Moog Makes Microtuning Mainstream

2011 NAMM Show: Moog Music is making microtuning mainstream, introducing the Phatty Tuner Alternate Scales Editor, a free download that lets owners of the Slim Phatty and Little Phatty retune the notes of the scale.

Indian, Chinese and Turkish scales are now easily accessible on Moog’s entry-level synths, along with Meantone, Pythagorean, Just and other historic and experimental temperaments.

Tuning data is editable and is displayed as a ratio, frequency and in cents. Scala files can be imported and exported for use with other tuning software. An unlimited number of tunings can be saved on your computer and the synthesizer’s hardware can store up to thirty-two different tunings.

Interested in exploring alternate tunings? Leave a comment and let us know what you think of this development below!

via MoogMusicInc:

Chris Rosser takes us on a sonic world tour with the Slim Phatty and Little Phatty. With Moog’s Phatty Tuner software, musicians can retune each note of the octave and compose in scales once available only to players of hard-to-find world instruments.

9 thoughts on “Moog Makes Microtuning Mainstream

  1. If you are old enough (like me), you 'll probably remember that a few Yamaha digital prosynths had microtuning ability and presets a long, long time ago, but almost nobody used them extensively, only a few "experimentalists" …

  2. Too bad the keyboards don't really have enough keys to facilitate microtuning. So it says you can do it. But with 37 keys, you could barely get into a 31ET tuning.

  3. a part of why a lot of pop and rock music sounds the same right now, in other words – stale, is because the combination of notes and progressions are so locked into their tuning system. so i think this trend to other systems could certainly help freshen things up.

  4. Reading further I discovered that the Little Phatty will not be able to use this program until it is updated to 3.0 whenever that is.

  5. It's a great idea but a real pity that it doesn't seem to work yet for real world users. I haven't come across any slim phatty users on the Moog forums that have been able to get this running. We can load alternate scales into our SP but can't successfully apply them, the tuning always stays the same. Can't wait to get it working right!

  6. Agreed (on the first part). I can't believe there are some > $1,000 synths where you can't EASILY make music (compose and improvise) using any tuning you want.

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