I have only been into music for just under a year. HOWEVER, a MAJOR frustration which I find in scaler are the instrumental limitations. We need scale and chord patterns (NOT chosen seemingly at random, but) we them to be where a professional (or at least experienced) musician would choose.
For example the guitar fingering of frets should be relatively close to where the last one was, and also needs a capo option.
In addition, a great number of us are also experimenting with orchestral (not only for scoring, but also) to add acoustic instruments into our contemporary arrangements… I mean Violins, Violas, Cellos, etc… When will we get natural fingering/playing for these instruments? Scaler team, please save #NoobsLikeMe!
I love Scaler but, that being said, I don’t think it was designed to take the place of traditional learning. To cram all the available fingerings of any one section of an orchestra, let alone several seems to me to be going beyond what Scaler was created for. There is a wonderful world of music that Scaler can take you very far into but I don’t think it should be expected to do everything. If you are learning orchestration, you can learn it well right from the piano, all the notes are there.
This is just my opinion of course and not to be taken as being offensive in any way.
No worries, I don’t take it as such. Therefore I will clarify.
Like any technological assistant (the wheel for example) it’s was initally likely used as a pulley, and then sharpening, and then transportation…
Where something begins is nowhere near as important as what it is. And, currently, Scaler is an organic platform centered around making a tool as powerful & impact full as reasonably possible. These are reflected by the rapid response times by the developer team to the user community… essentially it bypasses an entire marketing campaign to ask what we need more of so that they can provide if it makes sense… we are parts of a whole organic problem/solution/deployment/QA team.
That stated, as in trumpets move further into MPE, people want to emulate playable instruments. I may not know the keys on scales. But at my makerspace, we can create Bluetooth devices to track multi-dimensional information. This could be added with touch sensitive devices to create Virtual Instruments in real space for MIDI in which people can play accurately or not…
…But elements such as strumming, and bowing become very organic and that MIDI information can be recorded in the expression section of a DAW, while scaler can aid us with proper keys (one day we can add user templates for instruments we own to be saved locally).
There are TONS of options for those seeking solutions… but if they don’t have presets for those instruments to begin with, we cannot create them.
@sekrit , I like the notion of multi-dimensional information/expression. I find myself building over and over nested matrix constructs in the DAW, to interactively call up different levels along an axis of expression, just to mix it with another axis (dimension) or expression. In its simplest form it’s the Scaler section C matrix, 8 chords times 7 rows, controlled via corresponding X/Y matrix on my Maschine JAM (comparable to Ableton Push, Novation Launchpad, etc.). And those are just two dimensions. There are more to be combined. Right now I focus on scale degree and voicing (e.g. X-> C,D,E,F,G,A,B Y-> maj/min/5th/7th/9th etc). In the DAW I add combinations of expressions (the phrases, rhythms, melodies, etc). The whole aim being to experiment with various combinations of sound, melody, rhythm, harmony etc until I find something interesting. MPE seems very much sound expression focused. Where I see Scaler evolving is to provide a similar expressive dimensionality in the melody/rhythm/harmony space as MPE does mostly for sound (unless I am missing something about MPE that would also allow control of melodic/rhythmic/harmonic combinations?). Am I still in proper discussion thread context with my musings?
1.) For your specific use-cases I fully believe that what you seek and what you find resolved to be correct/accurate. However, that is subjective to your agenda. Whereas my agenda is accuracy of fingerings (often found on really good Sample based virtual instruments… unfortunately not in all, and certainly absent in the “Physically Modelled” instruments I have found.
Therefore, pristine sound accuracy obscured by marred, unrealistic playing style is relative to having a spectacular vocalist, with a problematic microphone.
All of this to state that it does not necessarily need to be one or the other… often solutions lie within a combination of solutions.
2.) I am not sure that all of the musical elements for playability will be found in Scaler (at least in the near future). However, IF you have not seen in yet, you may want to check our “Unify” from “Plugin Guru”. If you haven’t checked it out, I believe that you may find that it’s myriad layers of playability, from stacks of patches & effects played simultaneously, mat suit you… I’m planning to get it around the holiday season.
Interesting you bring up Unify, I literally just got it last week, for said reasons. I do think it caters to yet more opportunity to jam, but it is nicely complementary with Scaler - in fact, that’s how I actually found it, by mentioning in the Scaler forum. So the fingering of a physical instrument pertains heavily to sound then? I guess the holy grail of digital representation of analogue sound
Have you gotten to play with the Linnstrument? That sounds like something relevant to this thought, MPE and all.
To clarify “fingering”, I mean specifically with “Stringed instruments” such as Cello, violin, guitar, banjo.
I am seeking realistic/practical finger placements in play-style, as extreme shifts up/down the neck of an instrument without a purpose can lead the ear to detect that the tonal changes between notes (pitch) sounds “off”.
I do not want my audience for some of the performances to know that there is even a possibility that the piece was not performed by a “player”.
So, if I was at all unclear previously, then I beg your pardon.
Yes, I understood “fingering” to refer to a string instrument (I was concretely thinking of guitar, but looks like the concept applies to string instruments more broadly). So from what I learn it seems not only the sound but also timing subtleties are related to fingering, a form of “randomness” (organic?) is involved in playing a natural instrument manually, and that seems to get lost in computer-driven music. Very similar to the analog vs. digital oscillator comparisons sounding cold/warm.
And yes, I totally understand your concern, of listeners of your music not to be confronted with the computer-driven part of music production.
Speaking of the more organic nature of the timing, have you seen the feature in Scaler where it allows you to vary to timing & velocity? I think that has been an attempt to close in partially to what you describe. Check this out…
Fortunately I have seen that feature. Though I appreciate you pointing it out (just in case). I believe that it would be a wonderful “multiplier” to effect the timings as “humanizing” features evolve… after the aforementioned fingerings are hammered out.
Scaler has SO much potential to be so much more (which is not a denotation of shortcomings of the devolopers, merely a notation of the value which I can see it potentially bringing beyond both its current offerings and its current format).
That stated, I am off to bed. Please enjoy a wonderful evening.
