First off, Davide and team, v3 looks very pretty and I am excited and hopeful reading about the (as yet not revealed) functions which MAY address my biggest wishes for v3, time will tell.
I’ve only had Scaler 2 for few months, and had initially thought I’d be able to use Scaler2 in the following ways, but I discovered (for me) it had some crucial missing functionality to do the basic task of helping me jam within a scale. I need that as I am not a pianist… so I wanted Scaler to have these (similar) things:
1/ ability to be able to dynamically follow a chord progression on the DAW so that when you are jamming using scaler, it restricts your notes to those within the currently detected DAW track’s chords/scale
2/ ability to be able to set a chord progression in scaler, to jam with that restricting your notes (can do this already) BUT to also be able to choose to record to your midi track only the notes you are jamming, and to not include the chord progression notes you’re jamming to.
3/ to create a chord progression in scaler 3, then assign a midi out for the chord progression, and then SEPARATELY create a midi output for your jamming along… so you can separately record the chord progression on one DAW track and the jammed bit on another DAW track. which would be amazing for grabbing your spontaneous jamming
I’ve LOVE to beta test with my Studio One 7 Pro… especially for the possibility my needs will be met by new features such as Scaler 3 being a “proper” instrument, and also “Multi-Lane Timeline” whereby “The Arrange page now includes a timeline-based layout with dedicated lanes for chords, melody, bass, and phrases. Each lane is synchronized with the main chord track, and clips are fully adjustable with independent control per lane or clip.”
That may just answer all my feature requests… holding thumbs!!!
Mark.
Create your progression in Scaler and record it on the Scaler track. Then use Studio One’s extract chords feature so they match. I realise the workflow is the opposite of what you suggest, but you end up in the same place.
In Settings → Keys Lock set Chord Mute to Muted.
Using the track input for your virtual instrument, select Scaler, arm the track for recording and record your previously recorded Scaler track to it. Or you could set both tracks to record and do them both when you play the progression in Scaler. Then with keys lock on and chords muted, jam along to your progression with the track input of your chosen instrument for jamming set to Scaler with Scaler’s instrument set to off and keys lock set to chord notes. You will then have Scaler’s chords and notes on two separate tracks.
Hi Nick.
Thanks for the response, but I don’t think so…
in:
1/ studio one chords track does not dynamically reassign your off key strokes to ones that fit in the scale, so for jamming that method does not work.
2/ the muted tracks are still recorded, ie you cannot hear the scaler chord progression but it will still be mixed in with the single jamming notes… extremely messy.
3/ same as 2/… if im following what you mean, muting the chords will not prevent them from being recorded to studio one.
I hope the new version makes it a whole lot easier to jam, restrained, without having to jump through hoops and tidy up a lot of mess…
Rather than trying to answer your questions individually, let me describe my workflow and see if it it helps you in any way.
Create a new Studio One song using the blank template.
Add Scaler, chord (e.g. Piano) and melody (e.g. Guitar) tracks using whatever instruments you want.
Set the inputs of both your instrument tracks to Scaler 2.
In Scaler, select a scale and create a chord progression (pattern) in section C.
Set the Scaler instrument (it defaults to Felt Piano) to off.
Arm Scaler and your chord instrument tracks for monitoring and recording.
In Scaler, bind section C to your keyboard. When you play the chords, it will sound only in your chord instrument as the scaler instrument is off.
Record your chord progression. It will record on your scaler and chord track.
If you wish, at this point you can extract your chord instrument track (not the Scaler track) to the chord track in Studio One.
Switch off monitor and record from your chord instrument track and switch off record from the Scaler track. Switch on record and monitor in your melody instrument track.
In Scaler, turn on Keys Lock, select Chord Notes in the dropdown. In settings set Keys-Lock → Chord Mute to Muted (you can leave this on all the time, it only has any effect when keys lock is on). Before playing the song, test that you are only hearing the melody and not the chords. Note that you can only use the notes that are underlined in green on the Scaler keyboard in section A (the ones with numbers rather than note names (letters) on them. I set my keyboard an octave higher so I’m not playing at the top end all the time.
When you record now, you will hear the chords from your chord instrument track, and notes from your melody track as you play them on your keyboard. It will only record the notes on the melody track.
Thanks Nick,
This complex work around definitely works for 2/ but it’s so complicated I am sure I’ll forget in a few weeks… so I will make a studio one project with this set up > Studio One has this amazing function where you can drag tracks with their instruments from the file explorer directly to a MIDI track, so any part of any song can be repurposed with all settings intact.
For 1/ I’m thinking of this working as a dynamic chord detection/bum note limiter, so Scaler would need to be detecting what is happening on the DAW, so this wouldn’t be a situation where the chord progression was initiated within Scaler. So I would want Scaler to detect the chords and limit in real time, both from a chosen midi track and WAV, even from an imported track that was multi instrument/mixed…
For 3/ i’d want to be able to use the binded keys on my left hand and key locked keys on the right hand and have these recorded on separate DAW tracks.
Thanks for your patience and help… holding thumbs v3 makes this (for me, a primary feature) much easier to use.
We will open up a beta in the next few weeks and would be good to get some Studio One users on there. I’ll make an announcement on the forum. Will start with 50-100 users and move it to 300-400 by the end of Feb.
Yes please Davide…
I’ve done loads of beta testing in my past… Autodesk (discrete logic), Apple (final cut pro), Adobe (premiere, after effects, photoshop), and then loads of smaller ones recently… so please count me in if you want a Studio One 7 pro user
