ScaleMaster Pro 1.3 adds instrument options for 5-string and 6-string bass, improved support for iOS 15, some essential bug fixes and tuning presets.
Some apps simply scale their content to fit different device classes. And maybe the word 'simply' in this context is misplaced as even mere scaling is usually a bit more involved than just updating one number. In certain cases like games scaling is a very valid approach. It also used to be the industry default as well as user expectation. Until the scientific calculator on the iPhone which is only available in landscape orientation. The iPhone calculator app comes as basic in portrait and as scientific version in landscape mode with twice as many buttons. Of course that is not something you want to do with a desktop machine – hold it sideways that is – but for the iPhone it made perfect sense.
The rumor is that it would be difficult to successfully adapt the user interface of a calculator to the size of an iPad and that is why Apple doesn't include a calculator app on their tablets. Well, maybe that is true or maybe there is just not as much use for a calculator on an iPad as there is for it on a mobile phone. We don't have any such compunctions. ScaleMaster is used on iPads nearly as much as on iPhones. And it is not scaled. iPad (iPadOS) and iPhone (iOS) versions differ quite substantially in their screen architecture. ScaleMaster's main toolbar is center screen on iPads and doesn't change much between device orientation changes. On an iPhone on the other hand we have 3 distinct screen sets with their own concentrations if you will. There is the "look up a scale in general" use case in portrait mode – our simple calculator with only 5 buttons on the toolbar. And then there is the choice between a full notation or instrument view in landscape mode – our 2 scientific calculators.
What does all of this have to do with the newly released version 1.3.0? Glad you asked. At times even very modular designs can be awkward and for now you have to hold your iPhone sideways to change the tuning of your guitar. But then it is also saved with the document, so no biggie as they say. Tuning presets are the big new feature item in ScaleMaster Pro. They have been on our implementation schedule for a while now and of course these are such time-savers. Everyone that owns a bunch of guitars will have at least a couple of different tunings to deal with. Mandolin as well. For bass players the news is even better. In addition to a bunch of tuning presets we also added support for 5-string as well as 6-string bass. That should open things up a little. So, that was important and we wanted to get it done before year's end. We also left one custom preset with movable sliders just in case we missed a standard one. Do let us know if that happens so we can include it in the next version.
Western music deploys at its base a pixellation effect of sorts on actual sound. That is to improve on the alternative - 'just tuning' as it is called - which imposes harsh limitations on instruments with fixed pitches like harpsichords and pianos. On these instruments anything but 3 circle-of-fifths adjacent keys would be so far out of tune that they were unusable. Music was written with that constraint in mind and it sounded quite phenomenal. But then, around Bach's time, a new concept was developed by which that unfortunate remainder that was left when dividing physical octaves into 12 would be evenly applied to all twelve notes in an octave as if to keep everything out of tune by just a bit instead of pushing the entire remainder off to the next key. And that worked. Not only did it work in that it wasn't offensive to the ear in general, but it opened up never heard dimensions of harmony and foreign soundscapes. It worked because it was backward compatible in the sense that many older instruments like the viols didn't have fixed pitches and could therefore adjust to the new "temperament" as it was called.
Bach subsequently wrote a series of pieces for the "well-tempered piano" where for the first time in history one piece existed for each position in the circle of fifths. It wasn't so much the existence of these pieces that was so remarkable, however, but the fact that all of them could be performed on the same instrument — in sequence — if that instrument was tuned in the well-tempered style. It was like the invention of color TV.
Now that all 12 tonalities could be used a lot of weight shifted into exploring all these new possibilities. Instruments were designed and redesigned and a lot of training material for musicians was published that focussed on fluency in all 12 keys. This is one of ScalePlay's core functionalities, to allow the creation of scale patterns like 1-3-5-4-5-4-5-4 with graphic tools and then vertically transpose these pattern to have them start on the second note of a scale or maybe the fourth for example. The grid on the left hand is the pattern and the grid on the right hand determines how far up or down a pattern is shifted. Those two components are then be wrapped in chord components and several chord components finally constitute a composition or song form.
This may sound like a fairly simple thing to do all in all and maybe not remarkable in whatever outcome one might expect of it, but in addition to generating interesting play-along etudes for improvising musicians ScalePlay can also be used to help writing music. Entire songs even, because it is so easy to dial in a chord sequence just by starting a bass line and then applying different scale types. A performance aspect exists as well where entire sequences can be triggered by touch if so desired, to drive external synth modules.
ScalePlay 1.5 now available. It includes quite a few updates and fixes. Nothing spectacular, but still necessary layout and general compatibility adjustments. ScalePlay also received a dark mode compatibility overhaul and there was some work on the engine itself.
ChordLab has been around for many years and is about as niche an app as you can get - a chord calculator for four-part harmony, voice leading and arranging in general. This is not an app for the novice or beginning instrumentalist. It is not a chord book app. It might, on the other hand, hold interest for Jazz guitarists, pianists and arrangers. It depends on the arrangement of course, but four-part harmony with appropriate voice leading is a solid choice.
Changes is a term coined for the "changes" that voices undergo in harmonic support of a melody and bassline possibly. In that an economy of voices, be it three or four at the most, has served as a stylistic as well as practical approach to harmonizing or accompanying. And this is the context in which ChordLab can be quite useful and maybe serve as inspiration for some more unique chord choices. No more chord spelling, just punch it up and put it through the motions.
The basic calculator function spells a chord defined with root and quality - like Abmaj7. Additional operations allow the application of inversions as well as common drop voicings and results are shown in music notation as well as note locations on the current instrument. With 16 different guitar tunings this can come in quite handy when putting together a bunch of new background harmonies.
The latest version of ChordLab for macOS streamlines the interface a bit while improving overall functionality. ChordLab has gained a new look - in the dark that is - and improved support for Big Sur.
ScaleMaster - a utility for quickly punching up this or the other penta- or heptatonic scale. On a bunch of different instruments. That is where ScaleMaster took its origin. Kidding of course - there was a blues scale, too - lol. Anyhow, since those early days it has gotten quite a bit more sophisticated. And still, having a quality scale reference handy is a good thing for any musician. You know how many songs were started with the phrase: "Hey, wait. Listen to this"? Well, maybe two, but in all sincerity - ScaleMaster is a fantastic tool.
With music notation and so many instruments. Then there is that circle of fifths window and the sound is just fantastic these days with over one 120 built-in full-range instrument sounds. Those are pretty cool actually. And clefs - yes all sorts of clefs. So, there is a lot that you can do with the app and everything relates to over 200 hundred different types of listed scales. Your use case will vary, of course, but one guy in the band with ScaleMaster is always good to have. This is a true universal app that includes a fantastic-looking full iPadOS version. Not just an enlarged version of an iPhone app. SplitView? We got that. You can even generate some very simple exercises to play along with. Not too shabby for an inexpensive little utility app. And did we mention all those instruments?
So, what's new in version 1.2.6? Well, first of all there were quite a few updates for iPhone. Like the iPhone Calculator app in a way ScaleMaster looks different in landscape view than in when in portrait mode. There are in fact two view modes in landscape - instrument and notation. Then back in portrait mode your phone will show both. That is one area that saw a lot of improvement in this new release. You can try it out in ScaleMaster LE (free demo) if you want, because this is very difficult to capture in screenshots or movies.
A less pronounced change in version 1.2.6 is the placement of the center toolbar also on iPhone. We addressed the overall layout on the smaller screens in general and finally we also worked in some newer device specs. But - our main focus was actually dark mode. Initially ridiculed when announced as a new main feature of iOS, dark mode is a bit more complex than one might assume. There has to be a certain logic to it. Colors become lights in the dark and are used much more sparingly. It's a whole thing in cases when there are so many gradients and shades in use as are in ScaleMaster. We think that it was well worth it in the end and you will hopefully agree.
So, if you belong to the 'dark-mode-always' club or just occasionally let your OS dip into the night, you will probably enjoy ScaleMaster a little better. I know that we do. ScaleMaster is available for macOS and iOS (full iPadOS version included in universal binary). Or check out the ScaleMaster LE - a very limited free demo app that allows adding functionality via in-app-purchases.
The summer this year was different for most of us in many ways. But still - summer is summer and I hope you all had a fantastic time. I took occasion to take a fresh look at one of my favorite games - AbaCruX. AbaCruX is based on peg solitaire and this is a bit of a project of passion to be quite honest. It has been close to 14 years of upgrades for what was one of the earliest apps for iOS, but version 3.0 packs by far the biggest punch.
Peg solitaire was a coffee-table curiosity in the 18th and 19th centuries. A self-contained unit of entertainment for one. Games were fabricated in stylish, luxorious and often very expensive fashion with beautiful wood or marble boards and exquisite little pearls that sometimes even found a circular rail of sorts in the board itself, so they wouldn't get lost. Some immensely beautiful. There was that tiny bit of an addictive nature to it. Like the card game patience but much more abstract in its mathematical nature. As it turns out the solution search space - a sum of all possible jumps and moves - is beyond enormous. So, there is a lot of depth and variety to this game. It requires strategic thinking of the highest level especially the more complex boards.
AbaCruX started its life in the late 1990s as a Macintosh application. A basic version implementing the English board. The word app didn't yet exist. It was distributed as shareware - mailed on floppy disks. A couple of years later AbaCruX was ported to Palm OS (Palm Pilot) and was subsequently distributed in a variety of app stores in those times of the Wild West of app stores - all of them now extinct. Then came the iPhone and with it the demise of the PDA in general. AbaCruX was one of the first apps in the new 'iPhone App Store' as it was called back in the day. 2 boards with 15 puzzles for each. Well, things have changed a bit in the new version 3.
We combined 3 platforms into one and added AppleTV. Your game now automatically becomes available on Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. Same goes for add-on purchases. If one were to get the very cool 'Extra Boards' add-on on an iPhone, it would become available for all other included platforms as well. The somewhat more exciting news about AbaCruX is that the basic version now comes with 120 configurations on 8 boards. Four times as many as previously. There is the brandnew game engine, fabulous animations, positional audio, a secondary scoring metric and Game Center integration. It is a brand-new game. Not only because of all the new features. No, it literally is a new game.
In the last decade there was much renewed scientific interest in peg solitaire. Quite a few papers were published detailing different approaches for solving the game. Mostly in regards to the English Board, sometimes the French or Diamond boards. Not as straight-forward as one might think and illustrative of what big numbers really are. Computers, however, have gotten fast enough with enough memory and storage as well for a brute-force approach on the central game and some of the other boards. The French board caught the attention of fans and academics alike for a while. Many more boards made an appearance. Boards like the Wiegleb board which dates back several centuries or the Siege board which may never have been a board meant for this purpose at all. AbaCruX now comes with 8 boards and an optional add-on of 8 more complex boards.
AbaCruX 3.0 also uses a secondary scoring system which is tied to Game Center and to make things a little more exciting players now have to beat the clock when solving specific configurations. As a result 2 scores are awarded each round. Stars and points. Stars are needed to unlock new configurations while points are used for competition in Game Center. The point scoring system takes number of moves, time taken and other parameters into consideration.
So, that's the 411 for now. More to come. If you are reading this, you may already have this exciting new version of an old favorite installed. If not, give it a shot. AbaCruX 3.0 is now available in your app store. Please, check out those add-ons, they help us survive.
