Custom scales for Push and scales at all for the note editor

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JuSchu
Posts: 122
Joined: Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:12 pm
Location: Wuppertal (Germany)

Custom scales for Push and scales at all for the note editor

Post by JuSchu » Tue Sep 04, 2018 9:25 pm

These are actually two feature requests. One for Push and another one for the note editor.
First I wanted to open two topics but there were too many intersections I would have two write on both topics. So it makes more sense to open just one topic.

Push can either display only the notes of a certain scale or all the notes of western music.
Live's note editor can either display all the notes of the western music or it displays all the notes that are already in the clip ("Fold").
It would be nice if the note editor could also display a certain scale.

Right now I have a workaround for that.
Just enter all the notes of your scale into a clip as an awful sounding chord (or arpeggio, or whatever, I prefer a chord), copy them a few times in octave intervals above/below and then activate Fold. Since Live 10 this workaround works even better since you can select multiple clips and you can enter the notes in another clip and don't have to do it in every single clip. But it's still not as convenient as just selecting the scale and activating scale mode.

And then it would be nice to have custom scales that you can edit in Live like a custom groove.
Very often I just play around on my Push in chromatic mode or on my keyboard without knowing which scale I'm in. I just play all the notes that fit in and later I use a scale reverse search tool to find out which scale it is or which is the closest. In most cases, I can't select that scale on my Push. For example, right now it's "Dorico Flamenco". Or perhaps you are a more professional musician than me and just already know many scales you would like to use that Push doesn't offer.

How would it look like in Live?
- Right next to the button for the groove pool, there is another button for scales. When you click it you see all the custom scales below the browser that are saved in the project (just like custom grooves are saved in the project).
- The columns in that List are "Scale Name" and "Intervals". Perhaps you could choose a tonic and the list shows the intervals as actual note names. Also, I might have forgotten something at this point because I never had a proper music theory education.
- There is a "Scale" button next to the "Fold" button in the note editor.
- You can add new scales by dragging clips into the "scale pool" (just like you create custom grooves). Then Live analyzes the clip, interprets the lowest note (if the clip starts with more than one note) or the first note (otherwise) as the tonic*, and then counts the intervals from the tonic upwards that are smaller than one octave. All the notes that have an interval of at least one octave or additional notes with an already added interval are ignored. The name of the clip will be the name of the scale. If there already is an identical built-in or custom scale you get an error message.
* This could be problematic if there is just a small time difference between the first and the second note while the second note is a lower note. Perhaps the notes were recorded manually instead of being entered with the mouse. So there should be a tolerance depending on the note length.
- You can also save scales as files like custom grooves.
- You can select the global scale next to the global time signature. There you find the built-in scales and the custom scales of the project. The custom scales are separated (blank entry, a line as an entry, unselectable bold "Custom Scales" and "Built-In Scales" entries, ...) on the top of the list.
- Just like you can select an individual time signature and launch quantization for a clip you can also select an individual scale for a clip. It could be a user preference if clips that are exported to the browser or imported from another project are set to the global scale of the project as individual clip scale.
- It could make sense to add markers in the arrangement (like the markers for time signature) to have changes of the global scale over the song. This only counts for the arrangement and overwrites the global scale. In the session view, only the global scale counts.

How would it look like on Push 1?
- The Major scale is still the default one.
- When you open the scale menu in a fresh project the Major scale is selected but shown in the second line of the display instead of the first line. On the first line is just a "----------" entry as a separator and a reminder that there are also selectable custom scales. Of course, if there are now custom scales there is no need for that separator.
- From there you can go up to select one of the custom scales or down to select one of the built-in scales.

How would it look like on Push 2?
I don't have the Push 2 and don't know how exactly it looks like right now. But of course, it should be similar, just visually more appealing.

torbenscharling
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Feb 08, 2018 9:29 am

Re: Custom scales for Push and scales at all for the note editor

Post by torbenscharling » Wed Jul 31, 2019 9:02 pm

BUMP !

KFIR DARSHANI
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:45 am

Re: Custom scales for Push and scales at all for the note editor

Post by KFIR DARSHANI » Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:47 am

There are alot of feature requests i have for ableton, Huge features and small stuff like that that can make your workflow better.
that one is a Obvious!

torbenscharling
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Feb 08, 2018 9:29 am

Re: Custom scales for Push and scales at all for the note editor

Post by torbenscharling » Mon Dec 21, 2020 5:53 am

Bump since now Ableton just ruined it in 11 latest beta Push 2 doesn't work unless you use the factory pusbase -_-

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