Skip to main content

Scale Library

RESERVOIR includes more than 100 scales organized by tradition and theoretical origin. Each scale includes a description of its cultural context and compositional character.

Western Modes

Pentatonic & Blues

Symmetric Scales

Jazz & Extended

European Extended

Japanese Scales

Indian Ragas

East Asian (Other)

Southeast Asian — Gamelan

West Asian — Maqam, Makam, Dastgah

Maqam, Makam, and Dastgah scales with fractional intervals use the microtonal pitch system; integer-only variants exist as 12-TET approximations.

East African

Synthetic

RESERVOIR includes a substantial bank of synthetic scales drawn from the mid-20th-century jazz-modal tradition — systematic constructions built from triads, quartal stacks, diminished cycles, major-seventh intervals, and hexadic mutations of the supra-diatonic system.

Mono-Quality Triads (8 scales)

Five-, six-, and seven-note scales constructed from consecutive triads of a single quality (major, minor, diminished, augmented) stacked in various cycles.

Quartal Formations (8 scales)

Scales built from perfect and augmented fourth intervals — Quartal, Quartal Triads, Quartal with Neighbors, Mixed Quartal Augmented, Quartal Diminished, Quartal Nine Tone, Inverted Quartal, and Quartal Upper Neighbors.

Diminished Variations (6 scales)

Scales derived from diminished structures with chromatic interjections and subscriptions.

Major 7th Interval Variations (8 scales)

Scales exploring major-7th intervals with varying numbers of subscripted and superscripted tones.

Consecutive Major Sevenths (5 scales)

Scales from stacked major-7th intervals with chromatic additions.

Hetero and Bi-Quality Triads (5 scales)

Scales combining triads of different qualities — major with quartal, quartal with minor, diminished with quartal, augmented with quartal, and bi-quality (major+minor) tetrachords.

Tertian Patterns (4 scales)

Stacked-third constructions — Tertian Chord, Tertian Patterns, Interpolated Tertian, Tertian Etude.

Mutated Hexadic Scales (8 scales)

Six-note scales from mutations of the supra-diatonic system.

Intervallic Hexadic (4 scales)

Six-note scales generated through intervallic mutation procedures.

Compact Hybrids (3 scales)

  • Phrygian-Suspended Pentatonic (0 1 5 7 10)
  • Blues-Locrian Hexatonic (0 3 5 6 10 11)
  • Compact Tetratonic (0 2 5 6)

Other Synthetic

  • Morphic (0 1 3 7 8 10 11) — synthetic heptatonic with chromatic clusters
  • Infra-Diatonic (0 1 3 4 6 8 10) — Greek enharmonic genus in 12-TET
  • Greek Pentatonic, Archaic (0 1 4 5 7) — Phrygian-flavored pentatonic

Microtonal — Just Intonation

Microtonal — Historical Temperaments

Custom Scale

Set the customPitchClasses parameter (0–4095) to define any combination of the 12 pitch classes. Each bit represents a pitch class: bit 0 = C, bit 1 = C#, …, bit 11 = B. For example, 2741 (binary: 101010110101) = C Major.

Legacy Preset Compatibility

RESERVOIR resolves a number of legacy scale names from older presets to their current counterparts. Saved projects from earlier versions continue to load correctly, even when the underlying scale has been renamed or replaced — the resolution happens silently inside the engine.