I have a score for 2 trumpets. Most of the time they are in harmony and not playing the same note and it sounds great, but when I have them in unison it sounds horrible. Does anyone have any clue what I'm doing wrong? The key signature is the same, so that's not the problem.
As I understand it, it's more of a synth thing than you actually doing anything wrong...
You might try using a Multi Point Controller - Pitch Bend, absolute style, offset 0, detune the unison note on one staff, then restore stuff when the unison note is finished...
I did a quick and dirty test and found that I needed to shift the pitch by at least "384" units (I went up) before it was reasonable - I'd prefer a little further. Note that 4096 units is a semitone OR 41 units roughly equals a 1 cent pitch change, so I changed the pitch by 9.4 cents, or about 1/11th of a semitone... YMMV
Edit: Umm, just how bad is it? Is it simply a unison note that somehow sounds wrong, or is it a definite dischord? If the latter, you may have a playback transposition on one staff that isn't obviously wrong until the unison shows up...
A question, from almost total ignorance. As I understand it, a synth can't start two notes at exactly the same time. Could the delay between the start times cause some kind of wave interferance that would effect the tambre?
G'day Cyril,
from what I've read, that is exactly the problem, a phase shift phenomenon. By shifting the frequency of one of the notes you prevent the phase shift from being constant.
This is, of course, only my understanding. If anyone has a better idea then please pipe up... ;)
ah, yup. it was the transposition thing. thank you very much, that was really bothering me
Cyril,
Think of French stamps. Timbre-poste.
ah well... tambre and timbre sound almost the same. Now if these two instruments will follow suit ;-)
cheers,
Rob.
Thanks. I have been accused of suffering from orthographobia. I spelt it the way I heared it.
Ortographobia... I like that.
Rechtschreibungsangst - Peur d'ortographe.
You're not bad. I saw a document today, not even a long one, with at least 26 sins against the spelling laws.
Also, when point out something, I hope it serves a purpose. In music, you are likely to use "timbre" more often.
But I wouldn't mind if you called a descending sequence of notes "timber...!"
cheers,
Rob.
oy!