about this seems to require that there's not any direct way to play notes. So what would the keyboard be used for?

2 years agorecursive

I must have misunderstood something. I'm a musician and have never seen a tunable keyboard, which I thought, upon seeing this, would be useful. I guess I'm dense, because I'd still be interested in this as an option in a physical keyboard.

But I am an illiterate musician. Perhaps that's were the misunderstanding arises. I favor Eastern instruments too.

2 years agoeth0up

No problem. I know that you can use a traditional midi controller and use computer-based synthesizers, some of which support a wide variety of tuning options. I never got too much into that myself. When equal temperament is too constraining for me, which is not often, I can get what I need with the bend wheel.

I was just thinking maybe I was missing some way of "performing" using this post. It seems more like random and emergent as far as I can tell.

2 years agorecursive

Shows nothing but a blank screen on an older iPad.