I have been looking for a program or software that allows you to choose or type a frequency and generate a scale. For example, choose 366 or any frequency as a base for C, and build a scale from it with custom pitches. This program would also let you type intervals.
Without the ability to chooose a specic interval I feel music is chained to specific frequencies.
For example Bitwig Studio has come close to unlocking the true potential of music, with MicroPitch that lets you choose from 415 to 466 Hz and then choosing intervals. However, the intervals are locked into specific pitches.
Is scaler interested in unlocking scales, or is it just another locked program?
Is there a music overlord that is handicapping humanity’s music potential?
Hugely interesting question, and one which is really complex. I suspect it’s much more maths (or maybe physics that’s doing the handicapping.
You could certainly set up in appropriate software (a sort of sampler) a scale which had whatever intervals you chose and set frequencies at those intervals as you wished, ignoring aspects of temperament. [You don’t have to have repeating Octaves e.g. Bohlen’s 13 tone …]
The problem would be what it would sound like. People have been trying to work out good combinations for a couple of millennia, so you would have many happy hours auditioning if you were going to do it ad hoc.
It seems to me, you could go for any root note frequency, and then pick a temperament and / intervals according to some existing framework. Spectrasonics Omnisphere allows you to set 60 or 70 different tunings, most of which I have never heard of. Making up adhoc frequencies s much harder to get sounding ok.
If you haven’t seen them, I strongly recommend the three videos on the maths/physics of scales - here is number 1
Most Daws, can change frequency ranges like the one you mentioned. But this is limiting.
The reason I am sharing this concern is because I feel scaler has been the first with a lot of music improvements. Custom progressions, Genre Libraries, Midi Recording, offering demo versions of the program and so on. In other words, musicians are empowered with knowledge and options that years ago only corporate composers had access to. No longer are you forced to listen to mass produced trash.
Forty years of Daws, and we still do not have a method of typing in frequencies manually.
Part of the reason we don’t have options when it comes to “music out of the box” is because this isn’t available for a musician when the first Daw should have made it possible. Right, program a frequency and choose the intervals.
The world has been fighting monopolies that want to keep the masses ignorant when it comes to progressive knowledge. These monopolies have ruined the world and moving the world forward isn’t a easy matter.
Personally, I never thought I could create harmonies found in some of my recent productions. All of this thanks to individuals moving the world forward like Scaler.
I feel some DAWS, programs like Chordpulse, Scaler, and Bitwig Studio fall in that category of forward thinking. Bitwig Micropitch is almost there.
It is also very strange that there isn’t a reliable frequency reader available either. So one can read a frequency exactly. I’ve pondered this question before when I was tempering strings on a guitar a couple years ago.
On the opposite end, there are those that do not follow this thinking, programs like blocked instruments with useless dials, or programs that spit out waves instead of notes, and so on. I presume they will want to claim copyright later.
So I was wondering whether Scaler is interested in making custom scales possible.
an old synth Z3TA+2 has a default tuning library of 4000 scales… probably more than most people would need but useful esp if trying to do some microtuning / styling to capture the right instrument tuning (available using synth and as an FX processor).
but useful esp if trying to do some microtuning / styling to capture the right instrument tuning (available using synth and as an FX processor).