This REAPER script allows you to select any range of MIDI notes and open up a website that shows you all the possible scales your notes are in!
This can be really helpful when you bring in some MIDI and need to figure out what scale it is in quickly. Or if you wrote something and aren't sure what scale you are using (which happens to me a lot 😅).
I will show you two ways to use this.
- Online mode where it will input your notes into scales-chords.com, giving you the name of the scale and lots of additional useful info.
- Offline mode where it will only show you the name of the scale.
Online mode (script)
To install this script, you need Reapack installed.
To use the script, open the Actions menu (shortcut: ?), in the top right corner where it says “Section:”, select “MIDI Editor” and search for "Script: Mordi-ahmusic_Search selected notes in scale finder.lua".
Once the script is running, it will open a website with all the possible scales your notes are in.
I recommend setting this up in your MIDI toolbar or setting a shortcut for it! ⭐️
Offline mode (native)
One downside of the previous script is that it depends on your internet to find the scale.
However, there’s also a way to search for the scale offline using a native REAPER feature called “Scale Finder”.
You can find this under the menu View > Scale Finder.
Once you have this open you can either input the notes individually with your MIDI keyboard. Or select the notes in your MIDI editor and click on Use MIDI editor selected notes. Then a list will appear with all the possible scales.
You won’t get the same amount of info like you get on the scale-finder website though. It’s just limited to the name of the scale.
You could use this feature to also identify the name of your chords but for this I honestly prefer using this → Quickest way to detect MIDI chords ↗️
That’s it!
Fun fact: I made this script in 2018 by tweaking Mordi’s script which is also amazing: “Script: Mordi_Search selected notes in chord finder.lua”
At the bottom of the MIDI editor in REAPER there’s a checkbox called “Key Snap”. When you tick it, you can choose a scale and all of your MIDI notes will be restricted to that scale!
ㅤ
