Alesis K2661 specifications 11-3, List and Description of Intonation Tables

Master Mode

The Master Mode Page

Determining the Version Number of Your ROM Objects (Intonation Tables 18–22)

As you’re scrolling through the list of intonation tables, you may notice a listing for an eighteenth intonation table with a name such as 18 Obj vn.nn. This isn’t really another intonation table. Rather, this is where the K2661 stores the version number of some of your ROM objects. If you ever need to find out what version of ROM objects you’ve got loaded, this is where you look. Simply go to the Master page, then scroll the Intonation parameter until 18 is displayed. If you have more than one block of ROM objects installed, you’ll see additional “tables,” up to and including 22. And don’t forget to return to your correct intonation table when you’ve checked the version numbers of your ROM objects.

List and Description of Intonation Tables

1	Equal	No detuning of any intervals. The standard for modern western
		music.
2	Classic Just	Tunings are defined based on the ratios of the frequencies
		between intervals. The original tuning of Classical European
		music.
3	Just Flat 7th	Similar to classic Just, but with the Dominant 7th flatted an
		additional 15 cents.
4	Harmonic	The perfect 4th, Tritone, and Dominant 7th are heavily flatted.
5	Just Harmonic
6	Werkmeister	Named for its inventor, Andreas Werkmeister. It’s fairly close to
		equal temperament, and was developed to enable transposition
		with less dissonance.
7	1/5th Comma
8	1/4th Comma
9	Indian Raga	Based on the tunings for traditional Indian music.
10	Arabic	Oriented toward the tunings of Mid-Eastern music.
11	BaliJava1	Based on the pentatonic scale of Balinese and Javanese music.
12	BaliJava2	A variation on 1Bali/Java, slightly more subtle overall.
13	BaliJava3	A more extreme variation.
14	Tibetan	Based on the Chinese pentatonic scale.
15	CarlosAlpha	Developed by Wendy Carlos, an innovator in microtonal
		tunings, this intonation table flats each interval increasingly,
		resulting in an octave with quarter-tone intervals.
16	Pyth/aug4	This is a Pythagorean tuning, based on the Greek pentatonic
		scale. The tritone is 12 cents sharp.
17	Pyth/dim5	This is a Pythagorean tuning, based on the Greek pentatonic
		scale. The tritone is 12 cents flat.
18–24	Obj vn.n	Not an intonation table; indicates version number of K2661
		ROM objects.

In general, you should select a nonstandard intonation table when you’re playing simple melodies (as opposed to chords) in a particular musical style. When you use intonation tables based on pentatonic scales, you’ll normally play pentatonic scales to most accurately reproduce those styles. An excellent reference source for further study of alternative tunings is Tuning In: Microtonality in Electronic Music, by Scott R. Wilkinson.

11-3