AUMI vs Scale Syllabus

Adaptive Use Musical Instruments (AUMI) software interface enables people who have very limited controlled (voluntary) movement to independently engage in music making. The Adaptive Use Musical Instruments software interface enables the user to play sounds and musical phrases through movement and gestures. This is an entry to improvisation rather than “hitting the right notes” or playing set pieces of music. Instead, the software uses music as a way for participants to express a range of affects, both by themselves and in response to, or in conversation with, others. While the AUMI interface can be used by anyone, the focus has been on working with people who have profound physical disabilities. In taking these participants as its starting point, the project attempts to make musical improvisation and collaboration accessible to the widest possible range of individuals. This approach also opens up the possibility of learning more about the relations between ability, the body, creativity and improvisation, from within a cultural context that does not always acknowledge or accept people with disabilities. This iOS version of AUMI runs on devices with cameras, and can run on iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads. A large assortment of sounds can be triggered with configurable amounts of sensitivity. AUMI also can be used as a MIDI controller to access other iOS based synthesizers or external equipment (using the iPad's Camera Connection kit or via Core MIDI over WiFi.) AUMI can also import audio from other iOS or desktop apps to be used as melodic or percussive instruments. AUMI can capture a record of the movement in the session, which can be exported and turned into reports in a clinical setting.

Scale Syllabus puts the 253 scales of Complete Scale Syllabus by Gianluca Barbaro in your pocket, and lets you see, hear and transpose every one of them. The scales are not a stored list. The app rebuilds them with the algorithm the book itself was made with: every seventh chord, every combination of available tensions, folded together by rotation. That is why the numbering matches the printed page exactly — scale 145 here is scale 145 in the book. WHAT YOU CAN DO • See any scale in standard notation, on a piano keyboard, or on a guitar or bass fretboard • Transpose to any of the twelve keys, with each note spelled the way a musician would write it • Start from any degree: pick a mode and the scale is shown from that note, in the key you chose • Hear a scale or any of its chords, ascending or arpeggiated, with the notes lighting up as they sound • See the triads and four-note chords every degree carries, inversions included, and view any of them the same three ways • Read the fretboard as a whole map, or touch a fret for the run one hand can play from there • Ask for a chord and the neck answers with shapes a hand can really hold — tap again for the next one • Walk through the sixteen ways a four-note chord can be laid out inside two octaves of keyboard • Choose your instrument once, and clef, written octave and transposition follow • Find a scale from the notes themselves: play a phrase into the microphone, or type the note names, and the app lists the scales that contain them and says what chord they make • Follow the relationships: which scales contain this one, which ones it contains, and which are a note away • Print a scale as a sheet of engraved music, export it as PDF, or share it • Read six short chapters of music theory, with figures the app draws itself • Mark favourites and keep your own written notes on any scale A guided tour goes through all of it the first time you open the app, and it can be replayed whenever you like. The app speaks English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese, and you can look for a scale in your own language. The names of the scales themselves stay as the book prints them. WHAT MAKES IT ACCURATE The book's own derivation quietly loses four chord types, and with them five scales. This app generates them too — appended at the end, so that not a single number from the printed book moves. Note spelling follows musical function rather than whatever is cheapest to compute: a minor seventh chord is written C Eb G Bb, never C D# G A#. FREE AND COMPLETE Three scales are always open: major, harmonic minor and melodic minor — and with the major come all its modes, natural minor included. You can open two more of your choice, and the ones you open stay yours. A single purchase opens all 258 scales and unlocks printing, PDF export and sharing — no subscription, no account. Nothing you write leaves your device. The app has no accounts, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, and what you play into the microphone is analysed as it arrives and never recorded, stored or sent anywhere. Reports of wrong or missing scale names are welcome: me@barbaro.it