Questions & Answers

Is there a way to add custom scales in piano roll? [Completed 7.0]

+208 votes
5,586 views
asked Dec 27, 2017 in Completed Feature Requests by williamlinghuang (290 points)
recategorized Oct 12 by Lukas Ruschitzka
I really hope there are more scales in the bank or if I can add my own scales once, then the software automatically does it for all tonic notes.

Also, is it possible to make the scale highlight all the way down the grid? It's hard to line up every single time. Thanks!

18 Answers

0 votes
answered Oct 12 by Lukas Ruschitzka (261,030 points)
 
Best answer
Completed in 7.0
+28 votes
answered Jan 17, 2018 by AlexTinsley (925,230 points)

Thank you for the feature request. 

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+23 votes
answered Apr 2, 2018 by danielbayer (3,050 points)
This would be so nice. Please either integrate more scales and also their modes or define a file format for loading our own scales!
+24 votes
answered Jul 30, 2018 by alexbingerd (480 points)
The same problem, I want to add lydian and locrian scale. Hope that developers will add some new feature for custom scales
+14 votes
answered Dec 11, 2019 by anubhavukil (8,520 points)
Please add more scales. Like, the Native Instruments Scales.

We should be able to add custom scales.
+10 votes
answered Jun 22, 2020 by tonybenevento (350 points)
Yes please add custom scales, I rarely stay in the tried and true. Harmonic/Melodic and mixed Major/Minor and lydian would be great starts!
+12 votes
answered Jun 24, 2020 by fschmidt (6,220 points)

The selection of scales is indeed not very consistent

Natural Minor ( ≙ Aolian), Dorian, Phrygian & Mixolydian are all just permutations of the major scale!

So either you include all permutations 

- meaning also: lydian, lokrian -

or none of the permutations.

Example: If you need D-Dorian, you can as well just set the scale to C-Major.
That's also the workaround if you need let's say the Lydian scale.
If you need F-Lydian, set the scale to C-Major.

As mentioned: Letting users create their own scales with custom labels
would be the easiest and best solution in my opinion as no scale could ever be missing! :D

+9 votes
answered Jul 16, 2020 by tpntrnka (500 points)
Color coded notes in the editor would be nice too. As in many other DAWs 4 colours for: 1. Note in scale and chord, 2. note only in scale, 3. note only in chord, 4. note out of scale and chord.
+7 votes
answered Aug 10, 2020 by robertgray3 (42,810 points)
Yup, would be very useful.
+7 votes
answered Oct 24, 2020 by gauer (650 points)
edited Oct 24, 2020 by gauer

Yes please, honestly I will be happy even if presonus adds just the two missing modes lydian and locrian .

Honestly I just can´t understand they did not add those two... "Hey lets give them 5 of the 7 modes", I mean, why? Wasn´t  anyone present at this moment to say "Man, if you gonna add modes, add all of them..."

Studio One in version 5 already, this has been requested over and over since version 2 or 3 I think, how hard is it exactly to write a few lines of code that gonna take like less than one minute to add those modes?

+9 votes
answered Dec 5, 2020 by Scoox (17,270 points)

+1 this. It would also be useful if we could "fold" the keyboard to only show the allowed notes. There are some good ideas on this other FR:

Add "guided", "mapped" and "easy" modes when Scale option is checked in the piano roll editor

I find the small blue "allowed note" indicators on the piano roll keys to be very hard to see and once you are looking at the notes area in the piano roll your eyes will be darting left and right to compare the vertical position of a note and whether it matches the vertical position of an indicator. Instead, either keyboard folding or highlighted note lanes (all the way across the piano roll) would be better solutions.

One side-effect of keyboard folding is that you can use it to create custom scales. You just draw a bunch of notes in the piano roll and mute them, then fold the keyboard. This causes the piano roll to only show those notes.

+6 votes
answered Dec 24, 2020 by stevenhernandez4 (1,000 points)
Yes, endless scales, please. Or a custom scale editor of some sort!
+7 votes
answered Jan 6, 2021 by edwincampos1 (510 points)
edited Jan 6, 2021 by edwincampos1
I couldn’t have expressed my sentiments any better than Gauer did a few months back.  It’s been years already S1 devs!  It only takes 1 of you to add the last couple of modal modes that are missing, and it would only take the length of a single day.  How can you have your modal modes incomplete, when even freebie daws out there have this feature complete?  You are a top of the line developer!  It just makes no sense that you would only throw a few modal modes at us, as if the concept of them are a novelty.  Many of us have trusted in your product over the other big name daws for years now.  Don’t let something like this build up into a future deterrence.

With that said, keep up the good work.  You guys are still the best gig in town.  Please keep it that way.  :)
+4 votes
answered Apr 7, 2021 by ozrichardson (810 points)

For reasons like this.  Reaper is still my fave DAW, even without a chord track.

S1, while has follow modes for the Chord Track, is also missing other features to bring this baby home (like a MIDI strum tool, and diatonic note duplication).

 

+3 votes
answered Feb 22, 2022 by Mulahbby (620 points)
Still a much needed feature
+3 votes
answered Jul 27, 2022 by clmentmarion (1,760 points)
Indeed adding, editing, saving custom scales would be lovely!
+2 votes
answered Oct 15, 2022 by dylangadwa (950 points)
+1 for additional/custom scales. I knew we just got a bunch of new features in v6 but really, really hoping that new/custom scales show up in the next point release.
+2 votes
answered Aug 12, 2023 by progtronic (250 points)
It's weird, that in its (roughly) 14 years of existence... S1 still doesn't have a custom scales function.

I mean, almost everything you need to quickly create one, is already there in the UI.

The addition of a tiny "CS" (create scale) button, to the left of the existing tiny "Scale" keyboard UI... could enable the input of a custom scale by clicking it into the already existing keyboard graphic, with a mouse... or by tapping it in with a midi device.

Workflow would be something like:

-user clicks 'CS' button (button flashes red, to indicate it's waiting for input), existing keyboard UI clears itself of any blue scale marks

-user clicks in each custom scale note onto keyboard graphic (with an octave wrap-around if entered through midi), lighting each selected key up with a blue scale mark indicator. Selecting an already selected (blue lit) key, would toggle it back off. The inclusion of a 'clear' button that pops up to the right of the flashing red 'CS' button wouldn't hurt (for a quick re-do)

-when done... user clicks flashing red 'CS' button again (turning it to a flashing green), which brings up a "Save Custom Scale?" window, in which the user can either cancel, or add a scale name and save to a folder somewhere. If scale is saved... it's added to the scale pull-down selection menu, under a 'Custom Scales' separator at the bottom of the default list
...