Build a Major Scale

You will build an eight-note major scale — Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do — where every pitch is an exact fraction of the BaseNote's frequency.

Prerequisites: the app running, and a skim of Core Concepts.

The ratios

Degree	Name	Ratio	Expression
1	Do	1/1	base.f
2	Re	9/8	base.f * (9/8)
3	Mi	5/4	base.f * (5/4)
4	Fa	4/3	base.f * (4/3)
5	Sol	3/2	base.f * (3/2)
6	La	5/3	base.f * (5/3)
7	Ti	15/8	base.f * (15/8)
8	Do	2/1	base.f * 2

Note that fractions are parenthesised and whole numbers are not. (9/8) is a fraction literal; 2 is a plain number.

Step 1: Clear the workspace

The app opens with a 169-note demo composition. Get rid of it.

1. Click the BaseNote — the orange circle at the far left.
2. The note widget opens, titled BaseNote Variables.
3. Scroll to the bottom, to the DELETE ALL NOTES section.
4. Click Clean Slate, then Yes, Clean Slate.

WARNING

The dialog says "This action cannot be undone." It is wrong — Clean Slate is captured in the undo history and Ctrl+Z brings the composition back.

Clean Slate closes the note widget and clears the selection. The BaseNote keeps its defaults: 263 Hz, 100 BPM, 4 beats per measure. Leave them alone — the scale is built from ratios, so the starting pitch does not matter.

Step 2: Create Do

1. Click the BaseNote again to reopen its widget.
2. Scroll to the ADD NOTE / SILENCE section.
3. Leave the kind set to Note.
4. The three fields are already filled in for you:
   • Frequency: base.f
   • Duration: beat(base)
   • Start Time: base.t
5. Click Create.

INFO

On the BaseNote the button reads Create, not "Create Note", and there is no At Start / At End choice — a note added from the BaseNote always starts at base.t.

The new note appears, gets selected, and the widget re-opens on it as Note [1] Variables. That is your Do, at 1/1.

Step 3: Create Re

Now you are working from a normal note, and the widget looks different.

1. With Note 1 selected, scroll to ADD NOTE / SILENCE.
2. Leave the kind on Note and the position on At End — this is the default, and it is what you want for a scale. Each note starts where the previous one stops.
3. The fields prefill from Note 1:
   • Frequency: [1].f ← you will replace this
   • Duration: beat(base) ← leave it
   • Start Time: [1].t + [1].d ← leave it; this is what "At End" means
4. Replace the Frequency field with:

base.f * (9/8)

5. Click Create Note.

TIP

The Evaluated: line above each field updates as you type. It prints Invalid if the expression does not parse — this live preview is the one place in the widget that does not wait for a Save.

Steps 4–9: the rest of the scale

Repeat Step 3 six more times. Each time: select the note you just made, keep At End, overwrite the Frequency field, click Create Note.

Create	Select first	Frequency field
Mi (Note 3)	Note 2	base.f * (5/4)
Fa (Note 4)	Note 3	base.f * (4/3)
Sol (Note 5)	Note 4	base.f * (3/2)
La (Note 6)	Note 5	base.f * (5/3)
Ti (Note 7)	Note 6	base.f * (15/8)
Do (Note 8)	Note 7	base.f * 2

Every note anchors its pitch to the BaseNote and its timing to the note before it. That split is deliberate, and Step 11 shows why it matters.

Legacy JavaScript syntax

Older modules store expressions as method chains. The widget decompiles them to DSL for display, so you will not need to type this — but you may see it in a hand-edited file.

module.baseNote.getVariable('frequency').mul(new Fraction(9, 8))

Step 10: Listen

Press Play in the top bar. You should hear eight notes climbing, and the last should sound like the first an octave higher.

Select each note in turn and read the Evaluated: line on its frequency row. At the default 263 Hz base:

Note	Raw	Evaluated
1	base.f	263
2	base.f * (9/8)	2367/8
5	base.f * (3/2)	789/2
8	base.f * 2	526

The values are exact fractions, not decimals. Nothing here is rounded.

Step 11: Transpose the whole scale at once

This is the point of the exercise.

1. Click the BaseNote.
2. On the frequency row, change the Raw: field to 330.
3. Click Save.

Every note in the scale moves. You wrote the pitches as ratios of base.f, so they are still a major scale — just a higher one. Nothing was recalculated by hand.

Change it back to 263 when you are done.

The eight-drag alternative

Every interval in the table above already ships as a module. You do not have to type them.

1. In the module bar, expand Intervals (46 modules).
2. Set the drop mode to End — click the ⇥ button next to Undo/Redo in the module bar's toolbar. This makes each dropped module land at the end of the note you drop it on, which is what chains a scale together.
3. Drag Major 2nd (9/8) onto your Do note. Drag Just major 3rd (5/4) onto the note that appears. Keep going: Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, Just major 6th, Just major 7th, Octave.

Each interval module is a single note whose frequency is (N/D) * base.f — dropping it onto a note re-anchors it to that note, so you get the interval above whatever you dropped on.

TIP

Click the magnifier in the library toolbar to search. It matches on name, ratio, family and tags, so typing 3/2 or fifth both find the Perfect 5th.

Saving your scale

Two ways, and the second is usually better.

Into the library. Shift-drag a marquee across all eight notes (or shift-click them one by one). The group widget appears. Click Copy to Modules. Your scale lands in the library's Custom section as Selection (8 notes), and it survives a reload. You can now drag it onto any note.

To a file. Open the + menu in the top bar and click Save Module. The download is always named module.json — rename it yourself, to something like major-scale-just.json.

Exercises

1. Make it a minor scale

Change three notes:

Note	From	To
Mi (3)	base.f * (5/4)	base.f * (6/5)
La (6)	base.f * (5/3)	base.f * (8/5)
Ti (7)	base.f * (15/8)	base.f * (9/5)

2. Slow it down

Select a note, find the duration row, and click the half note icon. The Raw field fills with beat(base) * 2 — then click Save. The icon buttons write the expression for you; they do not commit it.

3. Hear the difference against 12-TET

Drag the 12-TET module from the library's Scale Systems section onto the BaseNote. Play both. The just major third (5/4, 386¢) is noticeably flatter and calmer than the 12-TET one (2^(4/12), 400¢).

What you learned

• Major-scale degrees as exact ratios of a single reference pitch.
• At End chains notes in time; the frequency stays anchored to the BaseNote.
• Changing the BaseNote transposes everything that references it.
• The Intervals library already contains every ratio you typed.

Next

• Create a Major Triad — the same ratios, sounding together
• Add Rhythm — durations, dots and silences
• Pure Ratios — why these fractions and not others