Arturia KeyStep 37 MIDI Keyboard Controller and Sequencer - Manual (Page 43)

When Scale mode is active, this can have a peculiar effect on your arpeggio or sequence:
because all notes will be forced to play in the currently selected scale, there may be
duplicate notes. For example, if you've set the scale to C major and you hold down an E
and an Eb, because the Eb is 'foreign' to the C major scale, the Arpeggiator will play E twice,
which causes a ratcheting effect.
3.6.5.2. Changing the Scale Root
For Major, Minor, and Blues scales, you can select a new root note by pressing Shift and
holding down the Scale key then selecting a new root in the first octave of the keyboard. As
long as you keep holding down the Scale key, pressing a key will update the root note. The
currently active root note will be shown with its LED lit up continuously in blue.
Starting a scale on a different note will drastically change the mood or feeling. For example,
if we play the notes that make up the C major scale not from C to C' but from D to D', the
intervals will now be heard in a different order.
• C major starting on C: tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone (T-T-s-T-T-
T-s).
• C major starting on D: tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, tone (T-s-T-T-T-
s-T = Dorian mode).
When you take this second series of intervals and start on, say, G as the root note, you get:
• G, A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G' (known as G Dorian)
It's an age-old principle that was widely used in ancient music and medieval church music.
It was rediscovered by jazz musicians in the 1950s and 1960s. And when the western world
opened up to other music cultures, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, musicians explored
the exotic-sounding scales of Indian ragas and Arabic maqams, which used some scales
that were quite different to the standard major and minor scales that had been used for
centuries in western classical music.
Changing the root note is a form of 'intelligent' transpose — intelligent because the interval
structure of the scale remains intact. This, as opposed to normal or 'dumb' transpose, which
simply lowers or raises all the pitches by the same interval.
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♪ : If you want to know more about this fascinating subject, search "music theory" on a search engine
or YouTube.
Arturia - User Manual KeyStep 37 - Shift Functions 38