Window 140

=  Colour Code Options =

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Options for the colour coding of notes played and the keyboard note colours

PC kbd
Show the PC keyboard in colour...

See Colour code options to set up the colours to your liking and try out other colour schemes. The standard setting here is Barbara Hero's Pythagorean based colour scheme.

Play from PC keyboard
Show Lambdoma notes as you play, & play them using mouse or PC Keyboard...

Tips:

You can use the arrow keys to move a sustained chord around after you have played it.

Show the Bs | Notes Played window to see your notes in a score like form as dots on staffs.

Click on the music keyboard icons - to show the notes on a music keyboard as you play. You can also play the notes by clicking on the music keyboard picture.

The menu under the Tune Smithy icon at top left of the Lambdoma Keyboard picture has a quick link to the options for this keyboard.

Music kbd pics
Show the Music keyboard pictures in colour...

See Colour code options to set up the colours to your liking and try out other colour schemes. The standard setting here is Barbara Hero's Pythagorean based colour scheme.

Show music keyboard layout
This shows the notes on a picture of a music keyboard...

You see them here as you play from your midi keyboard. You can also play the notes here using the PC keyboard or mouse. Click on the keyboard first to get started playing.

Tip: you can use the page up and page down keys as a quick way to change the width in octaves.

Also if you go to the Tune Smithy icon at top left of the keyboard, you can quickly get from there to the options for this window.

Lambdoma
Show the Lambdoma keyboard in colour...

See Colour code options to set up the colours to your liking and try out other colour schemes. The standard setting here is Barbara Hero's Pythagorean based colour scheme.

Play from PC keyboard
Play in this tuning from PC keyboard...

Notes Played
Show the Tune or Notes played as score notes in colour

See Colour code options to set up the colours to your liking and try out other colour schemes. The standard setting here is Barbara Hero's Pythagorean based colour scheme.

Notes Played...
Shows the notes as you play them...

Tip: You can configure it to show note names, sol fa names, ratios, etc from the Tune Display window (Ctrl + 19)

It's meant just to give some feedback about note positions as you play. It can't be edited or saved, and you can only show your current playing, you can't move it back and forth to see earlier notes. To do all that properly would require a new program probably.

Theremin
Show the theremin visual effects in colour...

See Colour code options to set up the colours to your liking and try out other colour schemes. The standard setting here is Barbara Hero's Pythagorean based colour scheme.

Ther...
Theremin played from mouse or joystick...

The theremin is that instrument you can play by waving your hands in the air without touching anything.

Here you use the mouse or joystick instead of just moving your hands around. As you move the mouse or joystick the note you play slides around in pitch wherever you want it to go.

This is just a bit of fun. Has various options - try the sliding chords preset :-).

Open...
Open a previously saved colour scheme...

Open...
Select preset colour coding system...

The presets are standard ones from various sources.

Some musicians with absolute pitch actually "hear colours" when notes are played. Others like to associate particular colours with the notes they play for whatever reason.

>> History
Click here to show recently visited files of this type...

Alternatively, Ctrl + right click on button, text field or drop list

Keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F10

Save As...
Save your own colour schemes here...

You can make your own colour schemes according to your own associations of colours with notes with this window, then save it here for future use

Equally spaced Colours
Colours equally spaced through the octave...

So for instance if you had twelve colours to assign, then each twelve equal semitone would get one of the colours. Or with six colours, one for each whole tone and so on.

Colour Harmonic Series Fragment
This colours them so that 3/2 is the midpoint of the colour scheme...

If you had five colours for instance, they get assigned to

1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, then back to the first colour at 2.0

showing the numbers as decimals.

Or in terms of ratios, they get assigned to:

1/1, 6/5, 7/5, 8/5, 9/5, 2/1

Generally this options colours according to a fragment of the harmonic series, hence the name.

So the fifth is the mid point with this method, while the equal spaced method

has the mid point at the tritone, 600 cents. This method may be particularly

of interest to any working with harmonic fragment scales.

Colour by Scale degrees
Lets you assign a separate colour for each degree of the current scale

Relative - start at 1/1 as first colour whatever its pitch
So, choice of the 1/1 in the Pitch window is coloured with the start colour

Repeat colour scheme at intervals of
You can set this to another repeat, say 3/1 for Bohlen Pierce

Colour wheel with start colour
Spectrum colours starting at any colour in the spectrum...

Some extra shades of red-purple are added to the spectrum to complete the wheel so really its a colour wheel with the extra colours added from violet around to red. That's why magenta is included here although it isn't really a spectrum colour. This also lets the spectrum join up smoothly from one octave to the next - otherwise in scales with many notes to an octave, there would be a jump from violet for the last pitch in one octave to red for the start of the next.

But if you want your spectrum colours without magenta you can easily make them into custom colours, say 12 custom colours, then adjust the ones at the violet end to be a bit less red.

Red
Start the spectrum at red

Orange
Start the spectrum at orange

Yellow
Start the spectrum at yellow

200
Start the spectrum at green

Blue - Green
Start the spectrum at blue-green

Blue
Start the spectrum at blue

Indigo
Start the spectrum at indigo

Set custom colours
You can set as many colours as you like here individually...

The colours can be in any order you like, e..g if you want to go Yellow Blue Red Green Orange Purple or whatever that's fine.

If intermediate pitches are played, then the colours you give are interpolated, so for instance a pitch between blue and red will be some shade of purple. A pitch between say orange and purple could be purple, red or orange. The method follows the shortest way it can around the colour wheel when interpolating like this. So Yellow to Blue is interpolated as a yellow green, green or blue, and not as an orange, red or purple because the route from yellow to blue via green follows the shorter path of the two around the colour wheel.

Number of colours
How many colours to set individually

Number of colours - SPIN
Adjust the number of colours to set individually

Custom Colours...
Brings up the colours window where you can set the colours

Vary by octave
Colours vary as you go from one octave or repeat to the next

saturation for 1/1
Colour saturation for the start pitch

saturation for 1/1 - SPIN
Adjust start pitch colour saturation

saturation for 1/1 - SPIN
Adjust start pitch colour saturation by large steps

Add
How much to vary the saturation by for each octave

Add - SPIN
Adjust the amount of saturation variation for each octave

for each octave
Minimum saturation - needed for easy to read text at high and low pitches

For light backgrounds, text at high or low octaves can merge with the background and be hard to read.

This happens if the saturation is low for the background and text, and the brightness is high for the text (the brightness variation is ignored for light background).

min from centre
How close the saturation can get to 50 - for easy to read text

For the dark backgrounds colouring method here, if the saturation and brightness both get close to 50, the text can become unreadable.

brightness - text only
Brightness for start pitch - ignored for background if set to light

brightness - text only - SPIN
Adjust start brightness

brightness - text only - SPIN
Adjust start brightness by larger amounts

Add
How much to vary the brightness by for each octave

Add - SPIN
Adjust the amount of brightness variation for each octave

max
Maximum brightness - needed for easy to read text at high or low pitches

For light backgrounds, text at high or low octaves can merge with the background and be hard to read.

This happens if the saturation is low for the background and text, and the brightness is high for the text (the brightness variation is ignored for light background).

min from centre
How close the brightness can get to 50 - for easy to read text

For the dark backgrounds colouring method here, if the saturation and brightness both get close to 50, the text can become unreadable.

Light
Light background, varying with the text colour, text darker,

Dark
Background usually dark, varying, contrasting with text light...

The situation can get reversed in some octaves with Vary by octave switched on.

All the same colour
Set a fixed colour background

Colour...
Set the background colour in the Colours window

Same colour as text
Use the same colour as the text, but with text much darker

Background brightness
How bright the background should be - needs to contrast with text brightness

Background brightness - SPIN
Adjust background brightness

Background brightness - SPIN
Adjust background brightness by large steps

Text brightness
How bright the text should be - needs to contrast with background brightness

Text brightness - SPIN
Adjust text brightness

Text brightness - SPIN
Adjust text brightness by large steps

Help = F1
Click for help for this window. Or F1. Other opts: Shift, Alt, Ctrl + click...

F1 or click shows the help for the current window in your web browser.

Some windows may have no help yet in which case the help icon is shown crossed out with a red line.

Shift + F1 or Shift + Click brings up the tool tips extra help window (this window) to show any extra help for a tool tip.

You can tell if a tool tip has extra help if it ends ... like this one.

Ctrl + F1 or Ctrl + click takes you to the list of keyboard shortcuts for Tune Smithy.

Alt + F1 or Alt + click (alternatively Caps lock physically held down + F1 or Click) takes you to the on-line page at the robertinventor.com web site about the current main window task - which gives a short introduction to it for newbies to the program. If there is no on-line page specific to a task, takes you to the main tune smithy page on the web site.

Since the help for Tune Smithy is currently a bit out of date and needs to be redone completely for the new 3.0 release, then you may find the on-line page for some of the newer tasks particularly useful.

Organise Windows = F2
Or F2 - Reset / save / open for individual windows, right click for cat. list...

Shows the Organise windows window - which you can use to reset all the parameters for the current window - or save them all, or open previously saved parameters for just this window. Also has a drop list of all the windows and their shortcuts.

You can also right click on this icon as a quick way to get the floating drop menu of all the Tune Smithy windows organised by category

Other Dialog Star
Tip of the day - For All category - right click for neighbouring windows...

Left click for a tip of the day in this category.

Right click to see a menu of neighbouring windows.

The neighbours are the ones you most often move to after this one or within a minute of this one, arranged by popularity.

So as you continue to use FTS, it will learn your habits, and the neighbouring windows listed here, should be the ones you most often visit after this one.