Another step bass song and Solina String Ensemble

Glory Box - Portishead live
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C3LK5ELvZwI#fauxfullscreen


Key must be E flat minor. Hmm this key has so many black notes, sounds amazing.


All notes are natural except E, G, A, B, C, D which are flat.


Let's make a distinction here. All the above flats are black. But C flat is white.


Bass goes
E.    E
D   D
C nat    C nat
C   C
and repeat


On the Solina String Ensemble synth, one can see so many keys played being black.


The reason it sounds so nice is not only the sound but the pitch adjusted manually to sound correct to the listener's brain. The synth has an analog knob for master oscillator frequency which changes the frequency of all notes. Apparently it has been increased just as much needed so that all those high frequencies are higher than equal temperament A4 440Hz so that their pitch is correct to human listeners.


Ie they must be adjusted to higher than integer times some lower 440Hz reference frequency (n x frequency where n is integer). Here n must be greater by a few decimals, how much the human brain decides.


In fact it was tried to play along doubling the string line with Yamaha PSS-480.


Voice 41 ie strings was used. Transpose to +12 so as to reach those high notes.


The master tuning adjustment had to be at about +7 otherwise strings sounded horrible, shrill or out of tune.


This little experiment was done while listening with passive Pleiades Auratone 5C type speakers directly connected to iPad's headphone out and iPad's volume to about half.


This was done to ensure that brain hears the correct pitch and not a lower pitch influenced by higher sound intensity. The level pot setting of Yamaha PSS-480 was inbetween the first 2 indicating white line segments.


See also: Distinction between engineering octave and music octave - euroelectron