Norman Freund

Norman Freund is a xenharmonic composer, musician and music theorist, and an member of the Xenharmonic Alliance Facebook groups.

Discography

• Bandcamp
• Soundcloud

Locust March (2026)

Microtonal Music and Tuning Theory
-- Norman Freund

Usually we use exponents for an equal division of the octave (or some other interval), like:
f(i) = fRef* 2^(i/d)
Now what if we swap that around a bit to:
f(i) = 2(i)^1.7
This is explored in Locust March, plus some freely improvised tunings.
"Locust March"
SoundCloud, https://soundcloud.com/norman-freund/locust-march
BandCamp, https://normanfreund.bandcamp.com/track/locust-march

Dates:
06-Mar-2026 (inception), 08-Mar-2026 (finalised), 09-Mar-2026 (released)

Artists:
Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund
Artwork by Norman Freund

Description:
Inspired from ByteBeat music (thanks Vlad Kreimer, Ref. [1]). I have looked at ByteBeat synthesiser methods in the past, thought I would have a fresh look at it, here is my interpretation. Generate sounds from a 4 bit sound buffer where the magnitude of each entry in the buffer is also to 4 bit resolution. With the right graphic user interface (GUI) controls, this could be a very compact way of dynamically sculpting a sound. And without some form of smoothing and filtering of the sound wave forms generated, it could turn out very harsh.

I spent a day quickly coding up a 4 bit bye sound module in Max (Cycling'74), called BitBufS, towards the end of the day, the sounds and user interactions showed promise, so I polished the module into something usable within my Cell synthesiser frame-work. Locust March also featured performances on the analogue synthesiser of Soma Laboratory, the Lyra 8.

Two midi keyboards were used, one for the melodic part using the note pads and rotary encoders of the Ableton Push2, another for the drum part (well that was the plan, but in the end turned out to play a minor role) using a conventional piano layout midi controller.

The Lyra 8 was fed into the Soma COSMOS for reverb and stereo space before being passed into the Cell for audio recording of both the Cell synthesiser parts and that of the Lyra 8. I spent several days experimenting with sound timbre of the BitBufS, along with timing cells to control the two drums (well sort of drums). Drum 1 (more sounding like a bass) played the main pulsing rhythm -- the March. Drum 2 (originally aimed at a hi hat, but then transformed into something else) provided a textural background sound. Both Drums used my Fibonacci sequence based sound module (FibS).

The BitBufS and FibS used a microtonal tuning of:
f(i) = 2(i)^1.7
where
f = frequency [Hz]
i = integer, 1,2,3 ...
i [integer], frequency [Hz], Frequency Ratio, Octave + Cent
1, 2. 1. O oct + 0 cent
2, 6.5, 3.25, 1 oct + 840 cent
3, 12.95, 6.47, 2 oct + 833 cent
4, 21.11, 10.56, 3 oct + 480 cent
5, 30.85, 15.43, 3 oct + 1137 cent
6, 42.06, 21.03, 4 oct + 473 cent
7, 54.66, 27.33, 4 oct + 927 cent 8, 68.59, 34.3, 5 oct + 120 cent
9, 83.8, 41.9, 5 oct + 467 cent
10, 100.24, 50.12, 5 oct + 777 cent 11, 117.87, 58.93, 5 oct + 1057 cent
12, 136.66, 68.33, 6 oct + 113 cent
13, 156.58, 78.29, 6 oct + 349 cent
14, 177.6, 88.8, 6 oct + 567 cent
15, 199.7, 99.85, 6 oct + 770 cent
16, 222.86, 111.43, 6 oct + 960 cent
17, 247.05, 123.53, 6 oct + 1138 cent 18, 272.27, 136.13, 7 oct + 107 cent
19, 298.48, 149.24, 7 oct + 266 cent 20, 325.67, 162.84, 7 oct + 417 cent
21, 353.84, 176.92, 7 oct + 560 cent 22, 382.96, 191.48, 7 oct + 697 cent 23, 413.02, 206.51, 7 oct + 828 cent 24, 444.01, 222., 7 oct + 953 cent 25, 475.91, 237.96, 7 oct + 1073 cent 26, 508.73, 254.36, 7 oct + 1189 cent 27, 542.44, 271.22, 8 oct + 100 cent 28, 577.03, 288.52, 8 oct + 207 cent 29, 612.5, 306.25, 8 oct + 310 cent
30, 648.84, 324.42, 8 oct + 410 cent
31, 686.03, 343.02, 8 oct + 507 cent
32, 724.08, 362.04, 8 oct + 600 cent

On the Push2 bottom half 32 notes for the first voice of the Fibs and the top half of 32 notes for the second voice of the FibS.

You might ask where did this tuning come from? 1.7 Exponent? Whilst playing around with the BitBufS during the testing phase, I started out with a harmonic scale of frequencies of 2,3,4..... I felt I needed some expansion, so raised the integer harmonic integers to the power of 1.7. The Cell has a module to interactively try out different tuning schemes, I dialled in 1.7 for the exponent (f(i) = fref * (N/D)^(n/d), let i control N, fref=2, D=d=1, n=1.7), played some and thought perfect, so it stuck. Human hearing only goes down to about 20 Hz, however the tuning shown above goes down to 2 Hz. The timbre used has a lot of high frequency content, so the less than 20 Hz notes acted as percussion and above this acted as melodic. Each voice was assigned a resonant band pass filter controlled through it's own rotary encoder on the Push2, so as notes were played at differing frequencies according to the tuning shown above, manually the band pass frequency was adjusted, providing both timbre changes and acting as a low pass gate. For these two FiBS voices, only midi note on events were considered, which triggered an exponential rise and fall envelope.

Tuning on the Lyra 8 was all done by ear, some pre-recording tuning, then further artistic, improvised adjustments during the performance. A modular synthesiser approach was taken on the digital (software) side, 39 modules and 84 cables. Ten timing modules (OCell) were used to control the two drum parts, triggering when they were to come into action and setting off time ramps applied to effects swells and an accelerando for the second drum part. A low pass filter was used for the first drum, sweeping through a graphical ADSR for frequency; a high pass filter was similarly used for the second drum. A delay + feed back network used for the second drum part, at one stage, the feedback gain and delay times were "played" via the rotary encoders of the Push2 midi controller. A similar playing style was adopted for the Lyra 8 performance, at times "playing" the delay and feedback knobs. In effect the delay+feedback section is a synthesiser on it's own.

The BitBufS's sound buffer has 4 bits for time and 4 bits amplitude and for each of these an optional toggling metronome of specified period can be applied. This can result in a very organic sounding timbre. The raw BitBufS sound was passed through a smoothing filter to round off of the step changes. This was then passed through an optional filter of low pass, band pass or high pass, allowing the user to dynamically alter the filter frequency and resonance. The next stage was a feedback + delay section, followed by a limiter. With the right controls assigned to note pads and rotary encoders, the BitBufS could be played as an
expressive instrument.

No digital audio workstation (DAW) was used for Locust March, one recording track, live recording in one take, however many days of experimenting with sound design before committing to the final recording. No artificial intelligence (AI) was used for this composition, keeping it real, keeping it human.
No doubt the timbre, composition title and general mood of the piece reflects the current state of unrest on Earth, with the break-out of war
in Iran and neighbouring countries.

References:
[1] sonicstate, 13-May-2024, "Soma Labs Flux - Highly Expressive New
Instrument - Sonic LAB Presentation", YouTube Video, features performances and instrument discussion from Vlad Kreimer (Soma
Laboratory)