AudioTheory Guitars News

The AudioTheory software library is expanding with the upcoming release of AudioTheory Piano Keys. This new piece of music theory software takes all the cool features you know and love form AudioTheory Guitars but reworks them it into a piano-focused package.

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[h3]AudioTheory Guitars... but with a piano?[/h3]

Yes, the idea for AudioTheory Piano Keys started a while back as an obvious expansion of the series – AudioTheory Guitars has an extensive library of interactive chords and providing the same thing for piano chords makes a lot of sense.

However, with AudioTheory Guitars you've also got the fretboard component and other tools optimised for transposition. My goal has been to provide piano-specific tools along these lines, so AudioTheory Piano Keys will be launching with a couple of brand new innovative features designed for visually explaining how the music you're playing works:



[h3]The Scale Wheel[/h3]

The first of these I call the Scale Wheel. This is a circular diagram that visually shows how notes fit into scales. This works by locking the root note of the scale to the 12 o'clock position allowing the focus to be on the relationship between the notes.

It's a really useful way to understand how all scales of the same type follow the same pattern. The root note meanwhile is interchangeable and can be adjusted by spinning the wheel around as desired.



[h3]Real-time scale highlighting[/h3]

The idea here is to show how a note that's played fits into two scales at the same time. And also in real time! This is one of the application's more advanced features, but once you've got your head around the concept, it's an extremely powerful tool for helping write new songs or playing captivating progressions when improvising.

This works by having a second row of notes above the main piano. You can load the song key to the main display and then this second row shows the scale for the note that is currently being pressed. By default this filters against both scales, essentially meaning that the second row is showing you the subsection of notes that are both in the main song key and also in the key of the current note being played.



Of course alongside this you have all the useful features for note highlighting, viewing and playing scales and chords, and customising the application view as with AudioTheory Guitars. The store page for AudioTheory Piano Keys is now live which means now is the perfect time to add it to your wishlist:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1513510/AudioTheory_Piano_Keys

Currently there is no fixed released date as I'm still implementing the finishing touches, however I would anticipate the release date being approx. 3–6 months away.

The newest update to AudioTheory Guitars is here. This update is not so much focused on bug fixes (perhaps I fixed them all... just maybe) but rather an important new feature that has been frequently requested. This is the ability to automatically load chords when selecting a scale preset.



[h3]So how this works[/h3]

The major and minor scales (as well as the modal variants) all contain seven notes. Each of these notes is also the root for a chord that can be played as part of this scale. However, as we go through the scale from positions 1 through to 7 we swap between a pattern of major/ minor and 1x diminished chords at a fixed interval defined by the scale type.

For example a major scale goes...
I – major
ii – minor
iii – minor
IV – major
V – major
vi – dim

The good news is that with this new update to AudioTheory Guitars you don't have to worry too much about how this is constructed or the variations between scale types and modes. All you need to do is choose a desired scale from the selector and the rest will take care of itself!

These chords are of course not the only chords that will be compatible with your scale (and AudioTheory Guitars also includes many alternate shapes that can be swapped in) but it should be a great starting point when learning scales and finding compatible chords.

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[h3]One more thing![/h3]

Another quick note before I go. As well as making music theory software I'm also here in the world of Steam as a game developer, and today I'm launching Lion Quest Infinity, a title I've spent the last five years working on.

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It's a story driven adventure game where you steal a magic grandfather clock and travel through time and space on an adventure to save the universe. By night that is, by day you're working an office job.

Oh, and there's even a piano-based special game directly inspired by AudioTheory.



If you're looking for an original game full of twists, surprises and wild ideas, this is one to check out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1384530/Lion_Quest_Infinity

One more thing. Trading cards have just been released for AudioTheory Guitars. These are based on open chord shapes, have fun collecting them!

Hello! Today's update is all about chords. Version 1.14.0 extends the chord library and introduces some new features to support this larger selection of chords.



So let's have a look at what's new:

• Extended barre and power chord library. This has been completely overhauled to now support 5+ power chord shapes per note and 6+ barre chord shapes per note. This means there is now approx. 4x as many power and barre chords than before!
  
  
• To make this larger amount of chords manageable the mini 'Quick Select' popout as well as the fullscreen chord selector have both been reworked. Barre and power chords can now be loaded by selecting a combination of a root note and chord type.
  
  
• Some chords have more than one shape. There is a new 'cycle chord' button which is a circle with two arrows inside it. For any supported chord, this can be pressed to cycle between the alternate shapes.
  

With this initial chord revision the following alternate shapes have been added:

• Alt. barre chord shapes (Major, Minor and Major 7th).
  
  
• Alt. power chord shapes to optionally include an additional root note with the 3rd finger.
  
  
• Alt. F and B open chord shapes.
  
  
• Alt. shapes for all open Major 7th guitar chords.
  
  
• The cycle chord button can be used to alternate Dim7 chord positions (these chords were already in the application but this is a new way to swap between them).
  

Aside from chords there are a couple more miscellaneous features this update adds:

• The loaded preset file name now displays in light grey above the fretboard.
  
  
• Manual scale preset changes (as in adding or removing notes in the bottom left box) are referenced against the main scale library. If a manual combination matches a library preset then this will apply the correct relative scale highlighting (for example if you manually entered in the G Major scale it would automatically adjust the highlighting on the F# note to blue).
  

This update also includes the following bug fixes:

• The sustain button state now correctly saves between sessions
  
  
• Fixed a display bug on the menu slide out icon hover state
  
  
• The grey-out effect has been made uniform across the relative scale highlighting notes.
  
  
• Display bug when re-pressing the current chord selector tab has been fixed.
  
  
• Dim7 chord shapes reviewed and corrected (including fix for alternate tunings).
  
  
• Open string display on power chords revised.
  

And that's just about everything! Thanks for reading and keep practicing.

Fraser

A small update is inbound!
–Bug fix for scales not reloading correctly
–Save/ load now retains file name and last saved location
–Bug fix for Dim7 chord state not always saving between session
–Chord names now automatically display as sharp/ flat relative to the loaded scale
–Engine upgrade
–Larger sharp and flat icons for the default option buttons