Hi! I make ambient / meditation music and I always find myself wanting a sustained bass note below my chords and melodies. Unfortunately I can’t find that in Scaler. The patterns under expressions/bass are great but much more complicated than I need, with a lot of rhythm or notes variations.
I would love to find a performance mode (or just a new pattern under expressions/bass) that will output just the bass note of every chord. Just a long, sustained note without any rhythm or melody.
Hope I made myself clear. I don’t think it will be hard to implement? Will it be possible?
(and do the developers actually read this feature requests?)
Hi @standalone
Would outputting the lowest note in your chord work for your music? If so have you tried using multi voice output and sending channel 2 to your base? This outputs the lowest note of your chord.
hi @ed66 thanks for your answer1 Yes output of the lowest note of each chord is exactly what i’m after,
but I’m using Ableton Live and I saw this is only possible with another paid plugin, is that right?
Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes. This, I believe, is down to the way in which Ableton routes midi internally. It combines the midi channels into a single channel!
There are a number of threads on this issue with Ableton Live but although I have used Ableton I also use Reaper, which is excellent at routing midi. I apologise if this is not the answer you want, but…
I bought Blue Cat which Plugin Boutique recommended to address this issue, but I found it clumsy and conceptually flawed. It is in fact a VST host which runs as a VST within Live.
which describe how it’s easy to route the MIDI via note number.
Finally, although Live can’t route by channel (except on an input port), it can route on other criteria via a Rack. So it you can isolate the notes you want by pitch aka MIDI note number, then you can use an Ableton Rack on the Scaler track to route to separate tracks by defining the note number at which you want to split.
So if you can do this, you don’t need Blue Cat or Cantabile.
Hey @standalone I must agree with you, I regularly export the midi and delete all the top notes so I have my bassline. That’s kind of why we created a Bass Mode but you are right, why can’t there just be a Bass note mode which just plays the lowest note? There are some simple Bass Performances that do that but they don’t necessarily match the chord you are playing. Sometimes I assign a monophonic instrument to Scaler and they generally prioritise the lowest note. I use Carbon Electra for that and it works (from memory) like that. For now try my suggestion or just a matter of exporting or using a midi modifier. Will put ‘Lowest Note’ on our feature list.
I agree it would be nice to have as a feature in scaler, it would be useful for more cinematic stuff as well for creating a pedal tone.
I guess most of the times I just do this by hand right now. It’s obviously not hard to just plunk 1 note down and hold it with maybe a couple of changes over the piece.
If this does get put into scaler at some point it would be nice to have two options for this “performance”. One where it just holds down the root note of a chord and the other where it just holds down the root note of the key or scale you’re working in. The thing that might be tricky here however is Scaler is typically going to play a new note with each chord change. And for this kind of thing you may not want a new note played with each chord change. It’s essentially just plunk 1 note put a paperweight on the key and hold it till the end of the piece. That might still be easier to do just inputting it yourself. Either in real time or just drawing it in with the piano roll.
