“Get help learning musical scales”

I've never been great with musical instruments. In fact I'm so bad that I once tried blowing into the end of a violin trying to get a note. As a result, I'm often a bit scared about reviewing musical applications but I was pleasantly surprised with how beginner-friendly ScaleMaster is.

The Palm program allows you to experiment with different scales to perfect your musical compositions and harmonies. Like I said, I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to playing music and I never realised just how many different scales there are. There are over 100 listed in ScaleMaster and they originate from all four corners of the globe.

It's easy to become bogged down in technical jiggery pokery in many music apps, but what I like about this program is its simplicity. You simply choose one of the scales from the drop-down list, pick from one of four clefs (treble, bass, alto or tenor) then choose a virtual instrument to help you learn the scale. All the notes in the scale are then displayed through a clear, colourful depiction of that instrument. The instruments available are the piano, guitar, drums, mandolin.

You get a few options to tinker around with, such as volume settings, notation appearance and the ordering of the scales. I would have liked to have seen audio previews of the scales when you highlight them from the drop-down list, but generally I really enjoyed using this one (although my favourite instrument, the bassoon was missing from the virtual instruments).

Whether you're a beginner or a musical genius, ScaleMaster provides a great way of learning scales on the bus.

Languages:

English

OS requirements for ScaleMaster:

OS: Palm OS 5.0

Pros

Over 100 scales
Four well-rendered virtual instruments
Customisable appearance

Cons

Lacks scale previews

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From the publisher of ScaleMaster

Scales are elementary to all musicianship. They provide flavor and harmonic structure, but are at the same time fairly complex. ScaleMaster is designed to help in several key areas concerning scales.

It lists over 100 scale types in all keys and shows them in music notation. There are four different clefs available (treble, bass, alto and tenor). Additionally scale degrees are shown qualified by the interval to the root.

To help visualization there are four virtual instruments (bass, guitar, mandolin and piano). These virtual instruments feature overlays that can show scale degrees or position of a note in the current scale and can be shifted to all available positions. Any scale can be sounded out using RoGame’s Sound Libraries (Palm OS 5.0 and higher only) or the built-in synthesizer.

Designed for the beginning musician as well as the professional, ScaleMaster is an excellent tool towards advancement in theory and scales in particular, making it easy to look up a scale in seconds, getting a taste of the flavor of a particular scale by listening to it, or finding out how to play it on one’s instrument.