The EigenD software uses text file to define custom scales.
The location on MacOSX is here: /Users/youruser/Library/Eigenlabs/Scale Manager/User Scales.txt
The location on Windows is here: C:\Users\youruser\My Documents\Eigenlabs\Scale Manager\User Scales.txt
Note 1: Replace youruser by your user name on the computer as indicated be the directly that already exists in the Users directory.
Note 2: This path is to a file in your own personal documents directory. Do not confuse it with a similar-named directory in the EigenD installation, which also contains a User Scales.txt file which is just an example file.
To create your own scale, open a text editor (e.g. TextEdit, found in Applications), then decide on which notes you would like in the scale and work out how many semitones each note is away from the tonic. Next, write a horizontal list of all the notes in your scale in this format (semitones away from the tonic) in your text editor, with a space between each note. You can also name your scale, which will appear in the EigenBrowser in parentheses - here is an example of how you would lay out your file for the major scale:
[name goes here]
; Comment on the scale goes here (this is ignored by the EigenD software)
intervals=0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Then save your file as 'User Scales.txt' in your ~/LIbrary/Eigenlabs/Scale Manager directory.You can define as many scales as you like in this way by starting a new line in the text editor for each new scale. E.g. if I wrote major and then chromatic in this format it would read as follows:
[major scale 1]
; This is the major scale
intervals=0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12
[chromatic scale 1]
; This is the chromatic scale
intervals=0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
To create microtonal scales, you can use fractions of semitones to represent microtonal tunings (so to convert from cents, divide by 100). E.g. if I wanted to represent the 17-tone equal tempered scale in this format:
[17-tone equal temperament]
; This is the 17-tone equal temperament scale
intervals=0 0.7059 1.4118 2.1177 2.8236 3.5295 4.2354 4.9413 5.6472 6.3531 7.0588 7.7649 8.4708 9.1767 9.8826 10.5885 11.2944 12
Please note: If the intervals of your scale will not fit onto one line, you will need to indent the line by putting at least one space at the beginning of the line.
This will create a 'user scale' for each scale in your text file, which will appear at the bottom of the scale browser as 'user 1 (followed by your scale name in parentheses)' for the first scale, 'user 2 (name)' for the second scale etc., and you can select these scales as you would any other scale in the EigenD software (please refer to Eigenharp Pico Tutorial 3 for more details on changing your scale presets).
Please Note: If you edit this text file whilst EigenD is running, you will need to restart before any changes you have made will apply.
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