I barely no anything about music theory so I've been looking into learning a bit to help with production, what I'm about to propose may be sacrilegious so go easy on me haha.

Reading a bit about scales it seemed to me that the idea of remembering them seemed a bit pointless considering most of us are using computers that could easily memorise them for us, after all as far as I can tell theres no creativity in knowing the scale off by heart just the choosing of it and the playing within it?

So this reminded me of when I was messing around with the iphone animoog and it had all the scales mapped out on a virtual keyboard where u could choose to remove all the unused keys so all you were left with a keyboard of all the keys on the scale. I found this really fun and it made writing decent sounding melodies a lot easier than my usual fumbling around guesswork method.

I wanted to try and make a similar thing on the ableton live 'Scale' midi effect so that I could have every scale mapped to the standard white keys (C major scale?) on my keyboard, this way I could just wack the 'Scale' effect before my synth, pick a scale and jam out on the white keys like a pro haha.

Unfortunately the way Scale works it cant shift the scale up to a different root note if you do it this way mapped to the white keys, so I wanted to ask someone with a better knowledge of music theory (wouldn't take much!) if this is even possible. Better yet is there a plugin that already does this, if not then someone should make one!

Thanks for your input...

It's been a while since I used Live, but isn't there a MIDI Transpose effect?

Build a chain on a clip of:
TRANSPOSE -> SCALE -> VSTi.

Then if you want to play the white notes in the key of F minor just set transpose to +5, scale to Harmonic/Melodic minor and then "bash on the white keys" as you said.

The downside to scale enforcing plugins is that you cannot allow your own inspirations to take you outside the constraints of the scale.

This reminds me about the first tune I ever wrote. I was maybe 9 years old with a couple years of piano lessons, hummed some cornball melody on the school bus, and tried to write it out when I got home. There was a lot of musical influence that I had absorbed from listening to and playing music and that melody had a lot of stuff that I had no clue about. The song was in C major but it used 3 black keys frequently. And there are perfectly valid theoretical reasons for every one of those, but I'll be darned if I knew any of them until years later. Point is my little kiddy cakewalk wouldn't have sounded right without those alterations.

Man, this is not sacrilegious, it's just silly.

Memorizing the scales is not such a huge burden you know. Sure you'll be practicing them for the rest of your life - if you play a real instrument that is -, but that's to keep them in your tactile memory.

Intellectually memorizing the scales is laughably easy. Just start with the intervals and not the notes.
Major scale: tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone.
I doubt it will overload your brain. And if you are working on a computer, you'll have plenty of time to figure the scale notes out.

The OP is using virtual instruments.

Do you know all the scales in all keys?

Not all scales, but some. I practice major, natural minor and harmonic minor in all keys every day.

This would be the musical equivalent of paint by numbers. Hardly any creativity involved. You will also need know the chords to which the scales are associated.

If you want all of the scales here is a resource that shows them graphically on a keyboard:

http://www.apassion4jazz.net/keys.html

You do not have to memorize all of them for most music. Some are very esoteric but it does benefit to know the basic ones. There is no substitute for knowledge. As D. Josef pointed out the scales are built on intervals (whole and semitones) so once you know the intervals you can play the scales in any key.



I am not sure I understand this. Do you want to have all scales on the white keys only? Not possible. The black keys are not there for unnecessary decoration.

BTW there is nothing inherently wrong with a diatonic instrument.

Touch interface instruments do this all the time. The Kaossilator does it, Animoog does it, etc. Diatonic harmonicas have become almost synonymous with the blues.
It has its pros, like the fact that on a touch interface, you don't have the tactile feedback of keys or frets, and the small size of the device also limits your ability to play.
(But well, there is a reason why a "real" instrument is expected to be chromatic.)

What is wrong is the total laziness of admittedly not wanting to even learn the scales. And well if the post was about guitar or piano or flute or whatnot, where the fingerings really require you to separately practice in each key... But on a piano roll, all keys look the same, just shifted up or down a bit... Eh...

You don't need to "know the scale in all keys" - you just need to know the scale (in terms of intervals) and the relationships between all notes (ZOMG 12 notes to memorise, so difficult!!!eleven). With that knowledge it's really easy to know at least the basic scales (e.g. major, the variations of minor, pentatonic, blues) in any key.



But I'd say this is the real answer. Knowing the notes in the scale is one thing, knowing how to do anything with that knowledge another. You can't just delegate that to a computer - and if you could, where would the fun be?

Just because we have calculators doesn't mean no one needs to learn how to add 2 + 2. Knowing how to look up an answer on the calculator is not the same as knowing how to arrive at that answer or how to apply that knowledge to a real life situation.

If all you're interested in are the shortcuts, and not in music for music's sake, it's probably not your thing anyway. You won't get anywhere without dedication and application - as with pretty much anything else in life. As you make music, you'll learn the scales anyway - so just keep making music and you'll pick these things up!

Of course, there are obvious advantages to being able to easily and quickly look up a scale in any key - it'll help you learn and play in them for a start But don't see it as a substitute for knowledge, but as one of the paths leading you to knowledge.

cheers for the replies,

Jus to elaborate a bit on my original post, I'm not trying to say that knowing scales on a keyboard is redundant or pointless. But my point is that for someone like me who doesn't know any musical scales surely a simple step to make better sounding melodies quicker is to play within a scale. If I'm planning on playing in a scale then why not jus map the notes of the scale out on the keyboard in an easy way? I understand the way the piano style keyboard is the best way of laying out notes so as to have access to all the scales at once but if Im choosing a scale before hand to give me a hand selecting notes that will sound good together, and its possible to lay them out all next to each other on the white keys then why not do it?

I definitely make music for musics sake, but if theres ways that I can improve my sound without weeks of practice then why not do it? If anything messing about with scales in this way would encourage me to learn them, Ill probably end up being like 'dam I wish i could put x note in here' and learning the scales on the keyboard properly so i can do that. I find learning is all about encouragement and reward not working for ages for one big payoff at the end.

And experience. Muscle memory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory#Music_memory

Yeh I was thinking about this when reading the replies, Its a good point. Learning the scales layed out how they are on the keyboard from the start would mean i would naturally pick up a feel for the scales by instinct. This is shifting me towards the idea of learning the standard scale layouts. Does anyone know of any plugins that just have a pop up of the keyboard, showing depressed keys, that can highlight the notes/keys used in a selected scale so that i can have an instant reference of the scales in front of me when jamming with a tactile response on the screen of the keys Im pressing? That would be pretty cool!

http://www.casio.com/products/Digital_Pianos_%26_Keyboards/L ighted_Keys/LK-165/

This would get you started playing melodies rather than scales. Learning melodies is likely to be more informative for writing compelling parts on your own than learning the scales would be. I also think jamming along with songs you like and using your ears as a guide to what sounds right will teach you far more than any visual aid. This is coming from someone who overemphasized the visual/theoretical side of learning music for a long time, much to my later regret. It's an aural art form, ears are your best friend in progressing.

You're still probably better off just taking a few piano lessons if you actually want to make music with a keyboard or piano roll as input, just to get familiar with the layout of the instrument. Shortcuts quickly become limitations.

Hey thats exactly what I was thinking of but in VST form. Could you just explain the distinction your making between 'melodies' and 'scales'? appreciate the advice mate, thanks

usually when people think of scales they're thinking of an ascending and descending pattern of notes that are adjacent to each other in the key. so it would be (starting from C) C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. that's a scale, but it's not really a melody that you'd likely walk away humming to yourself. a melody is the part of a song that you'd sing to yourself after hearing it. studying and learning how to pick out simple songs on a keyboard will make it a lot easier for you to get ideas from in your head out onto the keyboard, whereas running scales won't necessarily help with that process much. working with melodies will also develop a different type of muscle memory (like mike was talking about) because eventually your fingers will just know what a certain interval sounds like.

the simplest scale to start with is C major/A minor, which is just all the white notes on the piano. you can learn a lot just by fiddling around with those and then slowly work on transposing what you know to one or two other keys. it's much more informative to know one key inside and out than it is to know a little bit about all 12 keys.

just to head off any criticism of what i'm saying, of course it is useful to know all 12 keys well as an eventual goal, but i guess i just think it's more useful to get your head, hands, and ears around one key thoroughly.