Congratulations for a wonderful piece of software!
Thank you for all the new features and for the energy and effort you put on improving your software!
I’m a harmony teacher and I would like to implement Scaler in my classes,
teaching and encouraging students to use it.
But there are a few things I’m missing from the harmony point of view,
one of them is degrees displaying the interval relation to the tonic.
Example:
If we are in the key of C, it would be useful to have
“Ab” displayed as “bVI” and “A” displayed as “VI”.
[Right now Scaler 2.4.1 shows Ab as VI (instead of bVI)].
Sometimes, both chords are used in the same piece, so it’s important to distinguish between bVI and VI.
If this is something some of you don’t use, it could be added as an option in the preferences.
“Degrees display interval relation” or something like that.
I would certainly second this. However, I also think intervals should be displayed both relative to the scale in focus and to the chromatic scale (unless that is what you meant in interval terms ?)
Chromatic intervals allow heptatonic scales and chords to be ‘codified’ into a single number which can then be manipulated to see what fits with what for an amateur like me. [One can do this by assigning each note position in a chromatic scale to a bit in a 16 bit word, and noting the integer so implied. So the Ionian scale would add up to 2741 (1+4+16+32+128+512+2048); a major triad from that scale would be 145 (1+16+128) . So, say, in Excel BITAND(145,2741)-145=0 i.e. the triad is contained in the scale. Note that the key doesn’t matter with this analysis, and neither do second octaves for 9th,11, and 13th notes, odd though this might seem - try it!]
So you can immediately see for any chord and scale where potential dissonances might be, or that (as a starting guitarist would know) you can play Am pentatonic over F major without causing offence.
Scaler can spit out ‘big’ chords, and I struggle badly to make pads based on them sound good against, say, one of Scaler’s generated melodic sequences based on the same chords. I have a spread sheet with 76 chord types and the more significant scales encoded in this way, so I can quickly see what might be a better fit, just by tapping in a couple of numbers and then trying them out in Scaler’s mod page.
Experienced musicians will scoff at this, but it helps to speed up my painfully slow attempts at creating anything worth listening to. It’s a learning process for me.
This approach can be extended to chords in MIDI note number terms (as for example in the Scaler state file). MOD12 +1 of the note number gives the relevant interval from a C root for any 12TET scale (and hence its bit position), which can then be trivially transposed as required.
PS this sort of thing I find very useful; it’s all in Scaler somewhere, except the chromatic intervals. I need to study more the mod page stuff.
That makes my brain hurt and my eyes glaze over. If I had to wade through that when I was starting music in 89 I never would have gotten anywhere. A bit OCD for me but whatever works.
[I’m speaking about this “Codified” section and NOT music theory. I enjoy learning about how chords go together. But this numerology thing is something else. Chromatic intervals allow heptatonic scales and chords to be ‘codified’ into a single number which can then be manipulated to see what fits with what for an amateur like me. [One can do this by assigning each note position in a chromatic scale to a bit in a 16 bit word, and noting the integer so implied. So the Ionian scale would add up to 2741 (1+4+16+32+128+512+2048); a major triad from that scale would be 145 (1+16+128) . So, say, in Excel BITAND(145,2741)-145=0 i.e. the triad is contained in the scale. Note that the key doesn’t matter with this analysis, and neither do second octaves for 9th,11, and 13th notes, odd though this might seem - try it!
