Tune the Kick to the Song ?

[contrary]

Clear as mud now.Thanks.

Sacha says; " There are three kinds of people who can do math ; those that can and those that can't "

[aciddose]

if you were correct and it wasn't possible to perceive pitch in a kick, it would mean you could tune the kick without hearing any difference.

is this the case?

[jupiter8]

if you were correct and it wasn't possible to perceive pitch in a kick, it would mean you could tune the kick without hearing any difference.

is this the case?

Does noise have a pitch ?

[contrary]

Does noise have a pitch ?

Yes ; many ,many of them !!!!!!!!!!

[Xenobt]

That decibel scale is confusing as all hell. 3 db is double the power (i think) and 6 db is double ???? (i can't even remember) and i believe 10 db is double the loudness or something weird. A quick google only added to the confusion. However what i do know is that adding one bit is +6 db and adding two identical signals is the exact equivalent of that.

http://emusician.com/tutorials/logarithms_music_auidio/



http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_d ... ed_part_2/


http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_d ... fied_part/

Thanks for the white paper, contrary! I'll look more closely at it later, there's a lot to digest!

My point was, in practical experience, when you pan a mono signal to the center, it loses +/- 3db at the stereo master fader than it appears at the mono signal fader (i.e. something peaking a -3db on the mono fader will be at -6db on the stereo master fader)

If you pan the mono signal hard left or right, it regains the "lost" 3db. I know some hardware mixers have "zero-loss" panning but that's a whole different discussion! (As is this one really!):lol:

The upshot being that making an exact duplicate of a signal will add 6db in MONO as jupiter8 pointed out, but as I generally work in stereo, the doubled signal only adds 3db to the full stereo mix for the reasons pointed out above.

If I panned both signals hard left OR hard right it WOULD be 6db of gain, but adding the centered doubled track to a stereo master bus will result in a 3db gain of the doubled signal.

Panning the two signals hard left AND hard right would give the same 3db raise as just adding the two centered signals together.

But jupiter8 is right, combining two identical signals will raise the level by 6db, halved to 3db at the master fader by splitting it into stereo.

[jupiter8]

But jupiter8 is right, combining two identical signals will raise the level by 6db, halved to 3db at the master fader by splitting it into stereo.

Makes sense. I was thinking mono without even reflecting about it. Simple digital math,if you add two 24 bit tracks you need 25 bits to avoid losing information.

[xh3rv]

The SOS synth secrets from Nov 2001 to Sept 2002 are extremely relevant to this discussion. The articles touch on a lot of interesting concepts, particularly including the tune-ability of kicks or any percussion as related to the sound/harmonic producing components of both synth patches and physical instruments.

If anyone hasn't created a kick drum patch for a synth, I'd really recommend looking at the relevant stuff in the SOS or following another of the countless guides that show up in a Google search. IMO kicks are the easiest percussion patches to do - it doesn't take a lot of components, it can sound very synthy and still read pretty well in the mix as a percussive instrument.

[aciddose]

Does noise have a pitch ?

i don't know if that was rhetorical or not, but yes.

noise can have a pitch if it isn't continuous white noise.

for example if it is a noise pulse it will be interpreted by the brain as an impulse if it happens to be short enough. the peak amplitude of the impulse will be the rms value of the noise pulse and by changing the length of the pulse we can change it's frequency content.

if the noise is filtered then it has an average pitch at some point, although it is a lot less defined than a pulse.

you should already know this, shouldn't you?

[jupiter8]

Does noise have a pitch ?

i don't know if that was rhetorical or not, but yes.

Actually it wasn't. Or maybe a little but it was an honest question. That way o can go "HA!IN YOUR FACE" if you're wrong and "Ah gee,never knew.Thanks" if your not. That way i'll come across as a superiour human being. I need to polish some on my reputation.

noise can have a pitch if it isn't continuous white noise.

Actually this was what i was getting at. If continous white noise doesn't have a pitch how can we sample it and play what appears to be different notes ? Because of the filtering ? I honestly haven't given this much thought ever. Noise doesn't really interest me much in itself.

you should already know this, shouldn't you?

Maybe. Hopefully i will know by the end of the day if nothing else.

[camsr]

Well let's discuss noise for a minute while on the topic. An example of giving noise a pitch is using a peaking filter and boosting the band up in volume. How much volume depends on the noise character and Q of the filter. But, how we perceive this pitch and how well is the significant part.

Also, being able to tune this pitched noise is dependant on the filter Q. Higher Q, and it's a more solid note. The pitch is still present with a lower Q, but it's 'noisier'. Music notes are less pronouced with a noisier band.

It should be the same with our kick drums. Once the pitch moves too fast, it becomes 'noisier' or less tonal. Somewhere in the chain of listening a resonance will occur, and give more emphasis to a particular band, making the drum tonal. It could be a parametric EQ, or it could be your speaker cabinent resonance.

Since music notes are heard on a logarithmic frequency scale, higher pitches can get through with more shift in terms of Hz. The same Hz shift in a lower band will be 'noisier' or move through music notes faster, possibly too fast to develop any sense of pitch.

[aciddose]

kicks for example are not generally random, though. they tend to be random in phase, but have very high correlation in frequency/amplitude and are highly predictable.

this correlation between frequency/amplitude (higher amplitude = higher frequency) is a natural consequence of physical forces, and so we're pretty good at analysis of these sorts of sounds. most sounds around us have this correlation.

the 808-kick for example is generated by a circuit which obeys a function matching that in a physical system. the "pressure" correlates with amplitude and frequency. there is no constant portion of the 808's envelope, it's a continuous decay from 130hz to 35hz, or so.

what happens is that with higher amplitudes there is more "pressure" against the minimum and maximum of the range for the oscillator, just like in a drum the skin has a minimum and maximum it can move before it starts to stretch. when it stretches the energy is stored inside the skin itself and this allows it to store more energy than what is represented by it's movement alone.

as the energy is released and the skin goes back into it's natural state it becomes more loose, tension / pressure decreases and so pitch and amplitude decrease.

a rubber-band has this effect as well if anyone wants to do some experimentation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histeresis

you can also try xhip and set filter saturation a little more each time you do a filter snap on highpass mode / "filter trigger" set on/hard. the greater saturation is a sharper "edge" where energy can more rapidly be stored in the filter. as you increase that, it will have a greater and greater correlation between amplitude and frequency.

[Stomper]

if you were correct and it wasn't possible to perceive pitch in a kick, it would mean you could tune the kick without hearing any difference.

is this the case?

I already explained it in previous post.
if you have a kick that goes from 3khz to 50hz and than change it to be from 4khz to 1khz (im just throwing numbers here) than of course it will sound different, you change how it fills the spectrum.
but that is like saying you filtered a pad which also changes it frequencies and say you changed the pitch.
the change of pitch is too fast and too great. the brain just cannot detect a specific pitch.
you cannot listen to a kick and say thats a c or f. no kick has ever made a song sound out of tune. it can make a song sound bad if its frequencies are struggling for space. but thats a totally different thing.

[aciddose]

what are you talking about?

you just said "Yes you can detect a pitch from X to Y" then you say "No you can't detect a pitch"

that's simply nonsense. of course you can tune a kick or any other sound.

it can make a song sound bad if its frequencies are struggling for space. but thats a totally different thing.

how is that any different? in my opinion it's exactly the same thing.

[jupiter8]

the 808-kick for example is generated by a circuit which obeys a function matching that in a physical system. the "pressure" correlates with amplitude and frequency. there is no constant portion of the 808's envelope, it's a continuous decay from 130hz to 35hz, or so.

You're not confusing that with the 909 because the 808 bassdrum is pretty steady pitchwise as far as i can tell but the 909 is not?

It would be tempting to put in a "I have used one extensively so i should know" but since i'm not a retard i'll refrain from that.

[Stomper]

what are you talking about?

you just said "Yes you can detect a pitch from X to Y" then you say "No you can't detect a pitch"

that's simply nonsense. of course you can tune a kick or any other sound.

No, i said you can tune a kick to fit better in the frequency spectrum of the mix. detecting its pitch is totally different thing.