TUN is “tuning”. It’s the root pitch of the oacillator (but it’s relative to the NOT param on the TRIG page, so TUN=-12 means “one octave lower than the trig’s note).
DET is “detune” - an offset of oscillator 2’s pitch away from osc 1’s.
DET’s useful for a few things:
- making chords - if the balance between the oscillators is fairly even, both notes are heard clearly so use TUN/DET to create two note chords. When TUN is 0, the trig plays the notes specified by the NOT param on the TRIG page, which is usually easier think about. For either param, good values are 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, referring to minor 3rd, major 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th and octave from musical scales. Minus numbers work too. As the octave is 12, you can separate by two octaves with 24.
- adding harmonics: when the balance is set unevenly, one tone will be heard more quietly, so you can use this to add/emphasise harmonics. The same values as chords work, particularly 5, 7 and 12/24/36
- creating shimmer: when the difference between TUN and DET is very low, 0-0.6ish, you don’t really hear them as different pitches, it’s more like a fizzy wide movement as the phase differences between osc 1 and 2 affect each other
Your earlier experiments used multiple tracks for your chords. So then you can spread the notes of a chord over multiple tracks, and use DET for harmonics or shimmer. If you’re keeping your track count down, you should probably use DET for making chords.
You could use different TUN/DET values, but they tend to get more discordant. That works great for some sounds and some genres of music. As said earlier, techno stabs tend to be minor triad chords, or minor 7th chords. The TUN/DET values for those are 3, 7, 10 and 12/24/36. So long as one of your channels has TUN=0, you’ll be hitting a “root note” and the chord will sound “settled”.
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) space for the Analog Four MK2 and I gotta agree - it sounds closer than most of what I achieved with the Syntakt. I really need to get that studio ready ASAP.
