Not the Ubiquitous Autotune of the Same Name

Posted on by

One of the very special things about the Roland MKS-80 is that is has true analog, voltage controlled oscillators or VCOs. Unfortunately (or fortunately) VCOs are sensitive to environmental conditions especially temperature, not to mention lunar cycles and barometric pressure, but I can’t confirm those reports. In any case, this means that the synth needs time to warm up before the VCOs are stable.

Fortunately the MKS-80 has an autotune (no relation to the ubiquitous vocal processing of the same name) button that tunes all sixteen of the oscillators to each other automatically. Although, if you just turn it on, press autotune and start playing then it will drift out of tune again as the components warm up to a stable temperature. Below is an example of me doing just that followed by a pause where I pressed the autotune button and tried again.

Although an inconvenience to some, to me this gives the instrument more soul than its digital counterparts. As a piano player I know that a piano is never perfectly in tune. Also, the frequency of the notes played on a piano change slightly as they decay. Voltage controlled analog oscillators have a soulful, mysterious character to them that is partially defined by their imperfections.

Out of Tune In Tune

This entry was posted in One Synthesizer Sound Every Day and tagged , , , by John CS Keston. Bookmark the permalink.

About John CS Keston

John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research. John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.

Leave a Reply