Miscellaneous

There are a couple of things we haven't yet had a chance to talk about. So this chapter is a little collection of remaining items. Let's get started with a topic that is probably of interest to many - Audiobus.

 

Audiobus

Audiobus is a fantastic app and process. it allows us to record from one app into another, add effects on the way and so much more. ScalePlay is Audiobus 3 compatible and in its context acts as a sound generator. As seen in the image above ScalePlay is ready to get recorded into GarageBand. All that is left is to get it started and tap the recording button for GarageBand. On the other end - with GarageBand as frontmost app, ScalePlay functions as well. It displays an icon plus start button in the Audiobus control strip.

With Audiobus 3 ScalePlay can also be utilized in the MIDI tab and act as a MIDI source for synthesizers etc.

 

Ableton Link

Ableton Link settings are available from in the app's main navigation bar with an appropriately named button (3rd from top left). The Link button appears in orange if Ableton Link is enabled and gray otherwise. This setting is not adjustable during playback.

 

Virtual MIDI

ScalePlay publishes outgoing MIDI in one of the available 16 channels. This channel is specified in the General part of the settings view. Virtual MIDI is always on and it is left to the processing app whether to add ScalePlay as input source or not.

 

Line Mode

The line mode button is located in the center toolbar. It is disabled if the phrase line is set to 0 in a song's settings. Otherwise it displays on of three states. Above it is set to bottom notes, i.e. play all notes below the line in your phrase matrix.

In the image above the line mode has been toggled to play notes above the line.

Finally this image above shows line mode in "play all" mode. The line mode of a song may be changed at any point. Even while a song is playing back. And this is the same line mode button that we have already discussed in when talking about TouchPlay. Many of the sample songs that initially come with ScalePlay are set up to use line mode for different effects. Of particular interest are the songs Jaco, Poly and Taiko where switching the line mode creates a fairly particular effect.

 

Pattern Lock

Pattern lock is the button to the left of line mode button. Above it is not engaged.

In the picture above pattern lock has now been engaged. Again, we already discussed the pattern lock feature in the TouchPlay chapter. This also is a setting that may be changed during playback. ScalePlay's pattern lock is a means to compensate for root movement when going from chord to chord with the intent to keep the notes generated in the same vicinity. If we have two chords - C Maj and G Maj for example - and both play a Ionian scales, the second pattern will normally be executed 10 half-tone steps higher than the first one. That is true for all steps our phrase is executed with. This movement is not always desirable. These are the notes generated if kept in normal mode:

C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C

G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G

With pattern lock engaged the output will look something like this:

C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C

C, D, E, F#, G, A, B, C

 

Summary

Congratulations - you made it all the way through a seriously lengthy walk-through of a pretty complex application. As often in these cases many things are self-explanatory when working with the app itself, but then there are others that are less so. We found that explaining ScalePlay is much more difficult than actually demonstrating it. The basic concept simply takes a little getting used to. In any case we are happy you made it this far and hope that you will find ScalePlay useful. Do let us know if there are things left unexplained. We would also like to hear from you if you have any suggestions for improvement or feature requests. Many thanks for you interest and support :]