Rev. 5 – Jun 2020 Page 54 of 91
Octave). Four of them are available: 15-EDO, 19-EDO,
22-EDO, and 24-EDO.
To select an alternate octave division, open the Track
Menu and scroll until the TonesPerOct item. The default
option is 12EDO, which is the standard Western equal tem-
perament. When 12EDO is selected, the Scale and Root op-
tions (described in the Scale&Root section, above) deter-
mine the quantization.
When another option is selected, scale and root are ob-
tained from the menu items below, according the number
of tones per octave desired. For example, when TonesPer-
Oct is set to 19EDO, scale and root are determined by the
options set in Root 19 and Scale 19, respectively: Root 15,
Scale 15, Root 19, Scale 19, Root 22, Scale 22, Root 24,
Scale 24.
A wide variety of preset scales are available (see the
Scales section), but it is also possible for the user to define
up to four custom scales per each octave division. The
settings specified for the Quantization Direction will apply to
every octave division selected.
Whenever an octave division higher than 12 is selected,
the visual feedback system of the Stage Arc (A.2) will
change accordingly. After the encoder has reached the
11th tone, and the 11th LED of the Stage Arc has lit up,
the following intervals will be displayed by the leftmost
LEDs tuning off, until the last one (15th, 19th, 22nd or
24th) is reached; then, the following octave will begin
from scratch with another LED lighting up on the right-
most side. When the Coarse button is held down, the en-
coder will always shift the stage value by 1 octave per click
and holding the Fine button will always shift the pitch by
Cents.
Please note that higher EDOs will result in a smaller octave
range, because the total number of notes that can be per-
formed by USTA stays the same. (For example, if a 24EDO is
selected, USTA’s range will be 5 octaves instead of 10).
External pitch shifting is still available, however the
1V/oct standard is no longer in use. In these microtonal
modes, 1/12v corresponds to a single interval, no matter
the octave division: in other words, if a standard V/Oct
keyboard is used to perform Pitch Shift, a semitone above
will shift the melody of 1 microtonal interval. If the 24
EDO is selected, two octaves on a keyboard will corre-
spond to one octave on USTA.
This 1/12V-per-interval is available also in Composi-
tion Mode via external controller: each key of a standard
V/Oct keyboard will input a microtone.
Please note that if you change your Octave Division after you
composed a melody in 12EDO, the input melody will still be
available, but scaled to the rst 12 tones of the new scale. To
hear your original melody again, simply return to the stand-
ard 12EDO.
CUSTOM SCALES
Beside the built-in scales it is possible to create other
custom scales for quantization: up to four scales can be
created per each octave division (12, 15, 19, 22 and 24
intervals), for a total of 20 user scales.
This operation must be performed on a computer, as it
requires the creation of a .csv file which must be then
loaded into the SD card. To create the .csv file we rec-
ommend to use a flexible text editor, such as Atom: other
editors or word processors might add some unwanted
data to the file, such as text formatting, which may make
it unreadable for USTA.
The .csv file must be made of four lines, one per each
custom scale. Each line must have a succession of digits,
which can be only 0 and 1 and must be separated by a
semicolon ( ; ). The digit represents the semitones, which
can be either active (1) or bypassed (o) during the quanti-
zation process. The digits will be 12 for the 12-tone scales,
15 for the 15-tone scale and so on, up to the 24-tone scale.
No space must be used between digits and semicolons,
and no semicolon must be placed after the last digit.
Here is an example of how a .csv file for four custom
12-tone scales will look like: the first scale is chromatic,
the second major natural, the third minor natural, the
fourth chromatic.
1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1
1;0;1;0;1;1;0;1;0;1;0;1
1;0;1;1;0;1;0;1;1;0;1;0
1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1
Please note that the four lines must be completed in full
for the file to be properly read by USTA: if you need to
create less than four custom scale, consider filling the
other lines with e.g. chromatic scales (all 1s).
If an interval is missing at the end of each line, it will be
replaced with a 0. Values after the last one will be ig-
nored.
Once your file is ready, you must save it as follows:
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