Tunings and Scales

Open Scala and go to File-new-Equal Temperment-24 notes per octave-apply- and Ok! Now we see an array of blue and white keys. In fact, many more than we're used to seeing. You may not even think it looks like a piano keyboard at all! It may seem overwhelming but that's what we're here for!   First let's learn what we mean by scale and tuning. A scale is a row of tones, it can be anything. In this case, when we say scale, we mean the scale that consists of 24 quarter tones.

Ok, well, scale could also refer to what's called a "sub-set" which is a scale with a smaller number of notes such as the 7 tone major scale. Sub sets can be as big or as small as you like. The purpose of them is to give yourself some sort of guidelines as to how melody and harmony work. You could also do like many people and just use the whole 24 notes chromatically without a subset scale but I don't like this approach, although it can, if done right, make for some very rich music. The first thing we need to do is to be able to tell you what notes to play and to do that, we need to be able to name the keys and/or notes.    But face it, that blue and white layout is kinda ugly and really confusing, so here's a nice color chart so you can tell where the regular notes are and where to 12 new notes are.

This may look confusing but it's not. We use a 12 notes per octave note system so, in order to be able to name 24, we need to change something. The best way to do this is come up with new accidental signs to represent the quarter sharps and flats. Now these already exist, which you can see on the left here. Now we could use these symbols by using d as the quarter flat but there is nothing even close on a keyboard that represents the quarter sharp sign.

You know, unless you wanna type the japanese katakana letter, キ everytime you wanna put in a quarter sharp. So in order to over come this issue, we should use the ^ sign to mean quarter sharp because it looks like it's pointing up so think, "up". Likewise, since mixing ^ and d would look stupid so we should make d v to promote some kind of uniformity. So v is quarter flat. Just think "down".

Ok so here's the thing. If you're reading this, I assume without doubt that you know good and well what # and b mean. However, this gets a tad tricky when dealing with quarter tones. While a # sign means to raise a note by one step in the chromatic scale in 12, in 24, it means to raise the note by two quarter tones. That makes obvious sense because two quarter tone = half tone so a # would be two notes in quarter tones. It doesn't mean we're changing anything soundwise, it's just that you have to keep that in mind so you don't forget. And flats work the same way, two steps chromatically DOWN. ^ on the other hand means to raise the note chromatically by ONE step or one quarter tone and v means to lower it by one quarter tone.  With me so far?   If you can remember those rules, it'll make understanding the notes alot easier. This means that # is wider than ^ and b is narrower than v.  When it come to note naming, this means that we call any note that is one quarter step lower than a note, Xv (X representing any note) . So if we flat A by one quarter tone, we get Av.  If we flat A by two quarter tones which equals one half tone or half step, then we would get Ab.  If we flat Ab by one quarter tone, then we get Abv which is the same note as G^. This is where things can get confusing if you forget the rule. Any X^ note is the same as the note as the # of that note or the b of a note a whole tone higher flattened by a v sign.  For example, C^ is the same as Dbv. Typically though, you will most likely rarely come across me typing out a Xbv or X#^ sign so it's not a big deal if you don't get them now. However you do need to understand how b v ^ and # relate on the musical scale.   To make them easy to remember I'm going to come up with a little stupid memory thing.  

"Bill Vacuums Up Numbers"  As stupid and childish as that sounds, it will help you remember the order of small to large in accidentals. 

If you look at the chart and play scala on the black and white keys only, you will get a regular chromatic scale of # and b. Likewise, if you play the red and gray keys only, you will get the other, chromatic scale of ^ and v.  But we can call the quarter tone scale the chromatic scale as well. Hehe, confusing.

We will talk more about this later on.

Playing the Major Scale 

I think a good way to begin to grasp this concept of having two half-step chromatic scales is to learn to play major scales. You should know the major scale formula 

Whole-Whole-Half-Whole-Whole-Whole-Half and repeat. This is easy with 12 tones but with quarter tones, it's trickier because a whole step isn't skipping one note, it's skipping three notes. A half step skips one note and a whole skips two in 12 but not in 24.  The image below is an example of the C major scale played in scala.

You can see that the Green Dots represent if the note is a whole step (Four Quarter Tones)  higher than the previous note and in Blue, it represents it being only a half step higher. (Two Quarter Tones) Later on we will refer to whole and half steps as four steps and two steps because it makes more sense, as you will see later.  

Ok, so what I suggest you do now is play the major scale in scala. Hint, the shift key is the sustain pedal and will make the notes blend together which is useful for hearing the notes blend rather than clicking each one staccato. Alright, easy right? Even if you ignore the whole-half pattern, you can see where the white keys would be.  Ok now try it on some other notes such as C#. Hint: when starting on a gray or red key playing any kind of regular major or minor scale, you will never hit a black or white key. Likewise, start on black or white, red or gray will never be played. 

Just remember, whole is 4 quarter tones and half is 2 quarter tones.   Got it? Now try it on say, E#. The rules are the same. Now, D, now A, now F, now Fx. The more you learn where your major scales are with scala, the easier it will be to do the next stuff. Not that you have to pretend scala is your instrument, it's not like you have to learn all 24 scales, though it's helpful, we don't need to know that.  

When you're ready to move on, go to basic Intervals.

Scale Jumps

Now that we have gotten our feet wet in playing 24 major scales, we're going to look at the different scale jump intervals we have avaliable in 24 notes an octave.  Remember when we talked about whole and half steps? Yeah, it was like 2 minutes ago, haha. Those are ok but they don't make enough sense when dealing with alternate tunings such as 24 so we will make new names for those too. But Don't worry, they are so easy to learn.  Since a whole step is 4 quarter tones, the new name for it will be a "Four Step" because it's 4 steps in the quarter tone chromatic scale. A Half step will be called a "Two Step" because it's 2 steps. Easy enough. So we have four-steps and two-steps intervals. Is that all? Heck no, we also have our quarter tone intervals. This is where stuff gets weird. So far you've only been working with major scales; even though you were using different notes, they still were major scales and all regular intervals. Now we're going to introduce the 3/4 step or "Three-Step" interval! It falls exactly between a whole step and a half step. Weird, try it out.

As you can hear, it sounds really different. Hard to describe probably. Dv is one Three Step higher than C. We can play another 3/4 step or Three Step from Dv which is Eb. Ok so we have Four Step, Three Step, Two Step, and now a One step which is nothing but a quarter tone apart. 

As you can see and hear, C^ is one One step from C or a Quarter Step, if you wanna call it that. "one One step, that's weird hehe"  So Four Step is a Whole Step, a Two step is a Half Step, a Three step is a Three-Quarter Step and a One step is a Quarter step.  Simple enough, is that all the intervals, unfortunately not, in fact, these aren't interval names, they refer to the fraction of a whole step only to dictate scales but there are also interval names such as a Neutral Second and a Diminished Third. We'll learn all about that later but for now, remember what we call the notes and scale intervals.  

On to Quarter Tone Intervals