Fantom XR bass driving me crazy ...

9 Aug 2007, 10:11

Greetings all!!

Had a question for you guys. Have you ever noticed that the Bass guitar patches are not perfectly tuned as they go into lower octaves?

For example playing an A2 and A1 are slightly offset (Not noticeably, but definitely not the same pitch).

Im noticing this with my XR, I tried turning off all controls on the patch that might affect pitch, especially keyfollow (Set it to 100%), LFO tweaks, pitch envelope depth and things like that. I am using both Fantom XR stock patches and some from the Ultimate Keys. I was fooling around with alternative tunings and things like that before, but I set the scale tune settings for all parts within my performance to standard C tuning (all 0's).

Can modulation controllers do this to pitch?

Any ideas what might be going on? This is really driving me crazy. Is it just me? Is my Fantom XR broken or something?

Would really appreciate some help on this.

Thanks,

-Manish

Manish

Re: Fantom XR bass driving me crazy ...

9 Aug 2007, 13:28

i thot the same when i played bas all by itself on the lower notes...but if u have a chord or patter playing along side ull notice that its perfect.......

rgds,
Stanley

Keep playing till the music kills you!!!!
Check : www.soundclick.com/stanmix

Re: Fantom XR bass driving me crazy ...

9 Aug 2007, 13:54

Ur probably right stanley. Thing is that I haven't sequenced the whole song, but just drums and bass. Im using tuned percussion on this, so maybe that's working against the bass as well. Have brought all percussive blips and thunks into the key of C. Maybe when I sequence the other parts like synths and strings, it might sound perfect.

Thanks a lot for the reply!!

-Manish

Manish

Re: Fantom XR bass driving me crazy ...

9 Aug 2007, 14:27

The best way to check it is create a new patch with a bass wave on tone 1 and a sine wave on tone 2. If you hear beating on some lower notes, then the bass is not tuned correctly. Actually I would not mind if an acoustic or electric instrument was detuned slightly, it adds life to the music.

Re: Fantom XR bass driving me crazy ...

9 Aug 2007, 16:42

Thats actually a really good idea Art!! No wonder they call you da man

!!

I will try this out today and hope the basses are not out of whack, dont mind if they're collectively out of whack, i.e. equal tuning offset across all keys and all octaves. The problem here is that this particular song Im sequencing is built on weird intervals, especially the A's and G's, which I think are closer to A# and G# than A and G. I think it's been done that way to match the quality/timbre of the singers voice. This is what makes it further difficult to debug when the notes are whizzing across.

If however the detuning is standard across all notes in the fantom's range, it makes it easier to rectify. Well, we'll see ...

Thanks guys, U've been most helpful!!

-Manish

Manish

Re: Fantom XR bass driving me crazy ...

13 Aug 2007, 09:59

Thanks Art/Stanley!!

Stanley: You were right, as I added more sounds, the seeming discrepancies with the bass got more pleasant, and it now sounds actually cool.

Art: I tried your trick with putting in a sinewave (in another Tone with the Bass) and checking for beats. It was not dead on, but very slow beats (borders on psychological

). It's a neat trick. Thanks!!

-Manish

Manish

Re: Fantom XR bass driving me crazy ...

13 Aug 2007, 11:13

If the detuning is too coarse, you should hear at least 1 or even 2 beatings per second.