Renoise should support atonal tones. (Atonal tones are tones that are not part of the chromatic scale.) Playing atonal tones is as elemental as bending pitch, however sequencer programs do not support non-chromatic tones. If i’d win the bb4 contest i’d wish for this feature.
There are two patterneffect solutions for this:
1. A range from 00 to FF contains all the tones between the given note and the upper adjoining chromatic tone (small-second upward) e.g. C and C#. Example:
inputnote: C
effectvalue: 80
outputnote: halfway between C and C#.
2. A range from 00 to FF contains all the tones between two given notes, this uses two columns. This solution is handier, especially when you want to split the octave into other than 12 parts. Example:
inputnotes: C-4, G-4
effectvalue: 80
outputnote: halfway between C-4 and G-4 = halfway between D#4 and E-4
Using solution 2 for splitting the octave into 8 parts:
inputnotes: C-4, C-5
fx - output
00 : C-4
20 : 50% between C#4, D-4
40 : D#4
60 : 50% between E-4, F-4
80 : F#4
60 : 50% between G-4, G#4
C0 : A-4
E0 : 50% between A#4, B-4
FF : C-5
Right now the only way for playing atonal, is to start a mute note, bend the pitch, and unmute the note. And this is quite lame and unpractical.
I tried once to hear how a 36 tones octave could sound.
What I’ve done is to create three copies of the same instrument, using Instr.Settings => Sample properties => Finetuning
to detune them of 1/6 tone each other.
If you’re using 36 (can be any number: I’m just sticking to my above example) different samples for each octave, you could also detune them in a single instrument.
Of course this is not as easy as a complete atonal support, but I think this is still better than the way you’re doing now.
(PS: would be very interesting to hear something atonal by you!)
Well i haven’t made any atonal music yet, i’m just about to. And i was also preferring the solution that you said. But even if it is solvable, it does’t give me convenient logical overview. Now i’m taking my time to learn the features and properties of atonality, e.g. there’s a certain fuction of minor seventh and major seventh, and an interval between the two gives the mixture of them. And this goes for all atonal intervals, and as all intervals have different functions, it makes very interesting results.
The first inspiration that made me interested for atonal music, was the sorrowful song of a disintegrator machine.
