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The Underlying Scale tab of the Chordmap Properties window, shown in the following figure, contains settings for the chords that are considered primary to the chordmap. Scale tones in the Properties window are shown in red, and nonscale tones remain black or white.
The underlying scale of a chordmap serves two important purposes:
You can choose any seven tones for the underlying scale. It is recommended that the underlying scale be based on a tonic of C. This simplifies building and testing the chords of the chordmap. However, you can build the scale using any pitch as the tonic and using any tonality, so long as the underlying scale has only seven tones.
Note Nothing in the Underlying Scale tab identifies the tonic note of the underlying scale. Nor does anything in the chord palette identify which chord is the tonic. In the preceding figure, you can consider the underlying scale to be C major, A minor, or any of the seven modes based on the same pitches. However, each chordmap has a key setting that affects the underlying scale. It is recommended that you leave the chordmap's key at the default setting of 2C.
The Major, Har Minor, and Mel Minor buttons provide options for automatically entering a major, harmonic minor, or ascending melodic minor scale based on a tonic pitch of C. These buttons enter the seven tones of a scale in the lower half of a scale and duplicate them in the upper half. Click the Clear Scale button to delete all tones from the scale. Click the left or right Chrom Shift button to move all notes in the scale up or down by a half step. See Chromatic Shift.
After you enter an underlying scale, use the Chord Palette command to generate a new palette containing chords that are diatonic to the underlying scale. For more information, see Using the Chord Palette Command to Create a New Palette.