To easily make microtonal music in Ableton Live, or other DAW’s, I find it’s best to use third party VST’s that support Scala files. That way you can pick your tuning and write new parts in that temperament/tuning. I compiled a list of my favorite microtonal VST’s, synths, AU’s, and plugins. There are more synths out there, but these are my favorite.
You will also see a few rows that are highlighted green. These synths are my all-time favorite for working with Microtonal music.
If you have suggestions, please comment below. I would love to check them out and maybe add them to the list. If you are interested in learning more about tuning instruments in Ableton Live and microtonal music, then check out my article on Microtonal Music in Ableton Live.
Awesome! Thanks so much for this article, it’s super helpful!
Your welcome and glad to help!
Has anyone created a Microtonal effects Plugin (not softsynth) that uses preset scala files but incrementally adjusts the pitch across the keyboard of whatever synth it’s effecting?
I have tried. I worked with 2 M4L people and it feel through. I would even pay someone to upfront the cost to make it for ya’ll ;)
Thought I’d let you know, NI Absynth *can* take .gly tuning files, which seem specific to just Absynth, for full microtuning. I found out just by going through the “show synth” list in Scala.
Really good to know. Thanks!
NI FM8 supports MTS SysEx which gives you full microtuning. FM7 even supported per-note real-time MTS but they discarded that in FM8.
“Microtonal Polyphonic Shiny Dirt” free VST synth – microtonal, polyphonic, circuit-bent analog sounds, easy to use, 128 presets, 5376 microtonal tunings
and
“Microtonal Poly Worms” free VST synth, polyphonic, microtonal, easy to use, robust. 64 presets, 5374 tunings
both here;
https://biptunia.com/?page_id=2070
It’s important to note that Kontakt doesn’t really have full support for microtuning. IME any instrument that uses round-robin scripts or similar (i.e. most commerical ones) will give incorrect results. Sometimes you can disable one or more other scripts to get your tuning to “take”, but at the expense of losing most of the instrument’s functionality. For example, NI’s Vintage Organs can only be tuned if you switch off the instrument’s main script, which stops any performance parameters (drawbars etc) from being changed.
I would love to hear of anyone who knows of a workaround for this of course.