Instruments

Remember that we were talking about all those books of études that were published by those classical composers? So while the last bunch of chapters have been all about songs and matrices and such there is one element to ScalePlay that we haven't touched upon so far. The play part. Of course we can play our songs, record them via Audiobus or MIDI, but one important element of ScalePlay has to do with learning.

After having practiced their scales for years the already somewhat advanced Jazz student (or Rock, Blues, etc.) all of a sudden realizes that those scales don't sound all that great in a solo. A bit dismayed they come to the realization that those years were just spent building the basis for now being able to construct patterns with them and carry them through chord changes. Sound familiar? The thing is that advanced patterning through changes on an instrument takes a lot of practice. And even then sometimes it takes weeks to hear a specific progression in real time, because those fingers needed to get up to speed first.

ScalePlay to the rescue! - Just kidding. But the reason we built in such elaborate support for not only one, but nine instruments comes from that knowledge. Namely how difficult it is to just build and audit scale patterns on the instrument. With ScalePlay it is now a trivial thing to punch in a II-V progression, draw a pattern and step progression. And what is even nice is that one can slow it way down, watch as the app plays it on the guitar neck and maybe even play along.

 

Scordatura

Out of the nine instruments in ScalePlay eight are string instruments. For that reason we added a tuning window. Detuning of strings in classical music is called scordatura. Guitar and bass players probably just call it detuning. In any case ScalePlay gives each of these instruments a full 6 half-tone steps above and below standard tuning for each string. Everything auto-updates so the letter/syllable labels in the instrument will reflect whatever tuning was chosen. Additionally the ranges in the phrase matrix will update.

Note that the reposition button right below the tuning fork on the right hand side in the image above has changed to indicate that for string instruments the default position is first position.

 

Many Keys

All instruments in ScalePlay are fully playable with all 128 built-in sounds. Now that wouldn't be much fun if there were just the 3 octaves shown above. The keyboard instrument in ScalePlay has a full 88 keys. The image above shows the very lowest position (C1). And string instruments come with a full 24 frets.

In order to reposition any of the instruments one double-finger drags inside the instrument display. So just use index plus middle finger and give it a try. It may be awkward at first to slow things down enough to get to the desired position, but it works. Of course dragging in the phrase matrix will highlight those notes on the instrument. Another good shortcut to remember. And then there is the instrument reposition button to bring everything back home.

 

Summary

Banjo, Bass, Cello, Double Bass, Guitar, Mandolin, Piano, Viola, Violin. There are very few people that play all of these, but as long as the one instrument that counts - yours - is included, we are making headway. Of course most of these instrument have particular clef requirements. So let's head over to the notation view and check out how it can help us with everything.