Hmmm, I find this a bit of a stretch... Scale highlighting is just a very handy feature especially when combining with a proper working "Snap to scale" or at least "Fold to Scale"... Even if I know that much about music theory that I can calculate for myself which keys belong to the more comon scales this doesn´t mean I always have in mind which keys are included in i.e. Gb minor and it´s simply a timesaver if I can press a button and have the correct keys highlighted and in best case the notes are snapping to that... I find this especially helpfull when having to shift around some chords in Pitch... with snapping to scale you have to manually correct them all the time... Snap to scale which keeps the distance of the chord notes correct is a huge huge help here... Same for creating harmonies for an existing lead or arpeggio... it´s a lot of work in the PR editor when having to correct the notes out key manually... So, I find it a pitty that it´s still not included into Bitwig and it´s a major showstopper for me...
wow so helpful. you opened my eyes here. first time i see someone discussing this topic so clearly taking into account how a lot of people make music nowadays. would love if you covered more advanced music theory with this same approach.
18:38 sixths, in this case :-) All you say in this video very much needed to be said (and repeated often). Music is not notes but relationships between the notes. And maybe it's possible to find and learn those relationships by random trial and error, but getting a basic familiarity with intervals and modes makes it so much easier, and arranges everything in a logical order. Ultimately it's probably as complex as mathematics, but just like with math, it's better to know basic arithmetic than nothing at all, even if you never intend to learn differential calculus (which I, for the record, did not!). Nonetheless, even though I've learned a fair bit of music theory, I'd welcome scale highlighting in Bitwig, because why not? It can actually help see the modes. At 16:50 you have E Phrygian on screen, and anyone who's unfamiliar with the Phrygian mode can instantly see what's special about it: the minor second - not present in a major or a minor scale. That note (in relation to the root) is what makes Phrygian sound awesome and very different. Scale highlighting could help see these special spice notes, which are different for each mode. It could of course be smarter than just coloring the keys, a range of colors could be used to show the root, the third, the fifth etc. I really think it could be a useful educational tool. And for those who don't technically need it, it would still help work faster and avoid mistakes, perhaps. Visual indicators are a good thing in software, generally :-)
I disagree that you never start by picking a scale and then write a melody in it. I think a lot of film composers use them as a tool to get a starting point, because they know the mood they are aiming for (Like: Mmmh, "soothing and mysterious outer space theme"? Ok, let's try Lydian dominant, that should be a safe starting point. Previous scene was in C minor, it was quite dark and we want an uplifting effect? Okay, then let's go up a major third and thus go for E lydian dominant). You know, whatever enables you not to start from a blank page.
Music theory newbie here: Maybe it was just because you used the piano roll rather than traditional notes of looking at a horizontal keyboard, but just so you know, your video made a whole bunch of stuff click with me that I was struggling with before.
Are there any DAWs where the piano roll adapts to the scale/temperament chosen? Like how many notes per octave? It seems like such an obvious core feature for a tool intended as a MIDI editor. I know with most DAWs it's "technically possible" through hacks, but then everything is manual and the usual editing features become useless.
@@JohnSmith-pn2vl - That can be useful, but not what I am talking about. For example, there are notes on a piano roll, and an obvious editing feature might be to move or double them an octave up. That would depend upon how many notes there are per octave. Unless the piano roll adapts to the temperament being used, all of those normal editing features become useless. Moving to where they would be for a 12-tone scale instead of, say, 31.
Learning to play an instrument at a capable level (especially piano and guitar) truly does make scale highlighters obsolete. If you learn guitar, it helps to know piano a bit first AND to memorize the notes on the fretboard. However, after learning these instruments in this way, It's actually quite liberating. No, you don't have to be a virtuoso (I'm certainly not) to grasp the most important components of music theory. Your most important audio equipment is still your brain and your hands. 💡 As much as Bitwig gets criticized by some of the users or DAW-seekers as being "a plug-in with a DAW attached" (paraphrased), I would sooner have another pile of potentially redundant modular synth parts before someone spends the time/resources to create a scale-highlighter (in spite of the fact that I have other wishlists). However, I'm not Bitwig team, and I also won't stop using Bitwig because of one feature that I don't use. If it helps some people, more power to them, but even flash cards with note-names-to-scales can help the... cough... "scales fall off the eyes". 🥁 12:43 You mentioned a pet-scale of mine: Mixolydian flat-6. I remember hearing the note sequences for the Mixolydian-flat-6 mode a while ago, but never being told what the scale was (I simply enjoyed the music that I was being influenced by). I even created an amateur-sounding orchestral piece that used that mode extensively in the top lines. However, *I had no idea that it was Mixo-b6* until a few years ago. I felt like I already knew a friend, and someone else FINALLY told me the name of that friend. Now I even heard that friend when I listen to the original *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan* filmscore by James Horner, or the main theme of the old PC-DOS game: *Ascendancy.* There's a sense of exotic wonderment in that scale -- I know there are several other places that I've heard it in sci-fi film scores where ships, gateways/wormholes, and spectacular phenomena are to be perceived as bedazzling or majestic. To anyone that wants to toy with the scale with easily, it can be unlocked with only one accidental via the key of G (there really isn't a way to play the scale without accidentals). Play all the white keys on the piano with G as the starter, *but* have the D become D#. Then you can vamp between G-major and C-minor and you'll be in basic Mixo-flat-6 land. Unfortunately, this scale is not as malleable as the basic major/minor modes, but it is a great ingredient to add to your spice rack.
Excellent, straight to the point. We need more videos of this type. Do you have a recommendation for a book or a course that explains the theories and harmonies well? I'm really having trouble finding good resources for learning even though there seem to be a lot of them. They are more or less like math books, this is your formula, enjoy.
There's probably enough on youtube to last a lifetime. If I may make a suggestion, Implied Music is my favorite, esp. the recent series called "Where to Begin", the guy is a music teacher I wish I had. For more advanced stuff, MusicTheoryForGuitar is really good (even if you don't play the guitar, the theory explained is instantly put into practice), and that channel has been running for ages.
I only realized this this year sadly. But yeah thanks for making this video I think more people should know about this for sure. Edit: Actually.. I just realized that I might actually disagree. Sure, it's cool to experiment and end up in a weird or a cool scale like you mentioned Hans Zimmer does or whoever, but I think if you've heard some songs and were able to find out which scales those songs used you kind of know what scale to use for the kind of vibe that you might want. And for me personally, I seem to be able to come up with something good if I lock myself in a certain scale, even if I don't end up making something that's in that scale, whereas without it, I have to sit there for an hour when making a harmony even though I know about the basic intervals.
A fourth is perfect as is a fifth an octave and a unison. What you show as a perfect unison is, in fact, a perfect octave. I believe a perfect melodic unison would be playing the same C note right after itself. That's a C note in the exact same register. There is also a harmonic unison where two different instruments would play the same note in the same register at the same time.
@3:15 nice example of something which doesn't happen in most other DAWs: you accidentally pull the timerange instead of the noterange in Bitwig too often :D I wonder how that behavior survived till v5.
blah blah blah just pick D# minor already (lol I'm just teasing) Modes I picked up pretty easy, but I remember when I learned the relationship between a major scale and the minor hiding within it. That's the thing that blew my mind lol.
You dont touch scales before creating chord progression . Because thats matter . it will also making confuse for most newcomer and lost the opportunities to create unique blend to put unusual scales into standard chord progressions
😊 like like like
Hmmm, I find this a bit of a stretch... Scale highlighting is just a very handy feature especially when combining with a proper working "Snap to scale" or at least "Fold to Scale"...
Even if I know that much about music theory that I can calculate for myself which keys belong to the more comon scales this doesn´t mean I always have in mind which keys are included in i.e. Gb minor and it´s simply a timesaver if I can press a button and have the correct keys highlighted and in best case the notes are snapping to that...
I find this especially helpfull when having to shift around some chords in Pitch... with snapping to scale you have to manually correct them all the time... Snap to scale which keeps the distance of the chord notes correct is a huge huge help here... Same for creating harmonies for an existing lead or arpeggio... it´s a lot of work in the PR editor when having to correct the notes out key manually...
So, I find it a pitty that it´s still not included into Bitwig and it´s a major showstopper for me...
To be fair, Ableton Live also shows the root note of the scale... thus it gives the user a visual reference to the tonal center.
Oh my God, you have me dying here "I don't mean to be racists...but that's just the color of the keys" 😂😂
I dont wanna be canceled 🔥
@@PolarityMusic note nazi.
wow so helpful. you opened my eyes here. first time i see someone discussing this topic so clearly taking into account how a lot of people make music nowadays. would love if you covered more advanced music theory with this same approach.
18:38 sixths, in this case :-)
All you say in this video very much needed to be said (and repeated often). Music is not notes but relationships between the notes. And maybe it's possible to find and learn those relationships by random trial and error, but getting a basic familiarity with intervals and modes makes it so much easier, and arranges everything in a logical order. Ultimately it's probably as complex as mathematics, but just like with math, it's better to know basic arithmetic than nothing at all, even if you never intend to learn differential calculus (which I, for the record, did not!).
Nonetheless, even though I've learned a fair bit of music theory, I'd welcome scale highlighting in Bitwig, because why not? It can actually help see the modes. At 16:50 you have E Phrygian on screen, and anyone who's unfamiliar with the Phrygian mode can instantly see what's special about it: the minor second - not present in a major or a minor scale. That note (in relation to the root) is what makes Phrygian sound awesome and very different. Scale highlighting could help see these special spice notes, which are different for each mode. It could of course be smarter than just coloring the keys, a range of colors could be used to show the root, the third, the fifth etc. I really think it could be a useful educational tool. And for those who don't technically need it, it would still help work faster and avoid mistakes, perhaps. Visual indicators are a good thing in software, generally :-)
yes, should have been the G
When bitwig does add scale highlighting, they should add a colour scale which hints at the tones which hint at the actual scale selected.
I like using the pitch class mode in Bitwig to help me know what notes will sound good together.
I disagree that you never start by picking a scale and then write a melody in it. I think a lot of film composers use them as a tool to get a starting point, because they know the mood they are aiming for (Like: Mmmh, "soothing and mysterious outer space theme"? Ok, let's try Lydian dominant, that should be a safe starting point. Previous scene was in C minor, it was quite dark and we want an uplifting effect? Okay, then let's go up a major third and thus go for E lydian dominant). You know, whatever enables you not to start from a blank page.
wow
Music theory newbie here: Maybe it was just because you used the piano roll rather than traditional notes of looking at a horizontal keyboard, but just so you know, your video made a whole bunch of stuff click with me that I was struggling with before.
Oh wow! I have been hung up on progressing with music theory and this provides an excellent guide towards my next steps of becoming fluent. Thank you!
Hi Polarity , i want to ask you if there is like a channel rack in bitwig >? to place a bunch of synths together
Instrument Layer & Instrument selector. Quick: select a instrument and use ctrl + g
Great !! many thanks man , big ups from Mexico @@PolarityMusic
Are there any DAWs where the piano roll adapts to the scale/temperament chosen? Like how many notes per octave? It seems like such an obvious core feature for a tool intended as a MIDI editor. I know with most DAWs it's "technically possible" through hacks, but then everything is manual and the usual editing features become useless.
in ableton you can show only the chosen scale notes if you mean that
@@JohnSmith-pn2vl - That can be useful, but not what I am talking about.
For example, there are notes on a piano roll, and an obvious editing feature might be to move or double them an octave up. That would depend upon how many notes there are per octave. Unless the piano roll adapts to the temperament being used, all of those normal editing features become useless. Moving to where they would be for a 12-tone scale instead of, say, 31.
liked! I didn't know about the pitch color families in the piano roll. That's good info. Well the whole video was good.
Excellent video! Also for stress testing a de-esser.
Learning to play an instrument at a capable level (especially piano and guitar) truly does make scale highlighters obsolete. If you learn guitar, it helps to know piano a bit first AND to memorize the notes on the fretboard. However, after learning these instruments in this way, It's actually quite liberating. No, you don't have to be a virtuoso (I'm certainly not) to grasp the most important components of music theory. Your most important audio equipment is still your brain and your hands. 💡
As much as Bitwig gets criticized by some of the users or DAW-seekers as being "a plug-in with a DAW attached" (paraphrased), I would sooner have another pile of potentially redundant modular synth parts before someone spends the time/resources to create a scale-highlighter (in spite of the fact that I have other wishlists). However, I'm not Bitwig team, and I also won't stop using Bitwig because of one feature that I don't use. If it helps some people, more power to them, but even flash cards with note-names-to-scales can help the... cough... "scales fall off the eyes". 🥁
12:43 You mentioned a pet-scale of mine: Mixolydian flat-6. I remember hearing the note sequences for the Mixolydian-flat-6 mode a while ago, but never being told what the scale was (I simply enjoyed the music that I was being influenced by). I even created an amateur-sounding orchestral piece that used that mode extensively in the top lines. However, *I had no idea that it was Mixo-b6* until a few years ago. I felt like I already knew a friend, and someone else FINALLY told me the name of that friend. Now I even heard that friend when I listen to the original *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan* filmscore by James Horner, or the main theme of the old PC-DOS game: *Ascendancy.* There's a sense of exotic wonderment in that scale -- I know there are several other places that I've heard it in sci-fi film scores where ships, gateways/wormholes, and spectacular phenomena are to be perceived as bedazzling or majestic.
To anyone that wants to toy with the scale with easily, it can be unlocked with only one accidental via the key of G (there really isn't a way to play the scale without accidentals). Play all the white keys on the piano with G as the starter, *but* have the D become D#. Then you can vamp between G-major and C-minor and you'll be in basic Mixo-flat-6 land. Unfortunately, this scale is not as malleable as the basic major/minor modes, but it is a great ingredient to add to your spice rack.
Excellent, straight to the point. We need more videos of this type. Do you have a recommendation for a book or a course that explains the theories and harmonies well? I'm really having trouble finding good resources for learning even though there seem to be a lot of them. They are more or less like math books, this is your formula, enjoy.
There's probably enough on youtube to last a lifetime. If I may make a suggestion, Implied Music is my favorite, esp. the recent series called "Where to Begin", the guy is a music teacher I wish I had. For more advanced stuff, MusicTheoryForGuitar is really good (even if you don't play the guitar, the theory explained is instantly put into practice), and that channel has been running for ages.
I watched a little bit of every channel you recommended, and they seem great. That's what I like and what I'm looking for. Thank you.
Very true...I play mostly white keys and play major, minor, and the modes.
eine piano roll scale Funktion wie in Studio One 6.2 wäre schon sehr hilfreich - außerdem vermisse ich ara für Melodyne
It would be cool to upload our own scales into the key filter
this must be one of the, if not the absolutely, - best explanations of music theory ive ever heard ;)
🤝
I only realized this this year sadly. But yeah thanks for making this video I think more people should know about this for sure.
Edit: Actually.. I just realized that I might actually disagree. Sure, it's cool to experiment and end up in a weird or a cool scale like you mentioned Hans Zimmer does or whoever, but I think if you've heard some songs and were able to find out which scales those songs used you kind of know what scale to use for the kind of vibe that you might want. And for me personally, I seem to be able to come up with something good if I lock myself in a certain scale, even if I don't end up making something that's in that scale, whereas without it, I have to sit there for an hour when making a harmony even though I know about the basic intervals.
A fourth is perfect as is a fifth an octave and a unison. What you show as a perfect unison is, in fact, a perfect octave. I believe a perfect melodic unison would be playing the same C note right after itself. That's a C note in the exact same register. There is also a harmonic unison where two different instruments would play the same note in the same register at the same time.
yes youre right, perfect unison is the same key/freq. i showed a perfect octave! thx
@3:15 nice example of something which doesn't happen in most other DAWs: you accidentally pull the timerange instead of the noterange in Bitwig too often :D I wonder how that behavior survived till v5.
Tolles Video! Mal wirklich gut erklärt, dass man es versteht (für mich) 😀😀😀
blah blah blah just pick D# minor already (lol I'm just teasing)
Modes I picked up pretty easy, but I remember when I learned the relationship between a major scale and the minor hiding within it. That's the thing that blew my mind lol.
it still mind blowing how everything is connected, easy logical and still so complex and hard to master in practice
You dont touch scales before creating chord progression . Because thats matter . it will also making confuse for most newcomer and lost the opportunities to create unique blend to put unusual scales into standard chord progressions
Uh, I got a alot to think about now, thanks!
Super helpful
yea, if you understand music theory this is how it is for you but MOST users have clue about music theory, just very basic knowledge.
👍
Thanks for sharing ;)
Nice! Thanks :)
SCALE HIGHLIARS
❤❤❤
😀😄😁😆😅🤣😂
Actually you were playing A minor instead of C major 17:30
nICE ONE :)
obviously racist ....not fooling anyone 🤣🤣
awesome
bitwig interaction algorithm sub like like major 5th high five good sir 👍👍