How to create a natural overtone instrument like Alphorn with its proper tunings?

• Mar 11, 2024 - 13:59

Hello friends of sound!

I would like to score music for Alphorns and have them play back in their proper tunings.

I believe I can change the tuning of specific notes by the (tuning) cent. But can I make a collection of those as a preset somehow? Kind of like a key signature perhaps?

I want to be able to make and choose a preset instrument, maybe based on the french horn default, which plays from the 2nd to the 16th harmonic at the correct pitches (as shown in the attached image)?

Have any of you done anything similar? Maybe for microtonal scores?

Thanks in advance!

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Comments

graffesmusic

• Mar 11, 2024 - 17:18

Idea: perhaps you could make an sfz instrument yourself.
Supports tune/pitch: https://sfzformat.com/opcodes/tune/
Decentsampler can also do microtuning.

horncologne

• Jun 18, 2024 - 10:31

Very interesting! That looks like a fun rabbit hole to go down.

Thank you, graffesmusic!

bobjp

• Mar 12, 2024 - 20:53

Two things come to mind.

I checked out some alphorn sheet music and lessons. It looks to me like the sheet music avoids the naturally out of tune notes of the harmonic series. Or, as Baroque composers did, used them to play in minor for a few notes.

When I played a natural ( no valves ) trumpet. I had to "lip" those notes into tune.

horncologne

• Jun 18, 2024 - 10:29

Hey, Bob! There are (very very overgeneralized) two schools of thought and performance in the Swiss/European-Alpine Alphorn world:

Old/traditional stuff mostly avoids the "out of tune" notes.
Newer/less-traditional pieces embrace and will use all of the partials between 2 and 16 in all their glory and weirdness, plus all sorts of fun stuff like scraping things along the cane wrapping for percussive effects, multiphonics, etc.

In my case, I want to hear the overtone series notes in playback in Musescore, rather than having to multitrack myself to hear what's going on :-)

The Baroque practice is not relevant to what I am up to, but it's fun to geek out together, so ... On the horn side of the fence, there is still debate as to how best to deal with correcting (or not) notes like the 11th partial in Baroque horn parts to get "clean," written F-naturals and F-sharps. I am not a trumpet player, so I am going by what I know from Bach and other horn parts: 1st Brandenburg Concerto, B-Minor Mass, Christmas Oratoriaio, etc. The first six minutes of this video cover this ground very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ph8cERXkGk

bobjp

• Jun 18, 2024 - 14:26

Polyphone will probably do what you want. Find a horn sf2 font and alter the notes in question.

Baroque composers used those partials all the time. Can't play a C scale without them.