A feature to help harmonizing melodies

At least I think this is a feature suggestion :slight_smile:

My understanding of music theory is about intermediate. I tend to know how things work and I know (or can figure out my head) what notes go in what basic scales and what chords go in what keys. But my songs usually start with a melody, and one thing that I need help with is finding chords to go with a melody, especially chords that are more interesting than I, IV and V.

So the question I need answered over and over is: okay, my melody goes to F here, now which chords in this key include that note? Scaler does not seem to have a way of answering this directly,. I can of course try each chord in turn and check, but that’s not very helpful. And of course I want to find the note not just among the basic chords, but include sus, seventh, ninth, dim7 chords, etc. It takes a lot of clicking and picking to go through them all in Scaler.

Could there be a feature whereby I could pick a note from the scale and see chords in that scale that contains that note? Then I could add those chords to the pattern, and even more helpfully, they’d be added in the inversion that puts that note “on top” automatically.

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It seems that scaler can already do this to a degree in that it can analyze the midi (the melody) and determine the scale and chord suggestions. However, it does not do a note for note chord assignment suggestion. It would be interesting if you could set up a pattern of chords that are suggested and use the melody to actually trigger the chord changes. But this starts to get complex as you may not want a chord change right on every melody note change. You certainly could remove the chord elements by editing the midi though. I too typically write a melody first so chord suggestions based on each melody note would be helpful.

The best way I can think of this with scaler today is to bind a chord progression and playback the melody with the DAW in sync mode and simply press the desired chord trigger keys as the melody plays. This takes experimentation but at least you are working with a chord set that should generally work.

Check out http://www.desktopmetronome.com/wpsite/products/chords-scales/

Here you will find that G# Ultralocrian and F Lydian#2 both have note F, and maybe use Fsus2 with F Dorian #4.

It’s not integrated with Scaler, but it’s something you can have open and quickly find what you are after.

I know this is an older topic, but I agree that Scaler should have something like HookTheory’s HookPad which shows a melody, but also the diatonic notes in chords. I am using HookPad to teach my daughters how to harmonize a melody and it has been more effective than Scaler because as they learn music theory and how to hear the harmonies over the melody, HookPad allows them to “see” the melodic and harmonic relationships as well. So if they create a melody, but then try to harmonize it with a chord they can see that the melodic notes don’t match the chord. They can quickly try a different chord, different voicing, variations, etc. to harmonize the melody.

But HookPad is a web app and not a DAW plugin, so the process of writing on HookPad and then exporting to DAW is slow and cumbersome. And with HookPad you just end up with MIDI notes in the DAW without the explanatory melodic and harmonic relationships.

Scaler could do this with a similar “color coding” of the relative notes. For example, HookPad uses red for the Tonic, purple for the Dominate, green for the Sub Dominate, etc. for all the keys, so a user can learn the music theory relationships via the colors while harmonizing a melody or writing a melody over a harmony.

I hope this (or something similar) comes to Scaler soon.

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This is and important area for the evolution of scaler. I think it’s prudent to stay away from graphical representations and implement modes that help us use different melodic methodologies guided by the user and their feel for what is right. We’ve got some great work going on internally with our artists. Stay tuned.

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what happened to this topic? very old thread but still hot

I agree! Would be interesting to know if something like this is coming.

must have feature for scaler

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Yes indeed it is coming in 2024!

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Very cool! Looking forward to testing this new feature! :grinning:

Being able to harmonize a melody in Scaler 3 would be the biggest improvement!
Inspiration for the developers in this direction? Look at pioneer apps like Youcompose and Tonica Fugata.

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