Audio Damage Sequencer 1 User Manual
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The default scale is the chromatic scale, which contains all 12 notes in the octave. If you use
this scale, the notes of each step in the pattern will play exactly as you entered them. Any
transposition you apply will move the notes by half steps.
You can see the notes in the scale by looking at Note buttons. If a note is present in the scale,
its Note button is illuminated. The lighted buttons also reflect the setting of the Tonic parameter.
For example, if the Scale is set to Major and the Tonic is set to C, the Note buttons
corresponding to the white keys on a piano will be illuminated. Change either the Scale or the
Tonic and you’ll immediately see the notes present in the resulting key. You’ll hear the effects as
well, if the sequencer is playing.
There are over 40 different preset scales available. Since you can see what they do by looking
at the Note LEDs, we won’t list them here
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. If you can’t find one that suits your needs, there are
eight slots for user scales. These work in the same manner as the preset scales, but you can
choose which notes are present in the scale by pressing the Note buttons. The eight user scales
are saved on the Micro SD card, and are shared by all patterns. You’ll find the user scales at the
end of the scale list. User scales are saved automatically when you save your pattern or leave
the Scale and Tonic editing page.
Tonic
The Tonic is the first (lowest-pitched) note in the key. Usually you’ll set this parameter to the
note corresponding to tonal center of the pattern, since this will probably produce the results you
expect if you transpose the pattern. On the other hand, setting it to something else might
produce interesting results, too. Since the Scale and Tonic parameters don’t actually alter the
notes you enter, you can experiment with them without fear of doing irreparable harm to the
pattern itself.
You may be wondering about the relationship between the Tonic and the Transpose parameter
we mentioned previously. One way to think about it is this: the Tonic, together with the Scale,
determines the series of intervals as you play upwards from the tonic note. A Major scale, to
pick an easy example, has a series of two whole steps, a half step, three more whole steps, and
one half step. The key of C Major starts with C and uses that series, playing the notes C, D, E,
F, G, A, B. If you set your pattern to use C Major, it will always play those notes, regardless of
how you transpose it. If you change the Tonic to D, the same series of intervals will be used and
your pattern will play the notes D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#, regardless of how it is transposed. The
Tonic, together with the Scale, determines a set of which notes will be played. Transposing
moves your notes up or down within that set.
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The scale presets were drawn from Wikipedia’s "List of musical scales and modes," found here:
Sequencer 1’s complement of scales includes every entry on that list which can be expressed as a subset
of the chromatic scale.