I'm looking for resources for Scala. I've got the huge scale archive and want to remove loads of them because I think that they're musically nonsensical. I wonder if there is an easy approach I can adopt to this end?
I'm also looking for a forum for the Scala app but cannot find one.
Scala by Huygens-Fokker - Questions
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- KVRian
- 709 posts since 4 Jul, 2011 from England
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- KVRAF
- 26033 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
Certain of these are purely theoretical and were never made for real application in music. Particularly ancient Greek 'enharmonic', 'chromatic', etc. So you may find as a principle all of the the "arist" files deletable. For instance "Aristoxenos's Chromatic Malakon" is strictly from maths.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 709 posts since 4 Jul, 2011 from England
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- KVRist
- 228 posts since 26 Sep, 2013
it would be good to have all these .scl files categorised, in order to make it easier to choose the right file for a particular melody/harmony/music.
Do you have any preferred files? If yes, which ones, and for what kind of music do you use them?
Do you have any preferred files? If yes, which ones, and for what kind of music do you use them?
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- KVRAF
- 37409 posts since 14 Sep, 2002 from In teh net
If you're on Mac I find this app indispensable for finding out information about all the scales in the Scala database
http://hpi.zentral.zone/scalavista
http://hpi.zentral.zone/scalavista
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- KVRAF
- 5381 posts since 25 Jan, 2014 from The End of The World as We Knowit
+1 A useful ScalaVista feature is you can right click on a scale for a popup menu with several options including Play Scale to hear it using the internal piano. Its pretty neat. The dev has an amazing microtonal wiki:aMUSEd wrote:http://hpi.zentral.zone/scalavista
http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com
Have you seen the Show Scale and Show Data commands in Scala?
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/examples.html
Aalto has categorised (eg Arabic, Carlos, Gamelan) subsets of scl files that sound good (Alchemy has similar with .tun). Sometimes I'll record a 12ET melody and try it with different scales first with a Piano preset (to eliminate true awfulness), and then try synth presets. I like that approach too. You can get a free monophonic Aalto from Beat magazine.
F E E D
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- KVRist
- 228 posts since 26 Sep, 2013
good advises, thank you.
I also often use Aalto or Diva to test different .scl or .tun files. It just would be good to have a pre-selection before that step. The categories in Aalto's library are something, but (for me) it is not very helpful. Each category contains scales with very different divisions of an octave (if there are octaves at all).
Because I still use traditional keyboards with 12 keys per octave, I concentrate on .scl files with 12 divisions. Other divisions are interesting too, but this somehow goes out of my hand. How am I supposed to play them? How could I memorise a melody or chord if all keys have a new meaning?
And it's not only the 12 divisions, I would like to know which .scl files correspond to real instruments, to natural tonality created with wind and string instruments. Maybe when I'm 70 I will approach the pure mathematical systems, but for now I'd prefer to put them aside.
ScalaVista looks promising, I didn't know this software. I was keeping myself away from HPi software because CSE still crashes on Windows so that I never managed to use and learn CSE. Until now I still use Scala, load files to check their division (sometimes they are already in the file name), and use the relayer function for monophonic analog synthesisers. It works, I'm happy, it's just that I mostly don't know exactly what I'm doing and where those .scl files I've picked exactly come from. Maybe I should get ScalaVista, but I fear it will be another software that I'll never use for whatever reason. I bought two or three specialised softwares this year that still are useless for me. I'm aware that the main problem is my lack of understanding, but there are many other problems, and simple stupid technical problems (software does not run).
I also often use Aalto or Diva to test different .scl or .tun files. It just would be good to have a pre-selection before that step. The categories in Aalto's library are something, but (for me) it is not very helpful. Each category contains scales with very different divisions of an octave (if there are octaves at all).
Because I still use traditional keyboards with 12 keys per octave, I concentrate on .scl files with 12 divisions. Other divisions are interesting too, but this somehow goes out of my hand. How am I supposed to play them? How could I memorise a melody or chord if all keys have a new meaning?
And it's not only the 12 divisions, I would like to know which .scl files correspond to real instruments, to natural tonality created with wind and string instruments. Maybe when I'm 70 I will approach the pure mathematical systems, but for now I'd prefer to put them aside.
ScalaVista looks promising, I didn't know this software. I was keeping myself away from HPi software because CSE still crashes on Windows so that I never managed to use and learn CSE. Until now I still use Scala, load files to check their division (sometimes they are already in the file name), and use the relayer function for monophonic analog synthesisers. It works, I'm happy, it's just that I mostly don't know exactly what I'm doing and where those .scl files I've picked exactly come from. Maybe I should get ScalaVista, but I fear it will be another software that I'll never use for whatever reason. I bought two or three specialised softwares this year that still are useless for me. I'm aware that the main problem is my lack of understanding, but there are many other problems, and simple stupid technical problems (software does not run).
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- KVRAF
- 37409 posts since 14 Sep, 2002 from In teh net
I think they are probably a more Mac focussed company because CSE runs fine for me on Mac.
Last edited by aMUSEd on Fri Nov 13, 2015 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 709 posts since 4 Jul, 2011 from England
Hmm, ScalaVista looks like it would be of great help. No Windows demo though.