skalaanalyser

Skalaanalyser is a software tool designed to analyze musical scales and tunings from audio signals or symbolic music representations. It aims to identify the scale type, tonal center, and tuning system used in a piece, and to provide researchers, educators, and musicians with detailed analytic results.

The program accepts input in audio formats (such as WAV or MP3) as well as symbolic data (such as MIDI or MusicXML). Its analysis outputs typically include the detected key or scale, a confidence score, a mapping of scale degrees to a reference keyboard, and information about the tuning system (for example equal temperament, just intonation, or microtonal tunings). It can also detect modal usage, scale variants, and the presence of non-diatonic features such as borrowed notes or chromatic passing tones. Visualizations often accompany the results, including pitch-class histograms, scale ladders, and tonal graphs. Users can export results for further study and integration with other tools.

Under the hood, skalaanalyser relies on a combination of signal processing and pattern recognition. Pitch estimation methods (for polyphonic textures) combined with chroma features and probabilistic models produce estimates of the most likely scale and key. In cases of ambiguity, the software reports multiple hypotheses with associated confidence levels and suggests contextual interpretations.

Typical use cases include music-theory analysis of compositions, ethnomusicology studies of scales and tunings across cultures, pedagogy for teaching scale concepts, and pre-production analysis for composers and producers. Limitations include reduced accuracy in highly polyphonic passages, extreme microtonality, or noisy recordings.

See also: pitch class analysis, key detection, scale (music), microtonality, music information retrieval.