Developer Jesper Nordin has introduced ScaleGen for iPad, described as ‘the ultimate tool for musicians who want to explore new ways of thinking about music.’
ScaleGen is a tool for organizing pitches into custom scales and tunings. It lets you create and audition scales within the app, and then export it as a MIDI file or to their gestural music app Gestrument.
It goes far beyond mainstream types of scales, letting you experiment with up to 24 notes per octave, use historical and experimental microtonal tuning and even scales that are different in each octave, like the overtone series.
Here’s the official intro video for ScaleGen:
ScaleGen comes with predefined scales of all kinds – from the traditional western scales and early music (Baroque/Renaissance) scales to Asian scales from India, Indonesia and elsewhere to more conceptual scales.
ScaleGen is available in the App Store for US $9.99.
If you’ve used ScaleGen, leave a comment and let us know what you think of it!
Great!
Wow. What a labor of love! I almost cannot believe the compositional insight in this app, and how it makes tonal exploration so much easier than the existing clumsy tools. It brings together so many ideas from the ‘microtonal world’ into one tool. Pitch is the next frontier, and this app can be a real doorway. Bravo!!!
Thanks Michael L and Ombossa!
Yes – we actually wanted to include all this in the original version of Gestrument, but it made more sense to divide it into two apps, since ScaleGen works fine by itself.
Is there a possibility to have a MIDI input for mapping in real time a MIDI keyboard to the custom scales ?
Great idea! Are you thinking about porting it to desktop (mac/pc)?
Excellent, this is the first iOS app in a while that has my attention – thank you for the obvious effort that has gone into this 🙂
Just a note for iOS app nerds: Jonatan Liljedahl of Kymatica did the programming on this one. Same Kymatica that created AudioShare, Sector, BitWiz and the AUFX series. If there was a sorta known master craftsman of iOS music apps, he’s it.
Hmm, tried replying yesterday, but I don’t see it here now – even though I’m sure the post was visible yesterday! Trying again now then:
@Will – yes Jonatan is really the best of the best in the iOS music app world! I’m so happy to work with him both on Gestrument and on ScaleGen. We have more things planned as well!
@Baddcr – thanks! Yes, the first version of this was in my Max/MSP version of Gestrument (with Wacom input) that I made in 2007;-)
@Chris – we have had that question for Gestrument as well, and I would really like to, since I think it would fit many peopls workflow, but right now we don’t have the funding or time. Especially since Jonatan haven’t programmed Mac OS apps before.
@gnavard – interesting suggestion, the problem would be when the scale is shorter or longer than 127 steps. I guess you could define a starting point, and then just go as far as you can depending on scale length and keyboard sie. I’ll put it in my list of possible ideas for future updates!