Scale Workshop has been updated this weekend. Let’s take a look at what this useful microtonal web tool is capable of.

Launch Scale Workshop in a new tab

Key functionality

• Create your own microtonal scales by direct data input, or use one of the many generator methods to aid your discovery.
• Export tuning files in a large variety of useful formats.
• Hear the scale by using your qwerty keyboard as an isomorphic keyboard, or use MIDI input (requires a browser with web MIDI support).
• Import Scala scl file and convert to various formats.
• Collaborate and share your scale easily by copy and pasting the URL which automatically has your scale encoded.

Recently added features

MIDI I/O

With a web MIDI compatible browser, you can use Scale Workshop to enable microtonality on your hardware synths and sound modules. This is achieved by 16 channel note output with pitch bend on each channel.

Rotate modifier

Rotate your scale so that a different interval becomes the new 1/1.

Improvements to the virtual keyboard

When using the mouse cursor, you can now play the virtual keyboard stylophone style, i.e. click and drag across the keyboard to hit a sequence of notes.

Export REAPER Note Name Map

REAPER supports custom piano roll layouts. You can now export a txt file from Scale Workshop to import directly into REAPER.

Export tuning to Korg Monologue/Minilogue XD

Export your tuning to Korg Librarian format. This can be imported into the Korg Librarian software so you can write it to your synth.

Better precision

Scale Workshop now has better handling of large numbers and ratios.

Better synth

Issues with the synth audio dropout are resolved. Various new waveforms are added. The default waveform is changed to semisine which is more ideal for auditioning tunings than the previous triangle.

User guide updated for 1.5

As this version is a major milestone for the app, we have made sure to update the documentation to cover all the new features.

The future of Scale Workshop

Early development work has started for Scale Workshop 2. This involves a complete rewrite from scratch and a new UI. The project will remain on the permissive MIT License so that synth developers can re-use parts of Scale Workshop’s code to add microtonal functionality to their own projects. Scale Workshop 2 is intended to be released when it reaches feature parity with Scale Workshop 1.5. Scale URLs will remain backwards-compatible. Scale Workshop 1.x will receive no new features except for bug fixes.

Get involved

• Developer/support chat is on Discord: Sevish’s server #scale-workshop
• New GitHub repo for Scale Workshop 2 specifically
• Use the app and let your buddies know