What are Reference Scale and Musical Scale?

We call reference scale the set of all notes, or shrutis for indian music, which can be selected to build up a musical scale to play rāgas or other musics.

Open Manage application options settings then Reference Scale to change it, through the button:

Reference Scale

When you change the reference scale, the list of available musical scales changes, in the Studio main page. Also, the list of tanpura and shruti tunings changes. (example: a Pancham tanpura tuning is only possible in Hindustani or Carnatic reference scale).

See 👆 Search and selection of rāga to learn more about musical scales.

Indian musics

For indian musics, the reference scales will contain all the known 22 shrutis. And the musical scales will correspond to the rāgas.

When you select Hindustani as a reference scale, you’ll get a set of more than 80 rāgas as musical scales, with details.

When you select Carnatic, at the moment, we only present one musical scale of all shrutis. The list of rāgas is under construction.

We recommend you to consult our pages:

You may create yourself new musical scales or flavours for Hindustani or Carnatic music: 👆 Manage my rāgas

Tempered 12 tones musics

For 12 tones musics, the reference scales will be modern 12 equi-tempered tones scale, and some ancient scales used in the past centuries in Europe. There is no particular musical scale for these reference scales. We just provide one with all notes.

The 12 tones reference scales provided are:

  • The modern 12 tones equal temperament scale
  • Pythagorean scale
  • Werckmeister III scale
  • Meantone scale
  • Bach/Lehman scale.

Change the reference scale of the studio

You can change the reference scale of the studio from the studio configuration: 👆 Studio options