As Crotchety pointed out…
Btw: May I point out that Natural Minor presets (i.e. Am with all the white notes) are present in the form of the relative Major scale (3 semitones up in case you need to know).
You were onto something. Seems like a good result. Happy days all.
Yes - I’ know my church modes. I just think it’s silly the way it is.
+1
But how should it be? Most composers call the harmonic / melodic minor alterations a “key change”. ie: Nobody writes music in harmonic or melodic minor. They either wtite in major or minor and make necessary alterations as they occur naturally in the music. So although we all know that these variations exist, along with the blues scales etc. they are very rarely referred to in practise and to a certain extent you just assume a harmonic minor from the position of the incidentals in the score. Much like myxolydian and aeolean scales are rarely if ever, referred to in a score heading. Of course all this may change but not yet as far as I can see.
Cubase writes to the rules they know are in general use. To make the proper alterations to programming they would need an explanation from you or others as to what and why these alterations should be.
I don’t know my “church scales”. I only know key signatures. In Cubase, aside from the GUI display you pointed out, they look fine to me as described above. Straight major and minor and no frills.
I just wonder why you think it’s silly.
If you’re a guitarist you needn’t bother as I will understand. 
harmonic minor is not a “straight” or normal scale in modern, western european markets, which must be Cubase’s core markets.
A “straight” / “normal” minor scale, as pointed out now 10000000000000000 time, is all the white notes from a to a.
A harmonic minor has the 7.th note (g) augmented to g#.
Ok?
I know. Look at all the music you can and tell me where you can find any reference to it as a KEY. A scale is not a KEY. A KEY is not a SCALE. You will not find any scale markewd on music in general though it may be rarely found in helpful notes by the composer. Most skilled musiacians will know from the accidentals what the scales are.
You lost me there?
This song is a A major. Therefore it is based on the A major scale.
If I want pitch correct to autotune the melody for this tune - I will choose the major scale in the key of A.
Great. Works in Cubase.
Now the song 2 is in the key of a minor. I want pitch correct on the melody so I choose A for the key and the minor scale. But guess what - Cubase has it wrong so every time my melody hits the seventh (g) Cubase corrects it to g# because the MINOR SCALE IS IN FACT NOT A MINOR SCALE BUT A HARMONIC MINOR SCALE.
Now - for song2, knowing my church modes, ofcourse I could chose C major in stead. It would work. Bot come on.
Now - Steinberg should either correct the label “minor” to “harmonic minor” OR better yet: include the normal minor scale in stead.
But Cubase cannot use the terms harmonic or melodic in terms of the key. Strictly speaking on a written scale they don’t exist! If they did they’d have the “bugs” that aeolian, myxolydian, lydian etc. were also not included. The plug in has different settings and is cutomisable so you may find it works after some tweaking as it exists.
The manual also states that it “fixes” audio inconsistencies “to the nearest semitone” but it doens’t state as far as I can see yet whether the nearest semitone is to the left or right (slight ). Not knowing your source material that correction to the
You may have a point but I think it needs elucidating some more re the plugin rather than the scales.
However to do this the way you think it should be could be complicated. The ascending Melodic minor sharpens the F & G on the way up and comes down all the white keys. Thus the A to A “straight” minor is used generally only on the way down. Cubase uses the Harmonic minor because it’s the simplest one in the book at present because it sees no straight A to A (all white notes) going UP. To it’s way of design it only sees that scale coming DOWN. Cubase cannot rewrite the book of harmony to suit itself or us. It’s not strictly my (and certainly it’s not yours) view but I think that’s the Cubase view.
It may not be right but it seems Cubase has adopted a set of rules it thinks are generally global AT PRESENT.
You and I know that what you are trying to do is reasonable but the “book” does not.
I’d say things could be better but whether I’d call it totally wrong? I can live with musical anomalies because they’ve been there all my life. There’s much worse to work around out there.
Minor scale - Wikipedia gives explanation very similar to music grade student textbooks as I remember them.
ps If you are from the UK or the US, and I’ve got to look this up, the scale Cubase uses could well be called “the minor scale” in (some) European or Germanic notation as it is the only one that has the same notes going up as coming down and so is consistent to write in programs. Thus you have you “correct” G#.
Pop music composers, it seems, are not part of the establishment able to influence the rules to change just yet.
Dear Conman - you’re not getting it.
When you chose “major” the preset notes are correct.
When you chose “minor” the preset notes are not correct, because the seventh note in is raised a semitone for some reason.
Let’s take the A minor example again.
The song is in the key of a minor, meaning the note g# (the seventh step in the minor scale) simply does not belong there.
If you write a song in a minor, notes that naturally belong in there are: A - B - C - D - E - F - G.
Of course you may use every note you want - but then you’re breaking out of the a minor key.
THUS - the raised seventh note in the minor IS WRONG.
Believe it or not buddy.
And one last thing: stop confusing people with the up and down nonsence. The harmonic scale is exactly what I described: a natural minor scale with the seventh raised 1 semitone. And nothing else. Both up and down.
The scale you are referring to that changes going up or down is the melodic minor scale.
I love it when people say I don’t get it. It means I totally do. I know I do.
Take the blinkers off. You can’t make up rules to suit your delusions. You’re now trying to crreate an argument which is not what I want so carry on being outraged.
No way to do this gently I’m afraid.
You never got it. Even when spelled out for you. They’re not MY rules or Steinbergs.
That minor is CORRECT. It’s not harmonic or melodic. It’s just MINOR. That G# is supposed to be there. It’s the only one that’s there both UP and DOWN the scale.
Learn your minor scales my son. All of them.
Lesson over. You’re on your own. Good luck.
I give you this:
Theoretically, you could defend the label “minor”. Granted. However, in the current preset with the raised 7th - it cintains the notes of the harmonic scale. You cannot argue against this. Look up the harmonic minor scale for gods sakes.
However…in 99% of the cases when someone uses the “minor” scale in modern music, they’re referring to the natural minor scale. End of discussion.
Either you’re trolling or you’re arguing for the sake of it or you simply don’t know what you’re talking about. It stops here old man.
All this talk of keys and scales and no-ones mentioned modes, ionian, aeolian, lydian, mixolydian, dorian, docrian, penatonic etc. I always use the custom thingy on the autotune as the programmed keys are either ioninan or aeolian and i use phrygian and lydian quite a bit. The autotune definitely get the notes wrong for anything but c major (ionian).
p.s. aeolian, Phrygian and lydian are all minor scales. interestingly enough phrygian e minor has exactly the same notes as c major (ionian) but go from e to e rather than from c to c.
“minor scale” is rather a scale category than a scale itself. “a minor” says nothing about any note other than the minor third and the perfect fifth.
Therefore Steinberg marked it wrong, or rather inaccurately, if the so-called “minor scale” does indeed include the major seventh.
I think the confusion derives from mixing keys and scales. If you talk keys, it should actually be just one option to choose from: “C major / a minor”. Additionally there should be other options for scales like “harmonic minor (starting with A)”, “mixolydian (starting with whatever note you please)” and so forth.
Wow, how this topic has taken off!
Just what I was going to say myself. Let’s see if this helps (some of this is repeating points made by others, I’m just trying to summarise here):
1) Melodic Minor: This plugin only works on a particular scale of notes, i.e. a pattern of steps, so it would be darn near impossible to set it up for a strictly Melodic Minor scale, which is different up and down as everyone already knows. So MM has no part to play in the debate.
2) (Harmonic) Minor: Whatever anyone’s feeling about the way the (Harmonic) Minor preset is labelled, it is useful to have it, as its step pattern is somewhat unique in that it can’t be represented by any of the Ionian, Dorian, etc mode family (more on this later). So keep it, and for Minor just read Harmonic Minor. (I know this will set the cat among the pigeons but…)
3) Natural Minor presets already exist in the form of the realtive Major. It really doesn’t matter what you call it as long as the notes are right.
4) Modes: I think there might be a way of using existing presets to access the modes too. C Major can be used for C Ionian, D Dorian, E Phrygian, F Lydian, G Mixolydian, A Aeolian, B Locrian. Therefore it should, although I haven’t tried it, be possible to apply the appropriate Major Scale to work with any of these modes in any key.
5) For anything else, such as pentatonics (with or without the blue notes) there is Custom. But maybe there isn’t much of a reason for those as they are based on the relative Natural Minor / Major scales. I can only think that, seeing as they were such an obvious inclusion, it was reckoned that they were already there in the guise of other scales.
6) Chromatic: For all that I’ve said, I have found this scale to make the best job. I tried a “correct” major scale once and it just didn’t sound right, somehow. So maybe there is an issue here, or maybe it was just my singing!
So perhaps it’s not as bad as it seems, we just need to think of scales in terms of degrees, rather than anything tied to particular notes (I know you all know this, I’m just putting in some context). I’ll elaborate on that if anyone wants but I want to keep this post to the point (although not as short as I envisaged…).
Anyone reading this thread might get the impression that there is no solution for what IMHO appears to be a rather poorly implemented user interface for this particular plug-in. To Steinberg’s credit, they implemented a “CUSTOM” setting that allows you to make whatever scale you want to be emphasized by the pitch correction algorithm. Once you have designed your scale, you also have the option to save that as a new preset for which you can name whatever you want (e.g. C Major, A minor (Natural), A minor (Harmonic), etc.).
It doesn’t take that long to create your own presets, and if you practice your computer due diligence…you will backup all of your presets should you need them in the future!
Now that is a workaround!!!
Unfortunately, even if for instance you enter the data A, B, C, D, E, F, G for the A natural minor scale…the plug-in will visually associate that data with the key of C Major, indicated by the darker letters on the piano keys. While technically correct, I can see where this can be a source of confusion.
I believe with a tweak to the definition of the CUSTOM setting (no visual association with any musical key, or explicitly displaying the data entered as dark letters on the piano keys), and fixing the obvious graphic anomalies will help this plug-in be much more universally user friendly!
Al
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I think what we have seen…using the musical KEY does not completely define all the possible variables!
But, being able to define the scale used will cover most if not all pitch correction functionality no matter how surgical the application! And don’t forget as pointed out earlier…there is also a chromatic preset!
I believe the functionality is there…it is however IMHO clunky and not polished as of yet!
Al
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