Simple hand edited scales (.scl)

[a773]

Someone on instagram suggested, that it might be useful to share my baby findings related to .scl files, so here goes (warning: it’s very simple)…

I wanted to add a few scales to the er-301 quantizer, had a look at http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/scl_format.html and found it really simple.

An example (saved in /scales in a text file with the name “Major triad.scl”):

! major chord, by a773
major chord
3
400.0
700.0
2/1

Explanation: lines starting with ! is comments
The first non-comment line (“major chord” in this case) is a name/description (not used by er-301 it seems, it shows up under it’s file name without extension)
The next line (3 in this case) is number of notes in scale
Then follows three lines with tunings (in cents) of each of the three notes, so in this case 400 (major third) and 700 (perfect fifth) and 2/1 (which is short for octave).

Sorry if this is all to obvious, and has been covered to death, posting in the hope it might be helpful to someone…

[hyena]

Scala File Support

I’m following since I don’t know much about it. I downloaded that gigantic scales collection that apparently takes 50 minutes to load into the ER-301, and I’m somewhat puzzled at how to figure out what these file names mean and how useful they are, in order to make a sensible choice. Sometimes it’s obvious, like chin_pipa.scl should a Chinese Pipa tuning, but cont_frac1.scl for example and a few thousands more like this don’t mean anything to me Maybe it’s actually easier to just ma…

post number 3 of that thread

[bc3]

thank you for taking the time to explain for those of us that are challenged with the concept (i’m the one who asked on instagram ) super helpful and I understand the procedure clearly now.

[a773]

Ok, sort for not finding that thread. Feel free to delete this thread if someone feels it’s confusing with two threads (mine is superfluous).

[a773]

Great, good to know, so it wasn’t all in vain😏

[hyena]

No worries, maybe they can be merged for the sake of not having duplicate threads anyway scala support is really really great!only advice: dont put all the .scl files from the scala website on the 301 or else it will take forever loading the unit (about 50 minutes