Learn Live 12: Keys and Scales, Tuning Systems

Live 12's Scale Mode allows you to work within a particular key or scale with ease, and its tuning systems allow you to explore and go beyond the traditional 12 tone system. Let's take a look. Let's go ahead and turn on Scale Mode for this clip. This will highlight the notes of my scale in the background. I can choose to turn this on and off right at the top. I can also choose to fold the MIDI clip so that I only see notes that I've played, or show the notes of the current scale. If I right clic

k, I can choose for the MIDI editor to show me sharps, flats, or both sharps and flats. I can also choose to show the MIDI note number instead of the traditional pitch names. Notice how when I turn the Scale Mode on and off, the interval control switches from semitones to scale degrees. Let's do two scale degrees here and click Add Interval a couple of times to build chords out of these single notes. Let's take a listen. Notice that whatever scale I have selected for the clip down below is mirro

red up on top of the scale control bar. If I turn it on and off here, you will see that change get reflected in the scale below. I can even change the scale here and notice the change down below. Note that this is for the clip I currently have selected, not for the whole project. So if I switch to a different clip, you can see that the selector turns off I can also set the scale for a new blank clip in case I wanted to record something new here. Let's highlight both of these clips. I'll hold dow

n shift and click on the other one. You can see it's half off, half on. Let's turn the scale on for both and switch to D minor. I'll go ahead and play this bass line together with my chords. Sounds a little out of key. So I'll hit Fit to Scale here for this bassline. And all of a sudden, it's in key. Let's switch over to the device view for my chords track. Here on this track I have a chord MIDI effect. Let's go ahead and turn it on. I'd like to use the chord MIDI effect to add additional notes

to my chords and make them feel even bigger. To do this, I'll turn up the shift control here, which will add notes that are two semitones above to the chords that I have now. Let's take a listen. Let's enable Use Current Scale on this chord device. And now you'll see that the shift controls are in scale degrees instead of semitones. This will sound much more musical. Let's do plus two here. Much better. And maybe we'll do plus four on another shifter. Next, let's try adding this arpeggiator for

some extra movement. I'll make the rate go faster here and turn up the gate. I'll turn up the number of steps, which transposes the pattern up or down based on the distance I set here. Let's try playing with the distance a little bit. Sounding a little out of key. Let's turn on the Use Current Scale here. You'll see it automatically switches to D minor, and the distance is now set in scale degrees. I can even select this clip, click on a different scale, to try a minor pentatonic, and you'll see

that change reflected down below in the arpeggiator. Next, let's play with my meld synth. Meld has a detune parameter here, which as you can see is not really in key, but if I turn scale awareness on it's sounding a lot more musical. I'd like to add some more melody to this project. To do this, I'll open up my browser and click and drag the sweet vibraphone melody clip into the project. Let's take a listen. Let's solo out the vibraphone and open up the MIDI clip. I'd like to try some alternativ

e tuning systems in this project. To do this, I'll go down to the tuning section of my library. Live features a wide variety of tuning systems for us to choose from. And we can even bring in our own custom tunings in the form of .ascl files. Let's try this Wendy Carlos tuning. I'll go ahead and double click on it. You'll hear the sound of the vibraphone change as well as the names of the notes. Let's try a couple other different tuning systems. Cool. I'll stick to Wendy Carlos for now. Here, I c

an play with the reference pitch of my tuning the octave and note at which it appears, as well as the lowest and highest notes of my scale here. If I click this button, it will open up the web browser and show me Live's Tuning System website, where I can learn more about tunings. I can save this tuning that I've made as a custom one. Let's try it. Cool. I can choose to have certain elements bypass the tuning of my track.