Where's the funk?

@Willem123, I hear your frustration at the majority of Italian/Latin/Spanish based expressions and how they may seem foreign to funk and even for some of hip-hop and r&b. I am one of those same composers of what I just described. I do not read or write music, I have only learned less than 10 famous/ well known songs others have written in my whole life (hard to believe, but it’s true). My versatile love for music is the only theory I know.

I have written several thousand ideas with just my love to create. I fish around, try this and that, and come up with some great, some average, and some downright horrible ideas. I do the same with Scaler, fish around and try this and that, some hits, some misses. I have found the expressions amazing for creating Pop, r&b, hip-hop, and funk songs. It just takes opening the possibilities and letting it run its course. You would be very surprised to see how many successful songwriters of today are using the very same expressions that you see in Scaler.

MG The Future has some featured presets in the Scaler plugin and hosts a youtube channel that focuses on lot of things that would work with your request. Give him a look up, ask him some pointers. Check him out at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClFnj8uOaDmCyB9K8yJ9MgQ

One of my personal favorites in the last few years is Kamau Duane. His writing technique is beautiful. He has some amazing presets for Scaler that he has designed that works with the genres I named that get into the groove like butter. Check him out at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-izcfINvEkVIyuVA8gTrsA

Another youtube video from a very talented producer, Jelie, of Kickback Couture, showing how it works easily with hip hop https://youtu.be/xQSOfpRZgKY

Even one of the developers of Scaler, @davide , has produced some amazing dance music that is what you hear in the biggest dance clubs. His portfolio of music would blow your mind.

I am suggesting to you how this small list of producers make Scaler already a massive tool to create the sounds of funk, r&b, hip hop, and Pop and more with the expressions and more that is in the plugin.

I have found the expressions a huge development of my composing. I just wrote a caribbean pop song using the latest triplet additions. This song has the flavor of the likes of J Balvin, Rhianna, Bad Bunny, etc. The possibilities are endless. I highly recommend taking some sessions without any expectancies and just toy around with the expressions some more with a variety of different chords.

Give this a try…I have also created or found a set of chords that I liked and then went through every single expression just to hear the difference how it reacts with them. Sometimes some of the chords will sound off on certain expressions. On those you might try the inversion +1 or +2 and it will clear up the muddiness or offness of the sound. I also agree with the solutions thrown out by @jbone1313 to use your DAW to add to even more of what you are trying to create. After adjusting the rpm and swing in your DAW, you can hear the difference realtime while working in Scaler.

I am just a simple-minded composer who has found Scaler to be one of the most advantageous tools ever to use to create better songs (especially at its price). My fingers don’t have the limberness of most musicians, but with this plugin I can fool even those guys with some of my songs.

I get what you are looking for, a quick go-to category that gets right in the pocket of the style and genre. But the reality is that the best funk artists that made funk what it really is, were versatile as hell in their songs. Funkadelic/Parliament used rock and r&b. Average White Band, Brick, Chic, Change, One Way, Mtume, Gamalon, Prince and Slave were all highly seasoned musicians with backgrounds from jazz to rock to r&b. George Duke, Marcus Miller, and Victor Wooten used funk all over the place with complex chord structures from many genres. What I am suggesting is that they didn’t just use the same chord techniques over and over to create their greatest songs. They merged many styles. The same way that people like me take a known classical arpeggiation and make it fit in Caribbean Pop, hip hop, or r&b song. It brings more style into a composition and helps your sound become more of a signature sound rather than a copied sound (like a huge amount of songwriters today choose to be sadly).

I even take the majority of presets in Scaler as an inspiration starting point. I remove and add chords, change the order, inversion, scale, etc. to bring new life that becomes my composition.

Some of the melodies are not what I want exactly after I drag and drop it into my song, so I play the notes that I hear on the keyboard and then drag the notes in the timeline to fit what I am hearing. While many plugins and samples these days make it easy to make a song, I have to say that it is not usually even close to as good as the ones that people take some time on to write, including readjusting and rewriting parts. The best songs in my opinion are ones that people take time to work on and experiment on (notice that I included experiment).

I don’t know your purpose and goals in your songwriting, but I hope that these few suggestions allow you to find how fun and diverse Scaler can give your music. I am not saying your suggestion is not a great thing to add. It is a great suggestion. I am just offering a different way to approach the unknown/foreign expressions so that you may find how to master the challenge that it poses. Challenges bring forth a better musician/songwriter/performers. I can’t wait to hear what you come up with when you delve into Scaler with that approach if you find it worth trying. :bulb: :notes: :wink:

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