It would be great if Scaler also had a built-in melody or motif suggestions based on the chords. The new recording into a user track is great but for beginners like me it would help kickstart ideas. Also would it be possible the other way round to have a chord progression suggestions for user melodies recorded into a user track. FL Studio has this feature but it would be good to be able to do it in Scaler then transfer to my DAW.
7 Likes
Just FYI Rapid Composer 6 can already do this in both directions - give you a set of chords to go with a melody you import, or give you a melody for a chord progression you import. Its not Scaler, and it costs more than Scaler, but I thought I would point it out.
Have you found it useful
Rapid Composer has a bit of a steep learning curve, with a definite orchestral/classical music bias (in my opinion at least). It can do a lot, but can be a bit crash prone in my experience.
Instacomposer3 can analyse a given chord progression and then come up with melodies etc across multiple tracks. It has a lot of tweakability but I always found it hard to get pleasing results out of.
If you just want melody generation for non-classical stuff I think what you get out of MelodySauce2 by EVABeat is better than both the above (and certainly easier to use). It just generates melodies in a given scale/key rather than following your chords, although you can make it pay more attention to a specific sequence of chords in the āadvancedā part of the window. The included sounds in MelodySauce2 are just there for illustration, Iād always send the midi directly out to other instruments. But the melodies you get out of this are the most usable of all these generators, in my opinion.
If you strictly want to generate melodies using only chord notes you could give Phasebox2 from Venomode a try. It doesnāt have any melody generating intelligence baked in but if you feed it the chords from Scaler it can generate phrases just using the input notes. It is a bit of a case of hitting āgenerateā and seeing what it comes up with and then tweaking the settings, but you know the melody (and it can be a lot more complex than an simple arp) will always use your chord notes.
I have suggested to Davide he takes a look at Phrasebox2 and integrates that functionality into another tab on Scaler to help us come up with our own melodies. It is a nice idea but one I wont hold my breath for! Anyway, hope that helps.
Thanks Phrasebox 2 sounds like what Iām looking for.
Yes, PhraseBox is excellent. I have used version 1 for years and then forgot about it when I bought Arturia Pigments with even more powerful, but a bit more complicated arpegiator/sequencer. A few moments ago, after reading your post, I went to Venomodo site, login, and found that I can upgrade for free. So, I am testing it right now and it is still very good.
I tried InstaComposer 3, but it cannot detect audio, and I donāt like the idea of making everything automatically.
I tried also RapidComposer 6. Quite powerful, but not really what I needed.
The good: I imported MIDI (I did not try with audio) and I was in the UI so I could modify it. It separated parts of phrase by 4 beats and offered several options for harmonization. The bad: I used automatic harmonization and was disappointed. It was quite OFF, no match with my melody. The UI is complicated and iti is difficult tu find what I am looking for. I was lost in its menus.
I own MelodySauce2 but donāt like it at all.
ChordPotion is quite good and can be configured quite easily and gives good results.
However,my main problem is that I donāt need ideas for melody. Oftentime I have them in my head and need Scaler to recognize them and harmonize. So far I had mixed results. Sometimes it goes fine, sometimes not really, especially when I try to detect an audio track of my guitar solo, for example, but is looks normal that audio is more difficult.
Iām similar. I have melodies in my head, but I find it difficult working out the best chords to use. But I am doing a cinematic music orchestral course, but I struggle to find motifs and melodies I like from the chords. Hence why I hoped to find something that could help me with better ideas than Iām coming up with. I downloaded Rapid Composer 6 but it is far too complex for my needs. I did buy just the melody creator but I had to get a refund as it had a virus which thankfully my virus protector removed. So Iām not inclined to use that again.
Phrasebox doesnāt look too complicated and it isnāt expensive either, which is a bonus.
Steve
If you start using Phrasebox2 to generate melodies from a given set of chords, the output is quite sensitive to the settings for things like note density, length and length variation. It takes some playing with this to start to get useful output. I also find it useful to set the retiggering to note on/off and then the phrasebox phrase will restart every time you play a different chord in. The good news is that you can make the phrase as long or short as you like. And it is easy to start drawing notes for patterns and coming up with stuff without needing the random-ish generator.
One other thing phrasebox can do which i find very helpful is send individual chord notes to different midi channels, so you can orchestrate chords. I find it is much easier to do that via phrasebox than via the divisi motion in Scaler.
Thanks. Helpful advise. It will take me time to get used to learning it but it doesnāt look too difficult a programme. I really only want it to help spark ideas. Once I have an idea I can then just go with the flow of how I feel. But trying to follow chords is not always easy to do. Sometimes it just flows easily - the chord progression just seems to dictate the melody. And other times I get frustrated. But I know I need to get used to chords being the driver behind my melodies and not the other way round. That said, it isnāt always imperative to have chords with a melody,
Exactly my thoughtsāI have the same issue. Finding chords is pretty much solved, but melodies are still the hard part for me. Most of the time Iām quickest when I just sketch a few MIDI notes and refine from there. My main use case is Latin music (salsa, merengue, reggaeton). Thanks for all the suggestionsāIām going to try Phrasebox 2.
Were you able to test drive Phrasebox 2 to see if it fits your needs?
Iām also into Latin music, making bachata remixes at the moment just to put into practice all the music theory and guitar lessons Iāve been taking the past year or so. Eventually I want to make original songs. I find that I tend to write over complicated melodies using Hookpad / Klimper 2 to draw my own ideas out but Iām not skilled enough on the guitar to improvise on the fly for leads / melodies yet. Melody sauce 2 didnāt really work out for me since I prefer using the pentatonic scale but how the guitar is actually played vs guitar notes on a keyboard.
Hi
I did buy it before Christmas but not had a proper chance top test it. Currently Iām working on other pieces Iāve been working on but I do intend trying it out. I use FL Studio as my main DAW. I donāt normally have a problem finding the chords for those melodies but I do tend to struggle working out a decent melody from chords. Iām getting better but hopefully Phrasebox will help as well. I have tried using Scaler 3ās melody section but tbh honest Iām not impressed. The rest is great. I just wish Scaler would develop a built in melody generator even just to spark ideas.
Iām not convinced we need to add a ārandomā melody generator for a few reasons. There are so many plugins and AI-based models that can generate melodies, and they are usually full of fluff. I find the task of extracting diamonds from the rough a barrier to creative flow. Thatās where our Keys Lock functions are very powerful and allow full expressive flow for melodies. I do think there are areas to improve, which we have on our roadmap, but they are more theory-based (counterpoint generator, etc.) that do give something useful from the get-go.
Has everyone heard and explored the Keys Lock functionality to generate melodies?
We also have Melody patterns with some very useful modifiers in the sidebar. I use the modifiers to make melodies from all of our Motions. The possibilities are endless, and they always fit!
Later in 2026, we shall focus on this area for Scaler 3, so there are healthy discussions, thank you.
Iāve pretty much tried āem all and the only melody generator Iāve found that justifies the time spent in it is Melody Sauce 2. Even then, itās better to start in in Melody Sauce, find a melody or two that you like then move to Scaler to add chords rather than trying to get MS to fit a melody to an existing Scaler progression..
Either way itās not a seamless process but Melody Sauce just seems to have a knack of producing more interesting and usable phrasing and timing than similar progs.
And regardless of how you arrive at a possible melody line, take a copy of it and try removing one or two random notes and/or changing the length of one or two others to create a bit more space. It works more often than you might think!
I agree with this. Thatās why I find the modifiers so useful in Scaler 3. I always get good results playing with Density, Length and the Rotate parameters. Especially with the full length Melodies:
I agree that melody sauce2 is the best of the bunch for a standalone melody generator. However, the melodies it produces follow a scale/key rather than fitting a given sort of chords.
Personally I would love some sort of melody generator built into scaler. Davide is right you that you can do a lot with what is already in scaler. But I canāt shake the feeling that the motions etc are something like āpresetsā which everyone has access to with Scaler. So even with your own chord progression and modifications, you donāt feel what you generate will be unique.
I donāt think melody generation should be random but needs some built in structure - I hesitate to say AI but something along those lines may be needed under the hood. But I am glad to hear things along these lines are potentially a focus for Scalerās future.