Overview - Seeds etc - User guide - Musical note intervals - Scales - Midi in - Other pages
Seeds , The notes played , Scales, modes and arpeggios , Playing along , Make new seed , Seeds that go below the start note , Fractal rhythms , New Seed, scale and arpeggio tick boxes , New arpeggios , New scales , Using the mouse with the New Scale / Arp. / Seed windows
Click the Play button to hear a fractal tune.
Let's try the first seed on the musical seed drop list:
0 1 2 0
This seed starts with 0 . So the first seed in the tune begins with the 1st note of the mode or arpeggio ( up 0 from it).
Next you hear the 2nd note of the mode or arpeggio ( up 1 from 1st note), 3rd (up 2) , then 1st note again (up 0) .
As the melody progresses, you hear the seed in other positions in the mode. Next time you hear the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, then 2nd note of the mode. Then the 3nd, 4th, 5th and 3rd notes. Then back to 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 1st.
Notice that these start notes for the seeds also follow the same pattern : first seed starts at 1st note (up 0) , next one starts at 2nd note (whole seed shifted up 1 ), next at 3rd (up 2) , then back to 1st note again.
The entire pattern made so far can now be repeated in the same way, first in it's root position, then shifted up 1 , then up 2 , then back to the start position.
The melody is made by repeatedly building up to more and more complexity in this way.
The seed can have negative numbers, such as 0 -1 2 . Here, -1 means one note down from the note that starts the seed..
When the seed starts with some other number, the first note played in the tune depends on the number of levels. You can find out which one by multiplying the number of levels by the first note of the seed. For instance, if the number of levels is 3, and the first note of the seed is 2, the first note played is note 6 in the arpeggio. If the number of levels is higher, say 11, then the first note played could be very high indeed for a seed that begins with 2.
You can play the same seed in any of the scale s.
To do this, select from the drop list of Scales .
The drop list below it shows the ratios, cents or other notation used to define the scale.
If you are a complete beginner to the idea of musical pitch intervals, you may like to read Some basic concepts .
A mode is a selection of notes from some other scale. You can call a mode a scale too.
For instance, in the western 12 tone system, you can think of all the black and white notes of the piano as making a single 12 tone scale. Then the major and minor scales are two of the modes of the 12 tone scale.
As an example , the major (or diatonic) mode has steps of 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 semitones. I.e. two large steps followed by a small one, then three more large ones, then a small one to end the scale.
Tick Sync modes , if you wish the selection of modes to change to show ones suitable for the scale you have selected.
You can then select appropriate modes for a scale from the Arpeggios or modes drop list.
The drop list below it shows the actual numbers for the modes.
Click Show steps (tick box below the Arpeggios or modes box) to show the steps of the mode, untick to show the postions of its notes relative to the note that starts the scale. The position of a note in a scale is called its degree in that scale.
As degrees, the diatonic mode is 0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12. So 0 means the first note of the scale; 2 means, 2 notes up from it; 4 means, 4 notes up, and so on.
For those who are completely new to the idea of alternate tunings and scales, here is a description of a few in the scales list. See Musical note intervals for some more details and links to web pages.
The 12 tone system that most modern pianos are tuned to has all semitones identical. It is called the 12 tone Equal Temperament . Other 12 tone systems, such as the historically accurate ones for Mozart's time, Bach's time or Medieval times (the mean-tone system) all have unequal semitones.
Click Show steps (this time, tick box below the Scales box) to show the steps of the scale, untick to show the ratios from the note that starts the scale.
Notice how the semitones are unequal for most of the twelve tone scales. Some may be shown in cents - a cent is a hundredth of an equal temperament semitone. If you want to show them all as cents, go to File | Number Options and tick Show cents .
As an example of another tuning of the major scale, the nineteen tone system has 19 equally spaced notes to an octave, and the major scale in this system has steps 3 3 2 3 3 3 2. This is the same pattern of large and small intervals as before, but the steps are more similar in size than in the twelve tone system.
The Javanese Slendro scale has five approximately equally spaced notes to an octave, and the Thai modes are for a scale with seven approximately equally spaced notes to an octave.
The modern Bohlen-Pierce scale repeats at a note between the first and second octaves (at an octave plus a fifth). It has thirteen notes, and there is a version with the 13 notes equally spaced.
The Arabic Pythagorean scale has 17 notes, and the Indian Shruti scale has 22.
There are many other scales included with FTS, and more than 2000 in the SCALA archive.
Lists of modes are included for the 12 tone scales, for the pelog gamelan scales, the Thai equal 7 tone, 15, 17, 19, 22 and 31 tone equal temperament scales, for the Arabic Pythagorean scale, the Indian Shruti scale, and the Bohlen-Pierce scale. These scales are labelled with an (M).
For other scales, the mode defaults to Follow Scale , and the list shows various combinations of 0, -1, 1, -2, 2, which can give interesting effects.
These modes (except for the first of the 12 tone lists) are from the file modename.html from the scales archive for the freeware SCALA program by Manuel Op de Coul. They are included with FTS with his permission.
You can make other modes lists in the same way .
You can also make your own arpeggios or modes by entering the note numbers into the Note numbers box (separated by spaces). Be as creative as you like. Your arpeggios needn't span a complete octave. They can start and end on any note of the scale, and include any notes in between in any order.
The arpeggios can even include negative note numbers, to go below the start note of the scale, or numbers that go above the top note of the scale. These take it into the next repeat of the scale in either direction.
For more ideas, choose a fractal tune from the tune smithy drop list (via first entry in musical seeds drop list ). You can alternatively use Open from the File menu and open one of the Tune Smithy files (extension .ts ).
Then try changing things, and see what happens.
Try adding extra voices .
For details of what everything means, and other suggestions, see the User guide .
You can save your arrangements using Save As from the File menu .
Click the Make New Seed... button. Check that you have Enable sound ticked. Also, check you have Mouse activated ticked.
Now move the mouse over the picture of a piano keyboard , and a note should sound. The drop list will change to show Play mode . Click on the caption if it is not yet shown as the active window, so that it can recieve keyboard input.
You can now move the mouse off the picture again, and park it somewhere out of the way. Avoid the picture with the blue dots, which activates Edit mode .
All is ready now for you to start playing music from the p.c. keyboard.
Play successive notes of the scale by pressing the key to the left of the '1' , then '1' , '2' , '3' , . .. onwards.
If you need a wide span of notes, the scale continues through all the other rows of the keyboard, missing out the extra key at bottom left (12 notes per keyboard row, 10 notes for the last row of keys),.
Click +... (below the Channel for voice for p.c. keyboard box ) for more options
Since there are twelve p.c. keys to a row if you ignore the key to the left of the 1, you may wish to start at 1 instead To do this, untick Key 1 for degree 1, key to the left of it for degree 0 . The other options let you set a volume for each row of the p.c. keyboard, and to select an instrument from the Channels window into each row.
It's a transposing keyboard - choose Pitch... from the main window to change the pitch of the lowest note (the one shown as the left-most white key - "C").
Another way to play notes is to move the mouse back and forth over the picture of the keyboard - great for fast scales or arpeggios.
Click Play in the main window to play the fractal tune, and have a try at playing along with it.
Play chords by pressing keys simultaneously.
It also leaves out some notes on chords of three or more notes for the p.c. keyboards I have tried. To test your keyboard, try this experiment: play keys 3, 4, 5 as a chord, in your word processing program, or in Wordpad. Do all three numbers show (perhaps repeated while you hold them down) or do you just see two of them. Try other combinations of three keys in various orders.
Some chords of three or more notes can't be played from a standard p.c. keyboard.
Try this experiment in any program that accepts text, such as your favourite word processor, or Notepad , or Wordpad :
Hold down the key '4' . With it held down, hold down keys '5' , then keeping both of those keys held down, press '6' as well, as if you were playing a chord. You might well find that the first two keys 4 and 5 are shown (possibly repeated if you hold them down long enough to start up the typematic repeat function) but that the 6 is never shown. Release the 4 or 5 before the 6 and the 6 will appear, but release the key 6 first, and you never see it.
This is keyboard dependent - yours might do it for some other combination of keys.
The same thing happens with the MSDOS prompt, with Windows 3.1, and even in Linux, so it's not anything to do with Windows 95/98.
If you hold down this combination of keys, Fractal Tune Smithy never gets a message from Windows to say that you pressed the key '6' (or indeed any other message at the moment the key is pressed). So it can't respond to it. This happens for a fair number of three character combinations with two of them adjacent keys.
If you find a design of p.c. keyboard easily available that can be used to play chords with FTS, with any number of notes, let me know, so that I can recommend it when I next update this page: pc_keyboard_suitable_for_chords_for_fts@rcwalker.freeserve.co.uk
Making new seeds for the melody
Show the Make New Seed... window as before, and check that you have Enable sound ticked.
Now move the mouse over the picture with blue dots, until a note sounds. This switches to Edit Mode . You can then move the mouse cursor out of the picture, being careful not to pass it over the picture of a keyboard. Any notes that you made by moving the mouse are ignored for the new seed.
Now play a short phrase using the keys '1' , '2' , '3' , ... onwards.
When finished, press the return key to end the last note of the seed. Alternatively, click End seed .
You will see the numbers for your new notes in the New seed box, and the note times in seconds in the Timings box. The numbers between underlines such as _0.268_ are the timings for any silences between the notes. Silences are referred to as rests in music.
To play back the seed to hear what it sounds like, use Shift + return , or click on the > button. The speed of playback depends on the value for the time for one note in the main window - set this to 1 to hear it at the same speed that you played it.
The default is to sound each note until the next one begins. To hear the silences between the notes, tick Rests before clicking the playback button.
To use the seed in the melody, click Apply .
Tick With timings if you want to hear it timed exactly as you played it, or untick this box if you want all the notes to be the same length.
Tick rests if you want to include the rests between notes - this causes each seed to be played twice in succession, once for the note, and once for the rests,when used in the tune. This causes echo effects if you have several voices playing simultaneously - the volume for the echo is given in the Volume for sim. rests box. For instance if this value is 3/4, then if one of the other voices is silent, the voices above it in the Channels window are all played with three quarters of the volume. For an example of a fractal tune that uses this effect see Echo_effects_in_rests.ts .
To clear the seed, use the Escape key, or press Clear .
To remove the last few notes of a seed from the p.c. keyboard, press the backspace key.
Tick rests if you want to hear the rests between notes - this causes each seed to be played twice in succession, once for the note, and once for the rests,when used in the tune.
Having recorded your seed, you may want to shift it up / down in the scale before using it. This is especially useful if the first note of your seed is anything other than 0.
To move the seed up/down in the arpeggio relative to the start of the scale, choose Make new seed... , and click the horizontal arrow buttons to the right of the seed box.
For your first experiments, try shifting it until the first number is small, either zero, or plus or minus one or two or so.
If the tune goes above the highest MIDI note, it will keep going, You can customise the effect of this using Channels | Ranges . For instance if you choose Silent , it will play rests instead of notes, and you won't hear anything until the notes get back into range again. Default is to rebound back into pitch.
When you listen to the melody, notice how your seed gets transformed as it is shifted up and down to different parts of the scale. It will only stay exactly the same if you played it in an arpeggio / mode with equally spaced intervals such as the complete (chromatic) equal temperament scale, whole tone scale, diminished seventh chord, and so forth.
You can use the Reverse , Invert , and Reverse rhythm buttons to reverse the seed (i.e. run it backwards), invert it (i.e. go down instead of up), or reverse the rhythm while keeping the notes the same.
The Reverse and Reverse rhythm buttons remove any rest that may be left at the end of the seed.
To add a rest at the end of a seed, replace the last _0_ by 1.5 (say) for a 1.5 second rest. (you can use expressions like 3/2 or 1+1/2 instead - do them without gaps between the symbols). You don't need to type the underlines yourself; they are just a visual cue to help you see which are the rests and which are the notes.
You can also edit timings for any of the other rests or notes by hand in the same way.
Seeds that go below the start note
Seeds can go down below the start note of the scale, as well as up. To record a seed of this type, set the Origin shift to 1 (or higher if desired). For most scales and arpeggios, you will need to increase the Width , so that you can seen more notes to both sides of the larger blue dot. Usually a width of 2 octaves is sufficient.
Now you need to record a seed in the shifted position. The large blue dot corresponds to the start note for the unshifted seed. Find out which key on the p.c. keyboard it is by trying them out, 'till you find the one that plays it.
Play the seed, and click Apply as before.
Note that when you use this method, the seed sounds higher when you record it than it does at the start of the fractal tune. Usually it's an octave higher, but if the arpeggio or scale is less than an octave, it's shifted by some other interval.
In the special case where the arpeggio spans less than the complete scale, and the scale is unevenly spaced, the seed will not only be higher, but may also be recorded with different intervals from the ones you hear at the very start of the melody. That's because you have shifted it to part of the scale with different spacings. The melody will probably get to that part of the scale eventually, if you leave it going for long enough.
Try setting Rhythm fractal to level to a number larger than 0, and choose Level, with simultaneous notes from Choose Channels by , from the Channels window.
You will then find that all the voices, up to the number you have just specified, are playing with the same rhythm at varied speeds. Each voice plays faster or slower as necessary to fit the entire seed within a single note of the next voice.
To get a better idea of how this works, start a fractal tune that uses fractal rhythms, such as bird_call_like.ts. Show the Tune... window. Set the Width to 9 seeds as there are 9 notes in each seed.
Tick Tune | Options | Position by time . Show the Score .(drop list at top left of Tune | Options ). If you like, you can tick nudge to pitch , which positions all the notes precisely by pitch on a score with two sizes of spacing between the lines.
Set the Notes as drop list to, say, Channel numbers , and the Channel to follow, notes as drop list to dots . Choose 2 as the Chann. to follow - this will show the oboe as dots, and the other two instruments as channel numbers (you will only see 1s because the 3 for the cello will be hidden behind the first dot).
Now play it for 9 seeds. Notice the pattern of each seed as played on the recorder, and compare it with the pattern of first notes for the first nine seeds as played on the oboe - both have the same rhythm, with the oboe playing much slower, so that an entire seed played by the recorder fits into each note played by the oboe .
Now choose 3 as the Chann. to follow, set the width to 81 seeds, and continue play until the window is full. and continue play to 81 seeds. Notice how the notes played by the cello also follow the same pattern, with the same rhythm, but much slower.
New Seed, Scale or Arpeggio tick boxes
These are the ones you can find in the New Seed windows:
Show intervals - tick to show the ratio from the first note of the scale.
chord intervals - tick to show the ratios between adjacent pairs of notes when playing a chord.
degrees - tick to show the degree of the note - the position of the note in the mode / arpeggio, starting at 0 for the first note.
dots - tick to show the blue dot when you play a note.
They apply to all the New Scale, New Seed or New Arpeggio windows
You can find these ttick boxes in the New Arpeggio window - they also apply to the New Seed windows, but are left out of them for reasons of space.
Note names - the name of the note for the picture of the piano keyboard.
Note names untransposed - the name of the actual note played.
This one is in the New Scale window.
Beats - the number of beats between adjacent notes of a chord.
Click the Arpeggio... button.
Click on the blue dots to select/unselect notes to make a new arpeggio.
To hear it, move the mouse back and forth over the picture of the keyboard.
To play it back, click on the > button. The time for each note is as set for the Time for one note in the main window. You can also play it as a chord, broken chords, and various other options. To select these, use Ctrl + click on the > button.
Click Apply when you are ready to use it for the fractal tune.
You can also use keyboard methods - move the mouse cursor over the window with the blue dots to switch to Edit Mode , then park the mouse somewhere out of the way, and type the keys '1', '2', '3',, ... to select / unselect notes from the arpeggio.
Notes for the arpeggio can go below the start note as well as above. To make an arpeggio of this type, change the Origin shift and Width first, to move the large blue dot to the middle of the picture.
For arpeggios that have steps down as well as up, you may want to change the Order notes by box from Ascending order to Order Clicked . You can remove notes by using the backspace key for the ones last entered, or by right clicking on them (or by editing the numbers in the box).
You can also make arpeggios that ascend and descend by different patterns. There is one of these already included - the melodic minor .
You can make others by editing that one.
Or choose another arpeggio closer to what you want, and use Ctrl + click to add a new note for the blue dots.
If you do it that way, amessage will show asking if you want to duplicate the ascending arpeggio as a descending one. Answer Yes.
The ascending arpeggio is shown as red triangles , and the descending one as smaller blue triangles .
Clicking on a blue dot changes the selection, in this order: descending arpeggio note , both , ascending arpeggio note , neither .
To hear them both, use Ctrl + click on the > play button, and select Ascending / descending in the Asc / Desc drop list. Then click the > play button.
You can also type the arpeggio as
0 4 | 0 2
to ascend as tritone, descend as whole tone scale
Format is:
Ascending arpeggio | Descending arpeggio.
Tune ascends in the ascending arpeggio, and descends in the descending one. However, it can only cross from one to the other at places where both have the same note in the same position in the arpeggio.
For instance, if one arpeggio has less notes per octave than the other, they may never meet except at the first notes of the arpeggios. In this case, the only place to cross from one to the other is when the first note sounds.
So with the example just shown:
0 4 | 0 2
Tritone has three notes per octave, whole tone scale has 6 - they repeat as:
0 4 8 12 16 20 24...
0 2 4 6 8 10 12...
Both have 4s, but in different positions.
Tune can only cross over when they have the same note in the same position. So the only cross over point is at 0.
You can get interesting effects with these if the seed has negative note numbers, crossing from one type of arpeggio to the other occasionally, when the fractal tune returns to the start note.
Try this one with a musical seed such as
0 1 2 3 4 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 0
This will often miss 0 when passing between negative and positive numbers. Notice how the tune only crosses from one arpeggio to the other when it hits 0.
Here's another example: 0 4 7 12 | 0 3 (12 tone scale) - ascends as major chord, descends as diminished seventh, diminished seventh has four notes per octave, and major chord has 3, only cross over point is at 0 - the first note of the 12 tone scale.
If you want the tune to cross from one to the other arbitrarily far from the first note of the scale, both need to have the same (average) number of notes per octave.
Let's try one that ascends by the dominant seventh, and descends by the diminished seventh
0 4 7 11 12 | 0 3
These have the same number of notes per octave, and it is possible to cross from one to the other at any octave repeat of the fundamental.
Try it with a sequential musical seed such as 0 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1 0 , and you will find the tune goes up as dominant sevenths, and down as diminished sevenths.
The Make New Seed window for these ascending / descending arpeggios:
Some options for seeds with negative numbers are not implemented for these types of arpeggio.
You can enter seeds from MIDI in fine.
The origin shift for the p.c. keyboard isn't implemented. However, there is another way to do the same thing.
You can record it an octave higher. Then shift the seed up or down using the arrows to the right of the seed numbers.
Recording seeds using mouse clicks is restricted to the first repeat of the arpeggio.
Other New Arpeggio buttons
The -> Scale button turns your arpeggio into a scale.
The Sync scale with m. w. button can be unticked - then if you change the scale in the main window, arpeggio continues to show the same one as before. Also when you change the scales list for the main window, the scales list for the New Arpeggio window remains unchanged.
The Sync modes button can also be unticked. When you do this, the modes list no longer changes in synchrony with the one in the main window.
So you can have several New Arpeggio windows on the go at once, each with it's own modes list, and each with it's own scale and scales list.
Use the -> Lists button to copy the lists from the New Arpeggio window to the main window.
Method is just as for the new arpeggios. Click the Scales... button to show the current scale in a New Scale window. Click on the blue dots to select/unselect notes.
To play it back, click on the > button, and to change the play back method, use Ctrl + click on the > button.
The equal temperament scales consist of just two notes, the one that starts the scale, and the next step in the scale.
That's because, since all the steps are the same, no more notes are needed to define the scale. Your scales are repeated by adding identical steps, or sequences of steps, after the last note of the scale.
Click the Expand button to show more blue dots for the two note scales.
The harmonic series scale is a special case; it doesn't repeat at all. The number 2 defines it in a special notation which is automatically expanded to show it in the New Scale window. See Special notations .
To make scales that span more than an octave, change the Width . Then click the Expand button next to the Get scale played button. The blue dots of the scale to select from will be continued to fill the picture, and the Expand button will disappear, not being needed any more.
You can also make "scales" that span that go below the start note, or change direction. These can sometimes be useful for making fractal melodies. You can make scales that go below the start note. Change the Width , say, 2 octaves, and use the Origin shift first to move the large blue dot to the middle of the picture.
The arrow keys to the right of the New Scale box rotate all the notes round by one step to right or left. For instance, if you have the Pygmie scale showing, steps 8/7 147/128 8/7 7/6 8/7 , then the right arrow will move these all right one, and the last to the first, to make them 8/7 8/7 147/128 8/7 7/6 .
If you can't find the scale you want in the lists, you can type in the ratios or values in cents (or paste them from some other source). For details of how these notations work, see some of the entries on the Scales and Fractal Tunes page.
You can have several New Seed, New Arpeggio or New Scale windows on the go at once - just click the buttons anew for each one.
You can also echo the dots or keyboard pictures for any of these windows to a larger size. To do this, click on the picture you wish to echo, and type Shift + Enter .
Using the mouse with the New Scale, Arpeggio, and Seed windows
To sound notes simultaneously using the mouse, hold down the shift key, then move it over each of the notes of the chord in turn (you can move the mouse cursor out of the picture between notes to avoid sounding intermediate notes).
When you move the mouse, the note you hear is the one for the blue dot nearest to the mouse cursor position.
Look closely, and you will see that the white notes are of two sizes. The keyboard is scaled to have the same the spacing for each of the twelve tones of the piano, and so the sizes of the white notes depend on whether they overlap one, or two of the black notes. It is shown like a piano keyboard as a way to show the relationship of pitches to the familiar ones of an equal temperament piano.
This is a design which has actually been used for real piano keyboards by John S. Allen: Refining traditional music keyboard design
The note played is the one closest to the mouse cursor position.
If you have several New Scale, New Seed or New Arpeggio windows on the go at once, overlapping each other, you will notice that when you move the mouse over any of the keyboard or dots pictures, that window moves to the top. It is the mouse activated tick box below the Silent / Edit mode / Play mode drop list that causes this to happen - as you move the mouse over the picture, it needs to be activated to receive keyboard input, and that's what moves it to the front.
Sometimes it is convenient to have all the other windows in front of the main window. You then have to minimise them or move them out of the way to get to it. To give them this style, tick File | New windows on top . It applies to all windows you make after you tick it - any you have already made keep whatever style they have already.
Holding the shift key while making a window down toggles the style. So when New windows on top is unticked, holding the shift key down places the new window so that it is always on top of the main window. When ticked, shift + click to makes a new window at the same level as the main window.