scaletype manpage

COMMAND

scaletype -- Categorizes **kern data as pentatonic, hexatonic, or heptatonic.

scaletype [-D] [-p] [input(s)] [> output]

-p		Add pitch-class data to output analysis.
-D		Do not include directory path in the filename when analyzing multiple input files.

The scaletype command identifies the type of scale being used in simple music with no non-scalar notes. The primary scale categories identified are 5-tone (pentatonic), 6-tone (hexatonic), and 7-tone (heptatonic). Pitch classes which constitute less than 5 notes are labeled as toofew, and more than 7 notes are labeled as chromatic. The program is particularly useful for identifying simple pentatonic melodies in large sets of songs.

Multiple File Input

If more than one input file is given, a list of the filenames will be given with the identified scale type. For example, here are the analyses of the first 24 songs collected by Helen Creighton in Nova Scotia:

scaletyle *.krn
    
    nova001.krn:    hexatonic
    nova002.krn:    hexatonic
    nova003.krn:    heptatonic
    nova004.krn:    heptatonic
    nova005.krn:    pentatonic
    nova006.krn:    hexatonic
    nova007.krn:    heptatonic
    nova008.krn:    pentatonic
    nova009.krn:    pentatonic
    nova010.krn:    heptatonic
    nova011.krn:    heptatonic
    nova012.krn:    hexatonic
    nova013.krn:    heptatonic
    nova014.krn:    chromatic
    nova015.krn:    hexatonic
    nova016.krn:    heptatonic
    nova017.krn:    hexatonic
    nova018.krn:    hexatonic
    nova019.krn:    hexatonic
    nova020.krn:    heptatonic
    nova021.krn:    heptatonic
    nova022.krn:    toofew
    nova023.krn:    pentatonic
    nova024.krn:    hexatonic
 

If you want to count the number of songs in a set with a particular scale-type quality, you can pipe the output to the unix commands grep and wc -l:

scaletype *.krn | grep pentatonic | wc -l

For the set of Nova Scotia songs, the resulting count is 66, with hexatonic being 62, and pentatonic being 13.

By default, multiple files will be listed with their full pathnames according to the input. If you do not want to see the directory in which a file is located, you can add the -D option.

Pitch-Class Sets

Adding the -p option will add additional pitch-class information after the scale-type designation.

scaletype -p nova001.krn

   hexatonic	C D E F G A

The scaletype program cannot be used to identify the tonic of the scale, so the first pitch-class note in the list is not necessarily the tonic note.

More example usages of the scaletype program are avaliable on the scaletype examples page

The compiled scaletype program can be downloaded for the following platforms:
• Linux (i386 processors) compiled on 12 Jan 2005.
• Windows compiled on 1 Jun 2006.

The source code for the program was last modified on 12 Jan 2005.