Tutorial 3 of 7
Keys, scales, tempo and sounds
Beginner 6 min
Choose a key and one of nine scales, set the tempo by slider, number or tapping, and pick one of five synth voices.
Everything in this tutorial lives in the Sound panel on the right (below the grids on a phone). All of it can be changed while the loop plays, and every change is one undo step.
Key and scale
The melody rows are not fixed notes. They follow the Musical key and Musical scale you choose:
- Musical key sets the lowest row (the root), from C3 to B4.
- Musical scale decides which notes the rows above it use. The row labels change immediately.
| Scale | Character |
|---|---|
| Major pentatonic | bright, nothing clashes — the default |
| Minor pentatonic | darker, bluesy, nothing clashes |
| Major, Natural minor | the classic happy and sad scales |
| Dorian, Mixolydian | modal flavours for lo-fi, funk and folk |
| Harmonic minor | dramatic, with a raised seventh |
| Blues | minor pentatonic plus the “blue” note |
| Chromatic | all twelve notes — total freedom, easy to clash |
Your squares stay where they are when you change the scale; they simply play the new scale's notes. That makes it easy to try the same shape in different moods.
Tempo
Tempo is measured in beats per minute (BPM); one beat is four steps.
- Drag the Tempo (BPM) slider (40–220),
- type an exact value into Exact tempo, or
- press Tap tempo at least twice in the rhythm you have in mind. Tonegrid averages your taps.
During playback the position is kept when you change the tempo, so the loop does not jump back to the start.
Swing
Swing (0–45%) delays every second step by that share of a step. Around 15–30% sounds relaxed; 40% is a heavy shuffle like the Shuffle blues template.
Melody sound
Melody sound chooses one of five synthesizer voices:
- Soft bell — a sine with a gentle octave overtone,
- Pure sine — round and simple,
- Warm triangle — a little brighter,
- Pluck — a short, filtered sawtooth like a plucked string,
- Airy pad — two slightly detuned tones with a slow fade, good for chords.
All sounds are generated live in your browser; there are no recorded samples. The same synth renders WAV exports, so what you hear is what you export.
Try it
Open the Lo-fi evening template: Dorian scale on A3, airy pad, 82 BPM and 28% swing. Then switch Musical scale to Major pentatonic and Melody sound to Pluck to hear how much those two settings change the mood.
Ready to try it?