I want to explore Scaler with a focus on chords rather than scales to get away from the basic most common structures and leverage the motions.
I left the default C major scale and added a set of 8 chords, 2 are in C major but the others aren’t. Adding a new “Bass folIow track” works, it plays the root of each chord. Same with Arpegios, it plays along the chord regardless of the scale.
Then I add melody or sequence track to make a lead and thing get weird… some of the chord are not respected. For example Melody Riff A. I have set them to “chord” on the clip menu, not scale so I would expect them to follow tightly the chords but the result is very dissonant with main track.
What am I missing??
edit: did another test with this Riff A using only chords from C major scale (C maj / F maj) and it clearly doesn’t play F maj but B maj I think? I’m lost…
Hi @Jeeboo, note that some of the motions categorized under expressions, particularly melodies can be quite long and may include their own chord movements which may clash with your chord progressions. Those expressions are typically divided up into several sections e.g. Riff A 1, Riff A2 etc. The Riff A motion pattern contains all of these sections strung together.
So if you encounter some dissonance with your chord progression, you can use the scissor tool to split the melody clip, forcing it to re-trigger from the start. Or just use the individual melody sections e.g. Riff A 1, rather than the entire motion pattern.
Understand the explanation but not quite the rationale of adding some expressions with their own (un-identified) chords movements whilst the whole point is to track the user selection (scale or chord)… makes no sense to me.
Yet, I tried 2 things:
Use scissor to split the Riff A into 1 bar sections. No change, still dissonant.
Add a Riff A1 only instead of the whole Riff A. Still dissonant. I used scissor again to split it in 1 bars sections and it gives litteraly the exact same result as 1)
Which leads to the next question: what are the expressions that will NOT cause this issue? Is there any way to figure out beforehand?
Hi @Jeeboo If you split Riff A1 or Riff A into 1 bar sections as below (with C Major as your scale) then it should sound perfect. Leaving a motion with chordal changes playing across changing Main Track chords can interpolate oddly as they may be harmonically moving in different directions. I haven’t heard anything dissonant though (out of key). Note that this would only occur in rich Phrases or Melodies (like the Riff categories) but I find there are always ways around it such as re-triggering per chord or changing to scale based. This example works perfect for me:
I agree that if I use chord that are part of the selected scale, it works when I slice the melody in shorter bits of 1 measure.
However if I select chord that are not part of the scale, then the odd behavior comes back. See these 2 screenshots. I play G# minor on main track (all black keys except B), I added Riff A1 and re-triggered it at the beginning of the chord. Yet, the melody if off, it plays a C instead of B.
Using out of scale chords is important. I can understand some limitations but I’d like to understand what happens and eventually, what expression i can or cannot use so that I can use Scaler 3 “safely” as I’ll be using out of scales chord very often. I don’t want to spend my time struggling with this. I don’t remember having such issue in v2.
