These are the words of wisdom, my friend. I see the light at the end of the tunnel…but Scaler could help us more 
I start with what you just explained. But i am still too lazy to learn hehe.
RC can do that and more. Absolutely great program.
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Yes jjfagot! I totally agree! Paul has a deep knowledge of music theory and years and years of experience and that is something I can never hope to achieve. I’m 67 and I have to do things my way based on my situation and limitations.
Thanks for your suggestion but that is exactly what I have tried and although it works really well and is quite useful and inspiring, it still is not what I’m looking for!
So Yes! Scaler is a great and fun learning tool but again, not what I’m looking for. I will of course continue to use Scaler and hope for some new exciting features in the next major update.
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Hulkko, I have tried the demo version of RapidComposer but I did not find a way to import a melody and have RC generate chord progressions without being constricted to a scale.
But maybe that is possible somehow. I will email the developer and ask. He seems very helpful!
Yes, Hummersallad. The trick is there: in continuing to meet years. I just turned 62. And, as Paul Thomson makes clear, the more we learn, the better; there is no age in that. And in Scaler it is easy to learn, simply by practicing, putting an idea into action. What the developers of Scaler have always done is improve, and they have taken our suggestions into account, although in the basics they have made it clear that Scaler does not want to be an AI. What is very true is that each new version of Scaler has brought important improvements to help us. I am already anxious to know Scaler 2.6
Great series of videos.
I got an almost instant reply (RapidReply 
) from Attila at MusicDevelopment regarding the chords features in RapidComposer. I will post the results, if any!
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I like to use RC as a standalone program. Then I pull them from there to Dawi, in my case Logic. Somehow I don’t see the need to open it in Logic.
Hulkko, I am also a Logic user and just got in touch with Attila regarding RapidComposer and chord generation. I’ll let you know what he says!
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As an illustration I created a piece of “non-music”. Not meant as a composition, just an example of possible chords manually derived from listening to the four notes used by Paul Thomson; G, D, A, Bb.
I recorded 14 chords and when I check them in Scaler, at best, 8 of the 14 chords matched any scale. So there are several scales involved here. And that’s what makes it interesting. At least to my ear!
This ”piece" may sound a bit strange and is not in any respect intended as a ”real” composition. Just an example to what I’m trying to say. I could probably have reordered the chords for a more musical result.
BTW, the english horn keeps repeating the four ”melody” notes. Finally I added some piano notes and a bass line. Again, not meant as music, just a few possible chords.
https://soundcloud.com/formless-music/exampel-chords
BTW, Since this is a music related forum, why is it impossible to upload audio files??? I had to log into my long since abandoned SoundCloud account in order to share a file. Ridiculous!
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Most music forums I am a member of only let you post links. Pretty common. It would fill up server space so it’s not ridiculous at all. Easy to find space to host your files including Soundcloud.
Good exercise for the chords. You might try a call and answer between english horn and flute for some variety.
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Thanks Jamie! This isn’t meant to be “real music”, just an example of mostly unrelated chords that still work together. I would just want to find some way to enter the four notes and in return get lots of possible chord progressions. But I suppose that something like that just does not exist. At least not yet!
Excuse my upload-file ranting. I never upload stuff to forums so I was unaware of this limitation.
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Don’t forget that it is not necessary nor often desirable to have a new chord for each note of the melody.
It’s a great discussion and as I have mentioned before this is scaler’s raison d’être. I spent my young life as a successful touring music producer with no exposure to music theory. I was able to write chart melodies, riffs etc but mainly due to the genres of music I made, western harmony was not relevant, as I got older and doing more ‘composition’ Harmony became fundamentally important. I always wondered why there was no software that could listen to what I was doing and suggest harmonic content.
What the OP is suggesting is there but it is not in a ‘menu driven’ way. There are many ways to do it much like what @jjfagot suggests. Yes for me harmonic assistance and suggestions is the way forward in scaler and we have lots of that coming but how exactly can you better suggest chords to go with a few notes? I do like the idea of right clicking a note or series of notes in a melody and suggesting chords which share that note, ideas like that are practical.
For now I always suggest people look at the following sections which throw up nicely coloured chords that can not only work with your melody but suggest leading lines of where to go next.
- Voicings Menu (artists interpretations of diatonic chords)
- Suggest Mode (chords that go with not necessary belonging to scale)
- Circle of Fifths / Chord Edit (all available chords)
- Common Chord Sets in the Song Menus (thickened and coloured chords that go with)
5 Modulation (chords that go where you may not naturally go)
If anyone has any practical suggestions of how a more structured suggesting chords to a melody would look I would love to hear them.
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Davide, I absolutely agree with what you and jjfagot says! And the five methods you mention are indeed very useful and inspiring. And available now! No about about that. Did you have a chance to watch Paul Thomsons video? I guess I’m looking for a virtual version of him. Software with deep knowledge of music theory combined with a clever (AI-based?) “musical ear”.
- I supply a melody (and maybe decides on some parameters, like how often should the chords change, etc.)
- The app analyses the melody and suggests a progression of chords based on music theory
- The AI (“Paul” ) decides what sounds “good” and what makes musical “sense”.
- Repeat this a number of times until a “nice” progression is generated
- I can then refine the progression further to my liking.
The Paul-step could initially be omitted and instead let the user listen to every progression and decide what to do.
I know that all this can be done manually with great assistance from Scaler but I’d love to see the process automated. It would save time and probably come up with progressions that are not obvious.
Such a feature can of course become quite complex but maybe not impossible to implement.
With all due respect I don’t think any AI is going to replace Paul Thompson’s experience and musicianship. Or at least not anytime soon or fully.
I saw Paul’s video and it’s a brilliant way to go about coming up with some ideas. But what you’re discovering is that is does require some learned skills. Dare I say that you probably just need to buckle down and practice and those skills will come. Scaler can certainly help with that by making some of the basic chords more familiar to you. But none of the AI tools will completely replace having some knowledge.
There is also nothing stopping you from using Scaler to find those chords and assist with interesting ways to voice them. It’s just not going to do it as quickly for you as Paul Thompson can do in his head. You may have to step through some menus and pages and yes… it will take you longer. Or I assume it will. I know it would take me a lot longer than it took Paul to sort out all those ideas. I would suspect his video was also edited as well. 
I think patience is the key here. Take some time rather than looking for the quick solution and the end product will probably be better as well. And then the more you try it the faster you’ll get at it because then you’ll know all those chords and how to quickly voice them without having to think too hard as well.
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I agree totally although I do think Scaler can serve up options allowing you to choose and implement a little easier
I did watch the video and it is cool. This is all about imparting feel and knowledge, we all have feel but not all of us have knowledge - this is where Scaler comes in and I agree we can help. I’ve had a good think here along with this other thread: Chord Suggestion Based on the Top (Melody) Note and I think we may have something.
Thanks for all feedback as always.
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Thanks RBIngraham,
I absolutely agree with you that I ought to learn more music theory and that patience is key and that the tools in Scaler are already great. No doubt about that! And I don’t expect AI to replace Paul anytime soon. I would happily settle for a mini-Paul Light. And I don’t want this because I’m lazy, I just think a system built on “actual” AI (not the marketing hype type) would be fun, inspirational, useful and very nicely complement the tools already present in Scaler.
AI is already way more capable than many people might think. A great and recent example is Google Imagen! You type a sentence and it creates an image! To me this is beyond mind blowing. And I believe that doing this with images is way more complicated and advanced than suggesting chords since with images there are no rules, like music theory, to start with!
https://imagen.research.google/
Yes. It’s been quite a few years since a machine defeated a world chess champion. And yet, chess players use these machines to practice and learn, to simulate the results of their moves. Can you imagine that the chess championships were between machines, instead of between humans? Well, maybe there are already chess championships between machines, but it would be terrible if we humans stopped participating.
AI is making a lot of progress in all fields, and in music too, of course. I personally have many plugins on my PC that generate chords, arpeggiates, phrases, melodies, etc., but,
Let’s say that like other things I do with the help of machines, I finish my compositions “by hand”.
I think that Scaler and the other plugins help a lot by suggesting what I can do, but in the end the chord that I write in the score is up to me
By the way, I also liked this AI:
You write a text and it returns music that you can download in midi
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