SCALA scale

The SCALA scale format is the format used to save scales in the SCALA program. It has become the standard for exchange of scales.

In brief:

The first line is the title of the scale which can be shown on the user interface. The number of notes follows on a separate line. Then the scale values follow, one to a line.

Scale values can be shown as ratios or cents. Cents values are done with just the decimal point, not the word cents. Any value with a decimal point is understood to be in cents notation.

Lines beginning with exclamation marks are comments.

For full details see the page Scala scale file format

If you save a scale from FTS then it is automatically in this format - well except for rare cases.

In some situations with the scales for parts options, you can make a scale in FTS with negative scale values. These are just intended for use internally within FTS or for exchange with other copies of FTS. They are not valid SCALA scales because the format doesn't permit negative values (a negative frequency doesn't make sense).