Scala is a powerful software tool for experimentation with musical tunings, such as just intonation scales, equal and historical temperaments, microtonal and macrotonal scales, and non-Western scales. It supports scale creation, editing, comparison, analysis, storage, tuning of electronic instruments, and MIDI file generation and tuning conversion. All this is integrated into a single application with a wide variety of mathematical routines and scale creation methods. Scala is ideal for the exploration of tunings and becoming familiar with the concepts involved. In addition, a very large library of scales is freely available for Scala and can be used for analysis or music creation.

Great care has been taken to make Scala’s functions and operations very general. The range of parameter values that commands accept is made as general as possible. Often various forms of input are allowed. No arbitrary restrictions are made. Scales are stored in a flexible format. Intervals can be entered and saved as either ratios or cents values and be intermixed within a scale.

Constructing scales from scratch is one of Scala’s strengths. Kinds of scales that can be made with Scala include: equal temperaments, well-temperaments, Pythagorean (meantone) scales, Euler-Fokker genera, Fokker periodicity blocks, harmonic scales, Partch diamonds, Polychordal scales, Dwarf scales and Wilson Combination Product Sets. In addition, a set of command files is included to build other kinds of scales such as triadic scales, circular mirrorings, circulating temperaments, etc., and to serve as examples.