Roland Musical Instrument guide

maxWerk - Copyright 2000-2007 Amanda Pehlke

Published by RedMoon Music - www.RedMoon-Music.com

graphically displayed Transposer values, to arrive at the chord information in the Leadsheet and the chord names you see displayed on the Main Screen. Unlike other Transposer elements that can be disabled, Global Offsets are always in effect.

To make the clearest explanation, we'll describe the displayed data types starting with the bottom-most of the four in the Transposer window. We'll move upward, and then mix them up. They are:

4.Key - Transposing Keys cover the twelve semitones of the western octave. Values 0 through 11 set the Tonic pitch for the musical Scale in use. These pitches, summed with Global Offsets, partly determine the chord names shown on the Main Screen. Their combined I-chord result tells the "key signature" as in conventionally notated music, with the difference that in maxWerk each bar is tagged with its own Transposing Key number and Global Offset. You may wish to change Key only once or twice during your song for emotional effect, or you may wish to let maxWerk change Key values automatically many times to accommodate complex chord progressions. You may elect not to use changing Transposing Key information at all, if you are feeling entirely modal in your approach to your Werk. Of course, doing experiments with one data set will not harm any of the others.

3.Scale - Scale values determine the selection for each bar of seven pitches out of twelve that are represented by the note values entered in maxWerk. These values take effect after Key data, but before any further transposing you do in the remaining two displays. Scales, also called modes, have values 0 through 11 in the display. They include the seven traditional ones at 1 through 7, with the familiar names Natural-Minor, Locrian, Major (the default scale), Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian. The Harmonic-Minor and Blues scales are given values 7 and 8, and the Suspended, Diminished, and Augmented scales, often used for special-purpose chord changes, have values 9 through 11.

In case you hadn't thought about it before, differences between scales have to do with the patterns of whole and half-step intervals found between the notes of each set, and maxWerk has memorized