I’m 56 years into my musical journey but only three years into digital music composition & production. In my recent experiments, I’m getting to a workflow (I mostly write jazz-inflected songs) that keeps me creative. But I’ve got questions, and I’m wondering how others do it. Here’s my workflow - questions follow:
In my DAW (Studio One Seven) I’ve got a template with 7 plug-in tracks: Scaler 3, EZ Keys II, a percussion track with ADSR Sample Manager, a vocals track with SynthV, and three tracks, each with a separate instance of Kontakt 8: one loaded with NI’s Upright Bass, a melody track loaded with NI’s The Grand piano, and a guitar track with an NI Strummed Acoustic.
I always start with Scaler 3 to experiment with chord progressions. Even if I know my basic harmonies in advance, I always use Scaler to find interesting chord subs. I’ll sometimes use Scaler to test out various motions, bass lines, and articulations, but the more I use it, the more I find myself using it mostly for harmonies.
EZ Keys II is usually my second stop, especially if I’m working on a jazz tune or a standard. I find its vast array of accompaniments very inspiring.
Bass is usually my third stop, because it helps establish or reinforce the groove. I had been using EZ Bass, but now I’m using NI’s basses. Their selection of patterns is a bit more limited, but I find them less cumbersome to use than EZ Bass.
Melody is my fourth stop. I’m a guitarist, not a keyboardist, but I like to use piano to write my melodies because of its clarity and neutrality. I almost always write my melodies in the piano roll.
I might at this point decide to switch my main accompaniment from piano to guitar, which is why I pre-load the guitar. (Sometimes I’ll start with the guitar, if I’m composing a rock song or folk tune or something else I hear that way.)
Synth V vocals are next. My process is to type the lyrics into my melody track in Studio One, export the melody and lyrics as a midi track, then import that track into SynthV. I’ll rewrite the lyrics and melody in SynthV as I go along, but I’ll always save and re-export the midi along the way so I’ll always have that midi-melody-vocals track.
Percussion is my last compositional stop. After experimenting with Impact and EZ Drummer 3, I now mostly deploy loops, because they’re more varied and diverse than anything I can conjure on my own. Managing loops remains a pain. Neither ADSR nor Kontakt 8 can index Presonus’s built-in loops; Studio One doesn’t do as good a job on Kontakt’s loops as Kontakt 8 does. I find myself switching back and forth among those three loop platforms.
After my basic composition is done, I’ll arrange it - with the proviso that at this stage things might change dramatically. I might decide that a chorus is better as a verse. I might replace the piano with a synth. A cabaret number might turn metal. I use Studio One’s chord track to mediate between Scaler 3 and my other plugins - that is, I’ll drop my Scaler progression into Studio One, and use that to drive other instruments. (I had been doing a lot of this “compositional arranging” using multiple tracks in Scaler 3, but I found it difficult to keep a clear view of a full composition in Scaler because of its layout limitations, so now I’ve reverted to using my DAW for the arrangements.) My go-to’s for instruments are NI and East West’s Composer Cloud, the latter especially for brass and background vocals.
When I’m mostly done, I’ll do vocal harmonies. I’m finding the new Studio One Harmony Wizard add-on a great tool for this, and a lot of fun to use.
I will occasionally use Band-in-a-Box to create a solo break. Sometimes, I’ll use loops and samples. On rare occasion I’ll cut my own samples. Sometimes I’ll solo myself on guitar.
Recently, I’ve begun using EZ Mix 3 to mix, and I’ll always go to e-mastered to master. Mixing is a weak spot for me.
Questions:
For other Scaler users, to what degree do you use or not use its built-in motions, either for inspiration or for final production or both?
Also for Scaler users, to what degree are you using it as a DAW-within-a-DAW - i.e., using multiple tracks in Scaler to compose and produce, vs doing that part in your DAW? If you are using Scaler for this, what’s your workaround to get a full view of your composition?
How do you manage loops? Have you found a satisfactory way to index them all together, or are you using two or more separate systems?
After two weeks of experimenting with Kontakt 8’s new tools - Chords, Patterns, and Phrases - I’m finding them less useful than what Scaler 3 already has built-in. In fact, I’m pretty much persuaded that they’re primarily built for live performance and beats-makers, not for songs or composition. Has anyone found broader uses for the new Kontakt 8 tools?
I’m only beginning to experiment with macros and shortcuts in Studio One. I’d love to know which macros and shortcuts song composers (as opposed to orchestral composers or beats composers) find most useful.
I don’t use melody tools - I use my ear. Are any of you using melody tools for inspiration, and if so, which ones?
I’m posting in three favorite forums (Scaler, VI, and StudioOneForum) so apologies if you stumble across this in multiple places.
I sometimes use the progression builder in Scaler but I am not really hooked on it. It does a good job but I don’t really feel a need for a tool to do it for me. I can be just fine using step mode entry and entering chords freehand. Sometimes I just enter them in a text format in MuseScore. I also like to use HookPad because it is easy to move things around and work in blocks of measures. It is easy to copy and paste sections to build up the full arrangement. It is easy to know where I am as far as the overall time. The labels get imported into the arrangement track in Logic so I can tell at a glance where I am in the music.
What I love Scaler for is using the motions for different instruments to give me a rhythm to follow as I play into different tracks. I will have a track that is just block chords for the progression and load up Scaler Control as a MIDI effect (I am using Logic.) I might use the output of that track in a final product but mostly I am using it as a backing track. I am just as likely to turn off that track once I have built up as the other tracks get filled in.
I will have it play as a backing track and loop over the song (or just a section) and play along in the keyboard a few times to work out what I want and then I will record each part playing live into the daw. I don’t keep the motion stuff inside Scaler. I might want to play part of it personally. I might use a different arpeggiator. I might take the MIDI output of a section in Scaler and then modify it in the DAW. If I have something that uses a lot of articulations, I am just as likely to export the part as MIDI and load it up in MuseScore where I can access the articulations and dynamics more easily instead of juggling different key switches or different patches and then render it as WAV and import it back into the DAW as audio.
I have played around with the Chords, Patterns, and Phrases in Kontact but I have not been able to really figure out how to get MIDI data out of it. That makes it completely useless to me. It is a shame because some of the patterns and phrases are kind of interesting but if I can’t use it with other instruments, I have no use for it. The melody stuff from Scaler is ok as a starting point that can be edited but I am fine just entering it live. It is less hassle. It is easy enough to clean up my fumbling here and there on the piano roll.
Really interesting. I wasn’t familiar with Hookpad, so just looked at some videos. Part of me thinks it’s kinda like Scaler, but with melody capabilities, as well. Is this fair?
[quote=“GoliathGrouper, post:1, topic:22782”]
“I’ll do vocal harmonies. I’m finding the new Studio One Harmony Wizard add-on a great tool for this, and a lot of fun to use.”[/quote]
Have not been using Scaler that long although I did have V2 & upgraded but a very minimal user at this point. I have been toying with the idea of getting Harmony Wizard as I use S1 as well. Can you comment on how it has helped with your productions?
I also use SynthV (& BIAB, so maybe we’re just old guys LOL).
I’ll read over your post again to see if there is something I can comment on my usage of it.
Thanks!
Dan
Sure. I find Harmony Wizard very good for both building and isolating parts of multi-part harmonies. To be fair, I find writing two-part vocal harmonies easier to do by hand in Studio One and Synth V. But if I’m doing more than two parts, Harmony Wizard can give you all the lines, and isolate them and move them in one-click. It’s a great tool.
Thanks for that. Yes, it also seems to have a lot of options as well in the menus (on the demos I have seen anyways). And I am a guitarist, so it might make more sense to me as well going in that direction anyways.
Dan
I would say it is more of a rapid prototyping tool for sketching out first drafts of music. It is a little bit like scaler for having some stock arpeggiations and patterns. It is a little bit like a limited DAW with 4 melody voices. It does some nice things like constantly being in a reasonable voice leading mode. It makes it easy to stick to a scale.
The full version (you can use it for free) has some nice features such as exporting MIDI, notation, lead sheets, and audio. I don’t think that the free version does midi input. Some of its internal sounds (Not midi) are pretty good. Some not great but good enough. Its drums patterns are actually quite solid, if rather generic.
It is a really solid learning tool for music theory. It is heavily based in Roman numeral analysis for the chords. Nowhere near the breadth of scales and modes that Scaler has but good enough for most things. It makes it easy to see at a glance which are scale tones and what notes are diatonic to the chords.
I still find it useful for sketching things out and can use it for whipping out a prototype that I can bring into the DAW and work with as a starting point. Some of its patterns are good enough on their own. Otherwise, I just set the instruments to full chords where I can use the patterns from Scaler or the arpeggiator in Logic.