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Tune oscillators. Myth?


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Aside from the pitch bend wheel which gives the player the live ability to detune his keyboard on the fly, there often exists a menu option to detune notes by individual cents and semitones. Usually the only reason this function exists at all is to allow the performer to set a specific tuning for a special application or to match a band or recording which is also slightly out of tune.

 

Otherwise, modern synths derive their tuning from a single quartz crystal oscillator clock which is responsible for all of the timing functions of the CPU.

 

If you go back 30 or so years ago, in the bad old days when synths were built from discreet circuits, then each and every single note oscillator had to be tuned at the factory and retuned when a component went bad and threw the instrument out of tune.

 

Nowadays if your keyboard goes out of tune for no good reason there is a 99.999% chance that the pitch bend wheel has gone bad and needs to be recalibrated or replaced.

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Excuse this "back in my day" moment:

 

I used a Conn Strobe Tuner (below) to tune my keyboards prior to a gig.  Sometimes my MOOG Prodigy's tuning would drift between sets so I tuned it more often.  This was also prior to digital memory and presets, so keyboard players both played piano or organ with one hand and simultaneously tweaked the next required synth sound with the other hand.  This went on all night long.

 

conn-strobe-tuner.jpg

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In the past, you had to tune oscillators. Amazing.

Thanks for the reply.

 

And often several times during a gig as the electronics warmed up.. If Steve thought the Prodigy was bad he should have tried the MemoryMoog!

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