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Hi I am building a musical instrument in Processing which sends note information to Ableton. I would like to enable the user to switch between different scales (C-major, D-minor etc), so that the user always plays notes within that scale. Does anybody know about a smarter way of doing this than to hardcode all the different notes and scales in arrays? Or has anybody done something similar and want to share their code?
Cheers Andreas
Answers
http://members.chello.nl/r.kuijt/de_quintenzirkel.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths#Modulation_and_chord_progression
The thing to know is how major and minor scales are formed. It is all about whole tones (1) and semitones (1/2).
Major scale: 1 1 1/2 1 1 1 1/2 Minor scale: 1 1/2 1 1 1/2 1 1
The problem here, however is that tones and semitones are not constant values and may depend on instrument you use. You can however hardcode the frequencies for each note in needed range (including # and b) and use provided algorithm to automatically build a scale from the hardcoded notes range.
Thanks :)