Scaler fretboard tuning issue: one octave lower?

Scaler 2 General Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

I am just starting out with Scaler 2.7 and really loving it.
Yesterday I tried using it with Native Instruments Picked Acoustic library, as I know many do, and realised that for some reason clicking on the individual notes along the fretboard interface seems to trigger notes that are one octave lower than what you would expect from a standard guitar. Indeed the first C on the 3rd fret of the A string is marked as C2, which is the note that is triggered in Picked Acoustic (as confirmed by a spetrum analyzer), which is the lowest note possible in picked acoustic and is 4 semitones lower than the lowest E string in standard guitar tuning. Clicking on the low E string open (which would be E1) doesn’t produce a sound in picked acoustic as it is out of its range. Chords too are accordingly one octave lowe than what I would expect them to sound. These happens both with Guitar Voicing activated and not activated. Happens both in Reaper and Bitwig.

Can someone help me understand? Pretty sure I am missing something here, but seached through tutorials and forums to no avail. Thank you,

Michele

2

I believe this is common, and is not related to Scaler.

A pianist would generally regard middle C as the 4th C in from the lowest key on an 88 key piano, and hence this is designated C4, with C1 being the lowest.

However, MIDI numbering starts from 0,not 1, and hence ‘middle C’ has note number 60, and comes out as C3. Scaler (and most apps) shows the MIDI interpretation.

You just have to make this adjustment when comparing note values.

Picked Acoustic is a great VST…

1 Like
3

Hi @Panda, thank you so much for your reply, I now understand better the issue at hand.

Am I right then in thinking that while Scaler subscribes to one method of numbering octaves, Picked Acoustic/Kontakt uses the other, and I therefore have Picked Acoustic playing one octave lower than expected?

Thank you!

4

I just did a quick test, and it seems that Picked Acoustic aligns with Scaler.

So PA shows
pa

playing a C3 major chord. In Scaler, the same pitch is produced at C3

sc
sc582×574 75.8 KB

However, if I wire up midi from Scaler to Arturia’s Piano V2

ca
ca325×535 14.8 KB

and press c3 in Scaler, it plays the same pitch on the 88 key keyboard that a pianist would see as C4 i.e. 4 octaves in from the left hand side.

p3
p31003×433 49.3 KB

Feeding the audio from Scaler into Adobe Audition, confirms that this is 256.63 viz concert middle C. There is a lot on the web about this ; see for example (related to the guitar)

https://www.study-guitar.com/blog/middle-c-on-guitar/#Does_it_matter_if_different_programs_use_different_designations_for_Middle_C

Hope this helps …

1 Like
5

Thanks so much, Panda that’s super informative and helpful really. I’m still a bit puzzled by the fact that when in fretboard view, when I play for instance the open B string (or any other note) with Guitar Voicing enabled the sound that comes out of Picked Acoustic is one octave lower than on my actual acoustic guitar. I have resolved the issue for the time being putting a midi transposer (set to +12 semitones) between Scaler and Kontakt, but hopefully I will soon understand what I’m doing wrong!
Thank you again for all your help!