Scale

Controls: Sgram/PT Dialog >> Pitch-to-MIDI >> Setup
Changes: Sv="string12", Sv=n

The Scale button shows the name of the currently-selected musical scale. Clicking on the button opens the Musical Scales dialog that allows selection of other scales, including custom scales that you can enter.

The Scale control is intended for use when creating music from a random or semi-random input. It restricts the MIDI Voice input to only specific notes in an octave. Notes that do not match any of the scale notes are shifted to the nearest matching note, or optionally skipped entirely.

If you are trying to convert a performance (instrument, voice, whistle, etc.) into MIDI, you will probably want to set the Scale to "Chromatic" (default), which means all notes are accepted.

There are literally thousands of possible scales; The Musical Scales dialog lists over 500 that you can select from, including common and obscure Western scales, plus hundreds of ethnic scales and scales corresponding to chord notes. This same list appears in the AllScales.TXT file that MIDI scripts can read.

The Scale choice affects the general "feel" of the music, including whether the notes of a sustained background chord will harmonize with an arbitrary melody note.

Tip: Pentatonic Major is a good choice to insure that all notes harmonize. It is a traditional scale used in folk styles of the British Isles, American Mountaineers, Native Americans, and Oriental music.

Scales are assumed to start with 'C', which is always accepted. If you want an equivalent scale that starts with another note, you can use the +/-Note control, with or without the PreScale button.

Alternatively, if you want a scale that omits the 'C' but otherwise covers the same note range, you can create a Custom Scale.

Note: The Scale button is disabled when Tempo Mode is set to Percussion, since incoming notes are ignored.

• Musical Scales List
• Custom Scale Definition
• Custom Scale Select
• Custom Scale Name
• Skip Scale Misses

MIDI Changes Script:

Use Sv="string12" to set the Scale for MIDI Voice v to the string "string12". The string must be enclosed in quotes as shown, and must be 12 characters long. The standard format is "CdDeEFgGaAbB", where upper case letters indicate whole notes or white keys and lower case letters indicate flats or black keys. Leave a space, period, minus sign, or underscore for notes that are not to be included.

Alternatively, you can create computed or random scales via Sv=n, which sets the Scale for voice v according to the bits set in value n, which may be any valid expression. Only the low 12 bits are used. Bit 11 (most-significant) represents C in the scale, and bit 0 represents B. If a bit is set, the corresponding note is included in the scale.

With either method, a totally empty scale is converted to a full Chromatic scale.

You can use "voice" 9 to set the scales for all 8 voice at once.

Note that the Scale command changes the working scale for the given voice, but does not affect the scale name shown on the manual control.

When you read a scale setting by using Sv on the right side of an expression, the working scale value is returned as an integer in the range of 1 to 4095 (typically 2048-4095 since all standard scales start with C).

You can use the Output Display command to show the current working scale of any voice as a pattern string. For example, if Voice 1 uses a Pentatonic Major scale, then oLs=S1 would display C^D^E^^G^A^^ on the lower left.

Alternatively, if you use oLS=S1 the display would show Pentatonic Major. If the given value is not in the Musical Scales List and is not one of the Custom Scales, the display uses the above pattern string format.

See also MIDI Voice Setup Dialogs, Pitch-to-MIDI dialog, Pitch Track Toolbox - Overview