Any plans for more scales in the scale plug-in?

Pyramid
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i think has been a common request.

pentatonic minor and major seem like glaring omissions to me.

or any plans for custom scales so we can do it ourselves?

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I am confused. This device appears invincible, perfect sequencer. But we cannot set custom scales? Many scales in the diverse world (I am wanting to use several Japanese pentatonic scales). I never expect to find them in any ‘catalogue’ of scales as part of hardware. But most (esp. modern) sequencers include ability to customize scales (simply include/omit notes from 12 point “Western” scale). Even Beatstep Pro, the “poor man’s Pyramid”. We cannot customize scale in Pyramid?

Thank you, it appears as a beautiful product. Scott

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i fully agree, custom scales as well as arps are much needed

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Have to agree with this. Being able to load in custom scales would be excellent!

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I would love to be able to import custom scales / create my own.

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Hot topic right from the start for me as well!
Would be supereasy then ie. to lock an ARP FX to an Custom Drum Synth Scale FX, that locks the notes for your drum synth… would be fun.

I mean, you can also use the HARM FX for this, but it’s limited to 4 add. notes and your Instrument defintions are not shown.

But!
Custom scales would also end the requests to the Squarp Team to adding more Scale types, because everyone could add their own :slight_smile:

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If you are happy to just have a custom scale that you play live or play and record then you can use the custom chords feature and just assign a single note to a smart pad.

Obviously you can’t access this custom scale in the Scale FX but it’s useful enough for recording/jamming with a specific set of notes.

I’ve never tried it, but given that you can route MIDI in to trigger smart pads rather than notes, if you looped MIDI out from a given track back in via Pyramidi IN set to trigger smart pads (via a midi cable) I guess you could use this like the scale FX? There’s a ‘white notes only’ smartpad trigger option so I guess if you put a scale FX set to C major on the outgoing track you can bang away at random and it will only ever trigger notes in your custom scale.

Anyone wanna try this?

jim

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Love the scales area :slight_smile:

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This was a pretty clever idea, Jim. I don’t know why I waited over a year to give it a try, but I just did and it basically works. But, the fatal problem is that the custom smartpads feature does not operate like a scale , in the sense that a scale is a pattern that repeats across octaves. If you send C Major scale MIDI into the Pyramid in Custom Smartpads Live mode, and with “White Pads Only” as the destination for incoming MIDI, you will only ever get the 8 different notes (each set to whatever octave you chose for it) that you’ve locked to the 8 smart pads. You will not get those same notes in higher or lower octaves. So, if you mapped the first smart pad to Bb2, you will always get a Bb2 regardless of whether you send the Pyramid a C2 or a C4.

I’m not sure if this is a shortcoming of the Custom Smartpads implementation (which, if Squarp anticipated this use case, they might have been able to save themselves some grief from feature requests about more scales to add to the Scale FX), but I guess at this point we’ve got what we’ve got and shouldn’t expect any further development of the Pyramid :frowning:

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Ach. Shame about the octaves.

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Any advance on this?

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couldn’t agree more. I’ve no use for the scale fx without the ability to create custom scales.

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in fact, the scale and arpeggiator functions of nearly all of my hardware synths are much deeper than that of this dedicated sequencer. I prefer to do those things from the master brain rather than within synth patches so as to keep everything more organized. Have to say, it’s a bit frustrating that this powerful sequencer can’t do custom arps and scales.

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ideally definition files for scales then we can create the traditional and share custom scales

same with custom smartpads, definition files for custom chords to go with custom scales

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Yeah, I really wish that custom scales could have been implemented. One of the oldest and most common feature requests all the way back to 2016.

Having owned a Pyramid since 2016, I wish it had been improved in three ways throughout its lifecycle:

(1) Custom scales
(2) Ability for a track’s MIDI FX automation lane to have a different # of steps than the track’s note lane
(3) Buttons instead of pads (they’re not velocity-sensitive, so what’s the point? LED illumination? They’re just more effort to use than buttons.)

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There are great suggestions. I actually prefer the pads but my wife is often in the house and the constant click clacking on my Alpha Base and Octatrack are driving her bananas. lol

+1 for Custom Scales. This is a great start point for a whole song as it defines the mood and builds the chords and melodies and basslines. It would be cool to be able to share custom scale files with eachother as well like the definition files.

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That’s funny, because the Pyramid is my loudest piece of hardware - those encoders really make their presence known when you press them :wink:

Anyway, custom scales. I hope the dream can stay alive.

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Wait, so you really cant set custom scales on this? I was about to pull the trigger and get one, but this is a dealbreaker. Why on earth would this feature not have been implemented yet?!

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So I went ahead and got the pyramid and going through the instructions for live mode it turns out you can set up a custom scale with the custom smartpad type. Great! Why no one mentioned this I dont know, so I thought I would add it here!

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I think because that means you only have one octave to play with.