About CHORDJAM

Scaler 2 General Discussion
6

I should declare than I have 2 Niko packs, and some of the content is good. ***

In Scaler, there are (let’s call them) ‘sequences’ (songs and artists) and ‘performances’. Clearly you can use the sequences on their own as a base, and add everything else yourself; or you can enhance a Scaler sequence with any of the performances.
If there are S sequences and P performances, you have S x P combinations to play with - for just one instrument. [It’s now probably more than the 800,000 the last time I counted, but as Davide pointed out elsewhere, the multiplier is actually vastly bigger when you factor in the other multiplicative factors - and that’s not even thinking about patterns! ] I doubt if any Scaler user has managed to trawl through them all yet, or will ever do so.

To manage these, I guess users cut the scan down by picking sub-sets of sequences (‘World’ or ‘Trance’) and probably the same with performances which seem a priori to gel with whatever variant of music they are making.

Now, imagine (hypothetically) you rolled the Niko packs into the Scaler; you would then have another 750,000 +++ combinations to play with. FWIW (not very much?) , my take on this is

{A} The value in Scaler to me is more focussed on the performances and things like modulation than it is on the sequences; that’s where the clever and creative stuff is.

{B} Do I personally want another 750,000+++ choices to make in the menus ? The issue with expansion in this way is that everybody gets them regardless, and rather than speed things up one is overwhelmed with choices if only 10% of sequences are in the genres you want. If users wanted to have more choices, I’d rather Scaler offered them as add-on packs (D+B, Pop etc ), whether free or a few Euros.

{C} It’s a matter of a few seconds for me to drop a Niko midi into Scaler, listen to it and junk it or proceed with it. There is little value add (to me) therefore if they happened to be sitting embedded in Scaler menus rather than in my Niko folder.

All this of course is very much personal choice, and there will be as many views as there are users, but it would be interesting see see if the consensus here values sequences over performances, and whether having another 2,000 sequences would help or hinder.

PS *** There is an old saying that by the time in life a man can afford to lose a golf ball, he can’t hit it that far. Sadly, this is true for me; I’ve now reached the age where I can indulge in stuff just to try it out, but the ears and emotional creativity are not up to it …

2 Likes
7

yes, and it’s the reason why I bought it and uninstalled it
:grinning:

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8

Well… I was just thinking to write a post, more or less about that

I’m using Scaler since about 1 year: during this time I was able to make proof-of-concepts in many styles but… never using a matching pattern’s style
:rofl:

For example, for “flamenco” I used a hip-hop scale, and for balkan music maybe a blues, but I never used so far a matched style, so I ended thinking that scales are irrelevant to produce styles, and only the “anima” (soul) inflated in scales makes a difference…

SO, to me, a collection of MIDIs can be useful, but not the way @yorkeman mentioned

My 2 cents of a :guitar:

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9

Just for clarity, I wasn’t advocating more sequences - there are enough for me. My comments on midi were just that @Swingmix was looking for more clips, so I suggested a source for him.

You are quite right about the unpredictability of where a useful sequence might originate from. My central point is that of frogs and princes, and how you find the golden needle in the haystack (much mixing of metaphors here…)
So if I’m into (say) trance, that might be a logical place to start rather than jazz, to try and get some rationale in to the auditioning issue. I guess randomly choosing some sequence is also valid, and maybe more creative. I was just underlining its the sheer scale of the choices one is faced with that can be a problem.

So, what do you start from when you sit down in front of the PC ?

10

I hope scaler can add some styles according to music classification
Including, according to intro, verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge
There is only one purpose. Drag MIDI to finish music quickly.
And can be assigned to the keyboard, live play.
Help more people who are not good at playing the piano.
If it is a commercial work, you can modify it yourself
But if you do it quickly, you don’t lose inspiration @ yorkeman

Now I play all kinds of chords with scaler every day for inspiration
I’m very sensitive to chords and I’ve recorded a lot of ideas
But I have to combine ezkey to do some things, which is more troublesome
I hope scaler can do it on its own. That’s perfect

11

A premise:
I don’t consider myself a musician, nor a composer
Rather a folk who plays for relax and fun, and now I can say I am a “proof of concepts maker” (maybe this will be my next nickname replacing rabbit composer)

Indeed, my PC is currently full of proof of concepts :woozy_face:, mostly are raw stuff, and maybe I will never find the will to complete them up to mix & max, even if I have many Isotopes to do that
:rofl:

Anyway, all depends on the instrument I want to have fun with

In Ableton Live 11 I have a series of presets, so if I want to play e.g. with the Hammond, I use this or this

While if I want pluck Strum-GS 2 I do this or this

For the Scaler part, I usually start with any random series of chords, or I create one from scratch (less often) then I move notes up and down with MIDI Polysher to have an auto-accompaniment, then I have fun (trying to) play solos

12

The price of Scaler is much lower than that of Nikos MIDI pack.
Nikos MIDI pack is very, very expensive, but I don’t think it’s comparable to Scaler.
I like Scaler very much
But I don’t like Nikos MIDI pack
But I can watch some of Nikos’ videos, but I won’t pay for them.
I think Scaler is great, advanced and saves creative time
Nikos MIDI pack is backward and a waste of time

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@swingmix, maybe you lost this and this and this

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16

Niko is selling 1000 MIDIs for 27 bucks just now

Inexpensive I think

17

ezkey 2 comming soon

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Maybe I read it wrong. I thought more than 1,000 :sweat_smile:

20

Really?
Where have you found that?
I believed it wasn’t in the Toontrack’s pipeline

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21

It probably got lost in translation… Niko did advertise “a $1200 value”, that can get mistranslated as “price” (stumbled over this before). It’s a common way to make things look cheap by claiming a “value” much higher than the sales price.

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22

OK :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :laughing:

23

Under the 2k monitor, the ezkey interface is too small. I think ezkey should be upgraded. They haven’t updated in a long time.
I think I can discuss how to use scaler and ezkey correctly

24

I think that many people would like that, me included, but I also think to remember they’ve never mentioned the intention to do that, that is a pity

25

I quite agree as well. I initially liked Orb Composer so I purchased Orb Producer to use directly in the DAW and it felt like there was no real AI going on with the randomization. It would continually create out dull basslines and no matter how many times I would push the randomize button, it would generate more randomized drivel. The same thing went for each module of the Orb Producer suite. That being said, I did find it useful from time to time for arp generation but, even then, I would have to modify the midi in some spots to make it sound better.

I’m all for automating the generation of notes where it’s tedious and more about focusing on the lead instruments and overall song. Unfortunately, these plugins that claim to create random notes have so far proven to be too random.

I will say that I did find using Orb Composer a bit interesting but I feel that the program is not ready for prime time (not as easy to import the midi into DAW as Orb Producer and slightly buggy) and a lot of the folks that are using it seems to mainly be using it as a musical experiment rather than for creating songs that are for public consumption.

I found that Scaler2 is great for using alongside Captain Plugins though as their bass, chord, and other modules are not randomly generated making more coherent sounds. I do wish that they would do a bit more to add additional patterns but I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

26

I find it highly annoying that there are YouTube channels out there that will always tell you that “This is the greatest thing since sliced bread.”. I think they pretty much rubber stamp any product that they get for free. Some of the worst offenders I’ve noticed are like Ave McCree and a few other hip-hop type producer channels. I’m not really into that sort of music but I do sometimes find some of their tutorials helpful.