Kelfar Technologies has raised the bar to the highest level with this app. As a Master-Chanter (“Protopsaltis”) of Byzantine Music and instructor of the psaltic art, this tool has become invaluable to me in various aspects of my field. First and foremost, it is an excellent aid in teaching the various scales and modes of Eastern Orthodox hymnology. The app is able to faithfully replicate the intricate microtonal intervals of the Byzantine scales, allowing the student to hear how tetrachords are “built” within the octal diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic scales. In this respect, as a teaching tool, it is second to none. Second, this app produces a true accompaniment of the ison drone that is characteristic of Byzantine chant. Developed and digitized with recordings of human voices, World Scales faithfully produces a more authentic audio result than other similar tools available. I stress that HUMAN VOICES were used as the basis of making the sound output, and not by some other artificial “electronic” means. When properly transmitted through a high-quality speaker, the audio output of this app is the closest sound to a group of human “drone-holders” (i.e. “isokrates”) that one will hear in an actual Byzantine Choir. And third, although I am very hesitant yet selectively cautious in using this app in an actual church setting (the tradition of Orthodox hymnology allows only ONE instrument to be used in worship, and that instrument is the human voice), I do support its use in audio recordings and concert settings to help actual assistants and choir members in faithfully rendering the ison notes, which are the “decoration” to the melodic executions of the hymns. I applaud Kelfar Technologies in the development of this tool, and in its constant efforts to modify, improve, and further develop this app to make it the best of its kind. Thank you, Karim! Much continued success!

While starting to learn chanting with a Greek Orthodox church, I found out about the WorldScales app. With it, I can set the correct pitches for the various scales, something that thousands of other musical apps cannot do.I was delighted to see that not only can the user set pitch adjustments on each key, but it has the soft chromatic scale and Byzantine Mode 2 available directly from a menu. That was exactly what was needed for the music I was practicing.I was a little bummed because running on a MacBook the user interface is not as convenient as it would be for a touch screen on an iPad. But then I was completely delighted to discover the WorldScales' MIDI feature in the settings, connect my keyboard via USB cable, and it just worked. That's an even better UI than a touch screen.

This app is packed with features and is loaded with many helpful options and amazing settings. I am very pleased with this and it has come in handy for my purposes ever since I downloaded it. Many thanks to Kelfar Technologies for all of the hard work, diligence, and expertise that goes into creating such a useful tool.

Kudos to this excellent application for its friendliness to beginners and versatility for those of us familiar with Near Eastern tunings, for example.As a lover of Arab maqam and Persian dastgah traditions, as well as the Psaltic art of Byzantine music, I was impressed by the priority given to intuitive accessibilty and ease of use as well as the wealth of musical value that should appeal to the user newly exploring tunings and/or the variety of world musics.One neat included tuning for Arab Rast is the Byzantine 53 Diatonic set, which approximates a moderately bright Maqam Rast if one starts from the Byzantine Νε (as in the Fourth Mode Plagal), or Maqam Huseyni (as in the First Mode and First Mode Plagal) if one starts from Πα. By the way, having these solmization syllables displayed on the keyboard in Greek characters is a great learning resource. The Byzantine theorist Chrysanthos of Madytos in 1832 gave al-Farabi's tuning of what was later termed a Rast tetrachord as an example of good Byzantine intonation. The Byzantine Diatonic 53 tuning included with this app is a nice middle point between the al-Farabi tuning and the later Byzantine tuning based on 36 or 72 steps per octave adopted by the Patriarchal Commitee on Music in 1881, and I found it a very nice Rast. The five accidentals are left in unaltered 12-tone equal temperament, but for Arab maqam music I might recommend setting them to Pythagorean flats (or the 53-tone equal temperament equivalents, which I think should be within about a cent of the Pythagorean values), with offsets relative to A at Db -16; Eb -12; Gb -18; Ab -14; and Bb -10. This expedites modulating from Maqam Rast on C (or Byzantine Νε as shown on the keyboard), the standard untransposed location on the Arab gamut, to other maqamat (the Arabic plural of maqam) on C, with Nahawand, Hijazkar, Nakriz, and Hijazkar Kurdi as attractive possibilities. As an experienced tuning table user, I'll add that I was creating user-defined tunings within my first few minutes after downloading, and the design is praiseworthy in keeping the interface simple while offering precision to the nearest cent. But the real success was found in the hours of delighted playing that this led to. I especially enjoyed the 'oud and kanun samples.This application is itself a work of art, in its intuitive design and sophisticated precision and above all its use of these to convey priceless musical beauty and value.