User Manual

62 A User’s Guide to Garritan World Instruments
Using Scala les—Ethnic and Non-Western Tunings
A unique feature of the Garritan World Instruments is its support for Scala les to adjust to dier-
ent temperaments and tunings. Scales and tunings are very important in world music and Garritan
World Instruments supports Scala, a standard le format for musical tunings supporting hundreds of
dierent scales. With Scala support, musicians can play an instrument in its native form.
Many digital musicians are accustomed to Western equal temperament tunings, but there are many
hundreds of dierent tunings that are used in many dierent regions around the globe. While the
default tuning of the instruments in this library is Western equal temperament, you can also choose
from among various exotic and non-Western tunings and scales. ese non-Western scales will add
more realism to your ethnic instrumentation.
Scala is a powerful format used in musical tunings, such as just intonation scales, equal and historical
temperaments, microtonal and macrotonal scales, and non-Western scales. It supports scale creation,
editing, comparison, analysis, storage, tuning of electronic instruments, MIDI le generation, and
tuning conversion. A very large library of scales is freely available for Scala.
Scala Import Button:
e Import button provides a variety of other tunings that can be
imported and used with World Instruments. e Scala le import
feature enables the use of thousands of other tunings, if desired.
is is a feature that could be very useful in World Instruments
where non-Western scales are often used.
e following menu appears when the “Import” button is clicked: