When you drag the MIDI into your DAW with the guitar voicing, you’ll notice that it still doesn’t sound exactly like a real guitar.
I tried using Ample Guitars and other guitar plugins — some of them gave me good results, but many didn’t.
I guess it’s because Scaler is designed more for electric or pop music, but I imagine there are many acoustic musicians who would really appreciate a more accurate rendition.
Thank you!
I’ve been experimenting, and have some ideas that might be useful. These are tests I’ve been doing using Orange Tree Samples’ Evolution Jazz Archtop (a terrific, realistic VST) in Scaler 3.
- Once you have your chord progression, create a Chord Follow track on Scaler’s Arrange page. The central recommendation is that you make this the track for managing your guitar voicings. Don’t do it on the Main Track.
- Load your guitar VST as the instrument on this track. At this point, it will just play block chords through the VST, which is great for hearing the voicings.
- Click on the Chord Follow track, and open its midi file. Notice the midi controls on the bottom left - to change octaves, etc. Here’s where you can change voicings and inversions on that track. I’ve found that Guitar and Drop 2 voicings work particularly well with guitar VSTs. But you can also manipulate the midi file directly to get rid of (or add) notes that would more reflect a guitar’s chording structure.
- Once you find a voicing you like, you can use the VST plugin’s strumming keyswitches to program the strum directly into Scaler’s Chord Follow track. For example, I typically go into the Evolution Archtop VST, choose one of its built-in strum patterns, then go back into Scaler and add a C0 note along the bottom of the track’s midi file to trigger the strum. But you can change the strum bar by bar, if you like.
Hope this helps.
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Hi, Goliath.
Thanks for your suggestion. I’ll give it a shot when I have some free time.
However, this is exactly why I posted the article — it takes more effort for musicians who use guitar plugins. I’m pretty sure it’s something that can be solved through programming.
It’s not a Scaler issue. It’s the nature of guitar as an instrument - there are many more variables than, say, a piano, in the way notes are struck, strummed, plucked, combined, muted, held, etc. So individual guitar VSTs have a lot of their own controls that need to be manipulated, and key switching is pretty much the standard way to do that. (To be fair, the best wind and horn instruments improve with similar attention to dynamics.)
An alternative to, say, Ample or Orange Tree is to try the Kontakt Session Guitar series, and to work with their built in strums. The outline of how to do it is similar to what I wrote above, but there are fewer variables.
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MusicLab guitars are great with S2 and 3, because they have a number of humanization features that a chord-feeder like Scaler cannot have
I tested my LP a lot and it works, but it may work with your bare hands on the keyboard as well
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UJam has a few acoustic VSTs as well, Amber & Silk.
And you can try them out for a trial run.
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Ah, it totally makes sense. Making strums is much better in Ample Guitars, IMHO.
Well, then I should work on it manually, anyway.
Thanks for the educational info!
Have you made a tutorial for it? If yes, please give me the link.
Well, those kinds of pattern based VSTs have a problem. The more people use it, the more songs are identical.
I noticed that many songs sound familiar these days.
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Sure, and this is why putting your bare hands on can make the difference
This issue applies to any plugins with embedded MIDIs BTW, Scaler included
If you want to be original, you must learn to play the real stuff, but… In Italy, we say “se mio nonno avesse le ruote sarebbe una carriola”
(“If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a trolley car.”) 
As a matter of fact, I am unable to play anything but the doorbell, so I have just to please me
cheers
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They are all here, in the Tutorial section (search for my name)
They are all about AAS Strum GS, but the concepts are the same for any plugin, not only guitar ones
To summarize:
One instance of Scaler 2 acts as a chord feeder and is synced, as a Leader maybe, sending the chords to the accompaniment guitar, or in the Chord area of guitar plugins that have separated areas for chords and solo
Another instance of Scaler 2 is synced, as a Follower maybe, with one of the 3 bottom items in the Keys-Loch option selected, and it sends the solo notes produced by your keyboard to the Solo area of the Lead guitar, or to the Solo area of plugins that have separated areas for chords and solo
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Yes, but in Scaler 3 you don’t need to add a second instance of Scaler - you can do it within the single instance. In Scaler 3’s Arrange Page, you can add a Chord Follow track, then choose your third-party plugin as the instrument. You can then go directly into the midi edit and add the plugin’s key switches.
By the way, the Eastern US version of your Italian phrase is, “If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a trolley car.”
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Thanks for proofreading; I’ll change it 
When S3 will be stable, maybe I’ll use it
Currently, I prefer other ways
Anyway, I mentioned S2 syncing, so the asker can find the several tutorials I made in the past
I like the Italian! No one knows what a trolley car is any more.
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The grandma’s trolley story sounds funny 
Cheers!
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Ok, I’ll check it out.
Gracie 
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