Force random notes into a scale after transposing

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1

Hi everybody, Hi Sam,

I’m relatively new on Sonic Pi, so first let me thank Sonic Pi team and Sam Arron for making such a cool program! I’m having so much fun on it!

So here’s my question: I’m working on a project wich uses generating random notes and transposing to make variations. Is there a way to force the transposed result to respect a scale I defined before, such as in the “scale” midi effect in ableton?

Hope my question is clear, and many thanks in advance!

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2

I don’t know if my question is clear enough, so let me try to aks it a different way:

imagine I have a note X wich is randomly generated from different variables and decisions I made in the code, for example a E, but I would like this one to respect a scale of (still for example) C minor, so I get E flat instead.

How is that possible in Sonic Pi?

Again sorry if my question is dumb and the answer evident, I’m a newbie to Sonic Pi

3

Not quite sure of your question, but you can take a random integer and use it to index a list of allowed notes.
For example, you could have a three octave range of notes in the scale of :c and play notes from this chosen randomly like this.

notes = scale(:c3,:major,num_octaves: 3) # list of 22 notes
live_loop :test do
  n=rand_i(22)
  puts n
  play notes[n]
  sleep 0.2
end
4

Hi @simcitizen - welcome to our community!

Fab question! I don’t have much to add at this point in addition to @robin.newman’s remarks other than to say that it might be easier to think of a random nth note of a scale rather than, say, E. That way you get to look up the nth note using the approach Robin demonstrates above.

Good luck and I look forward to hearing more of what you get up to with Sonic Pi!

5

Thanks Robin and Sam for your quick replies! You totally answered to my question! I’m going to immediatly test your suggestions!

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