Developer Cem Olcay has introduced ScaleBud, a music theory for iOS.
ScaleBud features more than 40+ scales, You can list either notes or chords for them in any key you want. With the built-in keyboard, you can send MIDI notes of the chords or notes.
It comes with the standalone mode, Audiobus MIDI Sender & Filter modes, and the AUv3 mode.
- In standalone mode and Audiobus MIDI Sender mode, you can control your audio apps with CoreMIDI.
- In Audiobus MIDI Filter mode it can
- filter out off-scale notes in scale mode and
- generate chords for the notes you are sending in the scale you’re working in, if any available.
- In AUv3 mode, it can do both MIDI sending through its own keyboard and do mapping/filtering like in Audiobus MIDI Filter mode.
ScaleBud has a single-view interface that you can choose the scale and key you want to work with, as well as a note or chord mode selector on the left side.
In note mode, you can jump between notes in the scale by selecting them from the list. In chord mode, you can see the triad, 7th, 9th, 11th or 13th chords for each note in the scale. You can jump between them quickly as well, by pressing the chord you want to play from keyboard.
ScaleBud comes with an AUv3 MIDI plugin and standalone versions. You can directly control your iOS, Mac or PC audio apps with CoreMIDI. Just open the settings menu and select the MIDI Out you want to send MIDI to.
ScaleBud also supports Audiobus MIDI Sending and Filtering. You can send MIDI from Audiobus 3 app just like regular CoreMIDI workflow. Also, in Audiobus MIDI Filter mode, you can feed MIDI Input data from your hardware or MIDI app, and ScaleBud filters out the off-scale notes in note mode, or plays the corresponding chord, if any available, for each note, like a chorder, in chord mode.
ScaleBud works with Audio Unit version 3 hosts like Audiobus 3, AUM, Cubasis 2, Beat Maker 3, apeMatrix and Sequencism. As an audio unit plugin, it both maps/filters your MIDI Input to the MIDI Output you route, and sends the notes/chords you pressed from its keyboard. In chord mode, you can press any type of chord from the list in order to make chorder generate chords in that type. For example if you press a 7th chord, it will generate 7th chords for each note you send it from your MIDI keyboard.
Note: ScaleBud is not an audio app. It creates or filters MIDI data coming from input and sends them to MIDI output. Standalone app requires iOS 10.0+ AUv3 plugin requires iOS 11.0+ and a supporting host app.
Open Source Core:
ScaleBud is built on an open source core. The core components open sourced on GitHub:
Pricing and Availability
ScaleBud is available now in the App Store for US $4.99.
Cue annoying muppets telling everyone to learn scales and chords…. You know.. like when you’re talking about a movie and someone says “the book is much better”…. annoying muppets.
Complaining about the complaint before the complaint complaints might suggest an inferiority complex.
Nah, it’s a common comment on any scale assistant app or hardware.
You may also be afflicted.
I have a tiny one.
Chord and scale vocabulary.
music comes within….
The scales and chords book is much better!
.
.
.
(His other apps are also nice: keybudapp.com)
Whether you learn scales & chords, or refuse to learn scales & chords, neither will make your music good or bad. Even an app that will move notes to the nearest scale or chord note won’t matter. But maybe making great music isn’t the goal of everyone.
If you have a personal “policy” that you will AVOID learning stuff, then maybe your approach will keep your music “raw” and “real”. Everything you make will be a mystery and a surprise to even you. You will base all of your work and decisions on your moment to moment “yum” and “yuck” reactions to your own work-in-progress. That’s fine. It does what it does. You and your audiences may still enjoy what you do.
Even the most annoying of muppets shouldn’t have a problem with an app like this. It may actually help someone learn scales & chords, unless they really put in the effort to avoid it.
This app is an AUv3 MIDI tool, not just an AU plugin, but a tool that generates and modifies MIDI. There are only a handful of these AU MIDI apps for iOS and all are extremely useful. It acts like a filter for incoming MIDI data, quantizing incoming MIDI to the scale of your choosing, and it’s also a note-to-chord generator. Not all musicians know music theory, therefore apps like this one help. If you compare it to Eurorack, this app is like a Eurorack scale quantizer for iOS. Put it between your MIDI sequencers and your synths. There are a ton of innovative & creative MIDI sequencers on iOS, and this app is a tool for using them, either with iOS synths, PC softsynths, or hardware, including a Eurorack setup. It’s helpful to know what a tool does before knocking it on a public forum.
I didn’t see anyone knocking the app. There was a little back & forth riffing about typical comments about these kinds of apps. “You kidz should learn your scales & chords!” “Screw you, Grampa!”
It was just confusing because the “Screw you, Grampa!” came first in the comments. But I think it was a little tongue-in-cheek. It’s all good fun. But yea, not the kinds of comments that are especially helpful when you want to have a more clear discussion of your app.
Are there user scales and user chords?
No user scales yet, but the dev said on the Audiobus forum that Version 1.1 will be out in a few hours with multi-instance support and custom user preset saving.
There’s another AU MIDI suite called Rozeta by Bram Bos which contains 10 apps that specialize in generating MIDI & modifying MIDI. Plus StepPolyArp Unit and StreamByter.
These new AU MIDI apps remind me of some of the cool sequencer and quantizer modules in Eurorack.
At least this app could help someone learn scales & chords (even if they are decidedly against learning).