Scale Syllabus

The 253 scales of the printed Scales Syllabus, rebuilt by the book's own algorithm — in notation, on the keyboard, on the fretboard, and in sound.

Scale Syllabus puts the 253 scales of Complete Scale Syllabus by Gianluca Barbaro in your pocket, and lets you see, hear and transpose every one of them.

The scales are not a stored list. The app rebuilds them with the algorithm the book itself was made with: every seventh chord, every combination of available tensions, folded together by rotation. That is why the numbering matches the printed page exactly — scale 145 here is scale 145 in the book.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

• See any scale in standard notation, on a piano keyboard, or on a guitar or bass fretboard • Transpose to any of the twelve keys, with each note spelled the way a musician would write it • Start from any degree: pick a mode and the scale is shown from that note, in the key you chose • Hear a scale or any of its chords, ascending or arpeggiated, with the notes lighting up as they sound • See the triads and four-note chords every degree carries, inversions included, and view any of them the same three ways • Read the fretboard as a whole map, or touch a fret for the run one hand can play from there • Ask for a chord and the neck answers with shapes a hand can really hold — tap again for the next one • Walk through the sixteen ways a four-note chord can be laid out inside two octaves of keyboard • Choose your instrument once, and clef, written octave and transposition follow • Find a scale from the notes themselves: play a phrase into the microphone, or type the note names, and the app lists the scales that contain them and says what chord they make • Follow the relationships: which scales contain this one, which ones it contains, and which are a note away • Print a scale as a sheet of engraved music, export it as PDF, or share it • Read six short chapters of music theory, with figures the app draws itself • Mark favourites and keep your own written notes on any scale

A guided tour goes through all of it the first time you open the app, and it can be replayed whenever you like.

The app speaks English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and Chinese, and you can look for a scale in your own language. The names of the scales themselves stay as the book prints them.

WHAT MAKES IT ACCURATE

The book's own derivation quietly loses four chord types, and with them five scales. This app generates them too — appended at the end, so that not a single number from the printed book moves. Note spelling follows musical function rather than whatever is cheapest to compute: a minor seventh chord is written C Eb G Bb, never C D# G A#.

FREE AND COMPLETE

Three scales are always open: major, harmonic minor and melodic minor — and with the major come all its modes, natural minor included. You can open two more of your choice, and the ones you open stay yours. A single purchase opens all 258 scales and unlocks printing, PDF export and sharing — no subscription, no account.

Nothing you write leaves your device. The app has no accounts, no advertising and no tracking of any kind, and what you play into the microphone is analysed as it arrives and never recorded, stored or sent anywhere.

Reports of wrong or missing scale names are welcome: me@barbaro.it