Tuning / Musical Temperament
The oscillator section of each PSU-3301 synthesizer unit has the usual global tuning knobs; an octave switch with footages 16, 8, 4, 2 and there are separate control knobs for coarse and fine tune as well. However, along the very bottom of the synthesizer unit there is an additional set of individual miniature tuning knobs (labelled "Temperament Adjust") for each of the twelve notes in the octave, making it possible to tune it to scales other than the Western standard of Equal temperament. This is a completely unique feature for a polyphonic analog synthesizer which allows the Korg PS-3300 to be tuned to exotic scales such as the Byzantine scale or Eastern scales that have a different Musical temperament than Western scales.
Three examples of alternative tuning systems are given in the owners manual and are as follows: 1) Mean Tone System - This is a scale used for medieval keyboard instruments and features a pure Major third. 2) Just Intonation - Which is a theoretical scale with a pure Major third and fifth in C. 3) Hepatonal Scale - This scale divides one octave into seven equal intervals.
Read more about this topic: Korg PS-3300
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or temperament:
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So much fate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)