FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to computer aided composing arrangements.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Computer aided composing has changed the way of working when composing tunes. Traditionally composer composes and then musicians or the composer plays what he has written. During the computer age it is possible to let the computer immediately play the tune that has been composed. This has opened the world of composing to more people.

Instead of the fine-line staff, the tradi- tional way of writing musical notation which originated in European classical music, digital audio work ^¬ stations (DAWs) commonly use a 2 dimensional grid called the piano roll, to write MIDI-standard note- data. The piano roll is a step sequencer, where the 12 notes of western music are mapped on the X axis, and Y axis represents time, usually divided to beats, bars and ticks.

To write harmonic music using the piano roll, it is assumed the user is familiar with the theory of diatonic music, that uses scales, intervals, chords and chord progressions. The DAW merely provides an open-ended framework of all the available pitches, and it is left to the user to put the notes in the right places to create music in the desired key and scale.

To make this process easier for users without prior knowledge of music theory, the current selection of DAWs in the market provide very little help. None of the commercial options available today provide any kind of references of aides to scales, chords or in- tervals. SUMMARY

The invention discloses a method for compos ^¬ ing a tone, in which method a piano roll is used for representation of musical notation, wherein in the method the scale to be used is determined, the piano roll according to the selected scale is filtered in order to provide a filtered piano roll consisting the pitches of the determined scale and the user of the method places notes for at least one instrument on the filtered piano roll in order to produce a tune in ac ^¬ cordance with the selected scale.

The method according to the invention is preferably implemented as a computer software product or as a network service.

The benefit of the invention is that a person not familiar with the music theory can easily compose tunes that are in accordance with the music theory and thus composed tunes sound harmonic. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a further understanding of the invention and constitute a part of this specification, illus ^¬ trate embodiments of the invention and together with the description help to explain the principles of the invention. In the drawings:

Fig. 1 is a flow chart of a method according to the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Reference will now be made in detail to the embodiments of the present invention, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings.

In figure 1 a flow chart of a method accord- ing to the invention is disclosed. The embodiment of Figure 1 discloses a simple way to help the user write harmonic music without prior knowledge of music the ^¬ ory .

According to the present invention the user first decides the scale to be used, step 10. It is possible to provide a predetermined set of scales but the present invention is not limited to those. It is possible to add further scales and they work according to the principles of the invention. When the scale has been determined the composition tool filters the piano roll according to the scale, step 11. The filtering process means that only the pitches that belong to the selected scale can be chosen. It is possible to imple ^¬ ment this by using different techniques. For example, it is possible to change the visualization of the pi- ano roll so that only the pitches belonging to the se ^¬ lected scale are visible or the roll may be maintained as it was and the selection is forced to the closest allowable pitch. In the last step the notes are chosen to the tune, step 12.

According to the present invention when the user adds a virtual instrument to a channel, he is automatically shown a piano roll, by default in a pen- tatonic scale starting from the base-note C. The de ^¬ fault scale may be changed to any other scale. The pitches which do not belong to the C pentatonic scale are filtered out of the piano roll grid's X axis. The user is given the option to change the base-note to any of the western music's 12 notes, by selecting the desired base-note from a drop-down menu. The user is also given an option to change the default scale to another one.

The possibilities of pre-defined scales are without limits, some of the most common examples being pentatonic, major, minor, whole note scale, minor blues, major blues, double harmonic scale and the gypsy scale. When the user wishes to add another virtual instrument into the mix, the piano roll of the new in ^¬ strument is automatically filtered to the same scale as the previous one, making it effortless to make the harmonies of these two instruments fit together. The user is able to add any number of harmonic instruments he wishes.

In music theory, chord is defined as a set of three or more different notes played simultaneously. In the diatonic scales that consist of 7 notes (major and minor scale) , 7 triad chords that work harmoni ^¬ cally within the scale can be identified. They are usually referred in degrees, i.e. the first degree is the chord which starts from the first note of the scale. In C major scale, the first degree is the C ma ^¬ jor chord. Using Music Portal's filtered piano roll, it is possible for the user to automatically paint chords in the scale, without actually knowing how to play them. In this case the information on the X axis is changed from individual pitches to chords by their degree number.

It is also possible to transpose the notes of one scale to another. If the user has written notes in the scale of C major, he can select instead a minor scale from the drop-down menu, and the notes are moved to match the change.

In an embodiment the music is produced by us ^¬ ing a musical logo. In the logo the logo portions, such as letters, in a logotype of a company are given one note each, filtering them by a given scale that may be determined by the logo designed or may be cho ^¬ sen dynamically. When the user moves their mouse over the letters of the logo, a harmonic melody plays ac ^¬ cording to the principles of the invention.

In an embodiment the method disclosed above is implemented as a computer program that is embodied in a computer readable medium or as a network service. The possible other delivery and execution methods are known to a person skilled in the art of software pro ^¬ duction. The tunes produced with the present embodi ^¬ ment may be stored in a personal computing device or network server. Personal computing devices include for example personal computers and mobile phones.

In an embodiment of the invention the method disclosed above is performed in a computing device by executing the computer program mentioned above. The work station comprises input means, processing means and output means. Output means include at least dis ^¬ play and speakers or headphones.

It is obvious to a person skilled in the art that with the advancement of technology, the basic idea of the invention may be implemented in various ways. The invention and its embodiments are thus not limited to the examples described above; instead they may vary within the scope of the claims.