Welcome to the Virtual Monochord! For more information about what this is, see the about page. For more information about how to use it, see the help page, or click on the names of the fields.


create a scale

In this section you choose the pitches for your scales. Start by choosing a base frequency; the default, 440, is a standard middle "A". Then specify a scale. A scale consists of a series of pitches separated by spaces. Each pitch can be specified by a ratio, eg. 3:2, a floating point number with a decimal point, eg. 1.498, or as a scale degree of a equal tempered scale, eg. 12e7. You may also choose one of the preset scales.

base:
base:
scale:


scale:

create a score

In this section you choose which notes from your scale you want to hear. You do this by entering a series of notes in the score field, where each note is represented by the scale degree, that is, the number of that pitch in your scale. Remember that the scale is sorted in order of ascending pitch, which may not be the order you entered the pitches. Separate the notes with spaces. You can enter chords into the score by listing more than one number, separated by slashes. You can also specify a mode, also as a scale degree; this basically adds the given number to each note in your score, and will simply transpose a evenly spaced (chromatic) scale.

mode:
mode:
score:
score:

choose an instrument

In this section you choose an instrument (or timbre) to play your score. Note that the timbres are synthesized, and are not very realistic. However, the overtones of the different timbres amy help you hear the differences between tunings.

instrument:

generate the audio

Now press go to create your audio file: