Key

Most quantizers make you set a scale by hand and then keep it in step with everything else yourself. Key instead reads ROOT (1V/oct, semitone-quantized) and SCALE (1V per scale) in the plugin’s own convention, so Arrange, Note, Chance, Muse, Fugue, Chime, Loom and Slide all follow one key change, and Key hands the same key back out of its own ROOT and SCALE outputs. Four channels, each polyphonic to 16 voices. 14 HP.

Sub-scales

Each channel picks the full scale or one of three sub-scales. A sub-scale is a mask over the parent scale’s degree indices, not over absolute pitches, so {1st, 3rd, 5th} is a triad in any key: C E G in Major, C D♯ G in Minor. An empty sub-scale falls back to the parent rather than going silent.

A menu option lets a sub-scale leave the key, so it can carry an accidental (a passing tone the rest of the patch never sees) that transposes with ROOT and stays put when SCALE changes.

Microtonal and Scala

Key works in real pitch, not a 12-bit mask, so Harmonic series, Pelog, and Slendro keep their fractional intervals. Scala (.scl) files load from the menu at SCALE index 19, leaving 0 to 18 as the canonical list so cross-module SCALE CV is unaffected. The period need not be an octave, so Bohlen-Pierce and other non-octave scales work, and the parsed scale saves into the patch.

The keyboard shows when the scale lands on twelve semitones. Otherwise Key draws a region strip that is linear in pitch, so the gaps between the degree lines are the snap regions.

Inputs and outputs

• Controls: Root, Scale, and per channel Sub and Offset.
• Inputs: Root, Scale, Trig, and per channel In (poly).
• Outputs: per channel Out (poly); plus Root and Scale, which relay the key to other modules.

OFFSET moves in scale degrees by default (so +2 goes two steps up the scale and stays in key), with semitones as a menu option. A global TRIG turns Key into a sample-and-hold, updating only on a trigger.