What Increments Are The Tuning Settings On My Keyboard
I have a keyboard, a Roland RS-50, and I have been playing around in D Double Harmonic major a lot recently. That Wikipedia article says that you can play the scale with quarter tones, and I'd like to try this as I've never played with quarter tones before. On page 58 of the keyboard owner's manual (linked above) it says you can individually tune any note of the scale up by 63 and down by 64.
My problem is this: tuning down D# by the full 64 doesn't make it reach D (in equal temperament tuning in which all notes are set to 0) but it seems to get quite close.
How do I tune it to exactly 1 quarter tone down? What are the degrees in this tuning setting?
(1)1 Comments
Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best
The Roland manual static.roland.com/assets/media/pdf/RS-70_50_MI.pdf says the tuning ratio is one cent (100 cents = 1 semitone) for each MIDI value, with 64 making no adjustment.
So to tune a note in quarter tones, you want to set to set the values for each note to 14 (down a quarter tone), 64 (no change), or 114 (up a quarter tone)
Note, I don't have a RS-50, so I have no way to check this is correct.
Apparently, you can't tune a note up or down a full semitone - but to change from one temperament (tuning system) to another, you are unlikely to need to do that anyway. The fact that you can only adjust the tuning in 1-cent intervals is often a bigger limitation - you might think an error of 1/100 of a semitone is inaudible, but sometimes it isn't! For example the difference between an "equal temperament" 5th and a just intonation "perfect" 5th is a bit less than 2 cents, so a 1-cent accuracy is actually quite poor. A good piano tuner can do better than that "by ear" without using an electronic tuner.
Terms of Use Privacy policy Contact About Cancellation policy © freshhoot.com2025 All Rights reserved.