Hiya!
I've been looking forward to seeing this "scale tool" (or whatever you want to call it) on Bitwig for a lonnng time.
I see new version 6 has this tool implemented so you can choose from different scales and root notes, but I find the selection is fixed and you cannot add more custom scales.

Spoiler: Demo video for this new tool in Bitwig 6.

I found some time ago that Polarity made a controller for scales (and some other ones as well like melodies and chords, but I mainly use scales). The idea is perfect, it was quite much what I was looking for: being able to add more scales to the tool if needed, which I do.

I like to use Indian ragas (note: I know ragas are not exactly scales, but the order of the notes in ascendant and descendant order, but they can be used as scales) so I started to add my own ones.

The problem is that while working on a track, it could happen that all the program freezes if you are touching a knob and you click "undo", so you close it all, and when you reopen Bitwig it asks if you want to recover lost project, you click yes but the software does not actually recover anything, it's just the init template which shows up. It had never happened to me before so I guess the problem is the controller. What I do now is just write the note stack to a pattern where I start working on (Polarity's controller has a button for doing that), and then, deactivate the controller from Bitwig's settings. This way, if audio engine fails, I can kill Bitwig and recover what I was doing (with more or less luck, cause VSTs have their own story). So I mute those stack notes and move them off the grid (from -1 to 0 in the pattern). Then I hide the unused keys so I can work without worrying about notes out of scale.

But I find this way of working quite archaic and tedious, since you have to be careful not to consolidate a clip, because if you do, you lose the note stack...

So, after all this, has anybody notices about if this "scale mode" for version 6 could be implemented in the future to allow users to add custom scales?
Or, if, just in case, somebody knows how to do something similar with another tool or something, that won't complicate workflow and won't be causing crashes...

 

I would love to see it happen to where you can add custom scales in Bitwig but unfortunately I don't see them doing so anytime soon so instead of using a controller like Polarity's I have a dedicated bus in my session template where I use Audiomoderns Chordjam plugin and a few other midi FX that let's you select your key and scale to trigger chords and what not in realtime. I find this way is better for my workflow since Bitwig didn't have many native scales already built in like Romanian Minor, and other scales like Chordjam has.

 

Thanks! Not exactly what I was expecting, but I'll have a look at it, anyway.

I found that with Note Grid module you can build a custom scale, but to be honest, I have absolutely no clue of how to do it, since I don't use that tool and I have to learn first how to work with it, even though I'm following Gemini's instructions...