Hi,

Well, after many years of benefiting from the efforts of all of the nice
people who have contributed programs, utilities, files, etc. to the music
scene via the internet, I would like to say thank you by contributing
something of my own.

If I were as adept at programing as I am at music I would have done so long
ago. Unfortunately I am not. Fact is, I've only written a few programs out
of necessity. And because of my extreme tendency for 'spaghetti logic' and
the lack of time and energy I've put toward the developement of proper user
interfaces, I've spared the world at large from exposure to my hacks.

However, after coming across a program called 'Watch It' I found on the
internet which allows the displaying of .gif pictures from within other
programs when used as an accessory, I got an idea... I had previously
written a program which would produce graphic representations of guitar
fret boards with dots on the graphic that represent all playable notes
in any chosen key. All in all a very helpful program for guitar players.
But, it suffers from an very poor user interface and the 'spaghetti logic'
I used in coding it was so maligned as too prevent any future revisions to
correct that. But it met my needs and the output was very nice. So I got
this idea.

I decided to put the two together and now anyone using this can view these
guitar scales from within their sequencer programs or any other program or
even the desktop for that matter.

The real use for these scale representations (or atleast the way I like to
use them most of the time) is to use them like a sort of 'road map' or aid
when improvising guitar parts in songs. As a matter of fact what I like to
do is just let the feeling or mood of the song guide me while I play. And
it's so easy to do it while using these scales because your mind is
completely free to follow the mood of the song without being bothered by
concentrating on whether or not you are playing the right notes. Just look
at the chart while you are playing and only hit notes that have dots on
them (the hollow 'dots' or circles are also playable and they represent
the root tones). Cool huh? You'll be amazed how enlightening and liberating
this can be.

All you have to is pick the correct chart for the key of the song or
section of the song that you want to improvise in and away you go.
It's that easy and you can do it all from with in the sequencer program
you are currently using. I have included two sets of scales (major & minor)
with this archive. They both contain all keys. Also they were both created
for medium res (640x200). If anyone wants them for another resolution or
wants different versions for other scales then e-mail at my address included
below and I will do my best. The program I wrote to create these graphics
does it's work based on the formulae for the scale (ie. A major scale is:
'whole step/whole step/half step/whole step/whole step/whole step/half step'
ok) and you will need to give me the formulae if you want me to create
custom scales for you.

I would like to thank Stefan Bock for writing the Watch It gif viewer
that I mentioned before. I have included it in this archive so that you may
use it as I described. Also, I have included a small utility that will
allow you to reserve a user defined amount of memory at boot up that won't
be gobbled up by your sequencer program to allow you to load in the picture.
I think you need to reserve between 750-1000k with it to display these
graphics from within your sequencer (maybe not YOUR sequencer but I use
C-LAB's Creator and it takes ALL of the memory unless I reserve some with
this utility). However you may not need it -experiment. The reserve utility
is courtesy of Double Click software (now defunct) and is also
PD/freeware/shareware -read the docs.

Ok I really hope this helps someone else out as much as some of the things
others have shared have helped me out. You can reach me with questions,
comments, scale/resolution requests, etc. at:

r.johnson@support.com


I look forward to hearing from you and have fun improvising.

Ray Johnson
Burbank, Ca.
USA
