Transnotating Carlos Alpha 2


This is a follow-up to my previous articles
AlphaTherem Waltz and Transnotating Carlos Alpha.
Because of the errors I discovered in my previous Carlos Alpha note layout for my
Opal Chameleon I had to figure out a solution and found it.
First of all,
as already stated, I had to start pitch classes from C and not from A, so, I changed the list of note names from “A A# Bb B C C# D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G#” to “C C# D D# Eb E F F# Gb G G# A A# Bb B”.
While working on it I thought I could find a way to make my Chameleon not a transposing intrument,
as previously stated. What I mean is that I was looking for a note layout that would be compatible with both my Chameleon and a regular Halberstadt keyboard.
In order to find a solution I used
LMSO and Disarray. I started creating a dodecatonic mode of Carlos Alpha then started experimenting having both Chameleon and NS88 turned on, connected through Logic Pro to LMSO, on different MIDI channels.

Alpha15MatchingLayouts

The problem of my previous note layout was that LMSO and Disarray had different “anchor keys”. You see, on the picture above, that the two scales (Carlos Alpha Dodecatonic for the NS88 and 3:2div9, aka Carlos Alpha, for the Chameleon) share the same anchor key: C3.
Disarray, on the other hand, has its anchor key on the bottom key of the leftmost column of the array keyboard connected to it. So, I was looking for a note layout that made possible to play the C3 key on both my controllers and have the same MIDI output: MIDI note 60 (because C3 is the pitch from which all others are calculated).

MatchingLayoutsMap

The above picture shows my new map for the Carlos Alpha transnotation and below there is the new note layout for the Chameleon:

Alpha15f

The results of all this work are the following:
1) Using the two scales shown above (Carlos Alpha Dodecatonic for the NS88 and 3:2div9, aka Carlos Alpha, for the Chameleon) I am able to play the same note (except blue ones) on both controllers and get the same MIDI output
2) The blue keys are only playable from my Chameleon
3) All keys (except blue ones) are automatically remappable to standard notation.
4) The blue notes have to be manually remapped (as already explained in my previous article
Transnotating Carlos Alpha) to standard notation.

Compare the score of
AlphaTherem Waltz with the old and the new mapping of notes:

MatchingLayoutsScore

The new one nicely follows the contour of MIDI notes.