Insert chord

Scaler 2 Feature Requests
1

I would love to be able to insert a chord (space) in a pattern. There is no easy way to do it at the moment unless I’ve missed something.

1 Like
2

Interesting. I’m pretty sure you could do it in earlier versions and was surprised that it no longer works.

The odd behavior corresponds with some weird things I’ve seen involving rests in general. For example, I’ve had rests that would not delete unless I was in edit chord mode. Or, if I tried to try to drag 2 chords one space to the right, I get 2 rests inserted and only one chord would stay in the pattern.

If it was part of my regular workflow, I would have filed a bug report.

3

Can’t you drag and drop in between chords?

4

I haven’t tried that. I will give it a go.

5

Doesn’t seem to work for me. I tried dragging and dropping a rest and also a chord. Neither worked.

6

I can drag a chord to a space between chords (as long as I see the slight grey bar between them…maybe change that to a green line) but see some odd behavior anytime rests are involved. These include:

  • Adding a rest in section C always kicks me into Chord Edit mode
  • Sometimes rests will not delete from section C unless I toggle to Edit Chord Mode
  • Sometimes rests will not delete from Chord Edit mode unless i toggle to Section C
  • When I can or cannot delete rests while in chord edit mode is inconsistent. Sometimes you need to have selected the orange edit tab on a chord and sometimes you need to select another chord to let you delete a rest. This seems to occur more with rests at the end of a pattern with no chords after them
  • While rare, when deleting rests in Chord Edit mode, I’ve had chords appear in place of the deleted rest. It was as if I was deleting an item from a queue and the next item popped to the top.

Here are a couple visuals:
Gif from Vid

1 Like
7

I just did a new test and now I can see the grey bar and it works with both chords and rests. I never knew it was already there. This is great! Opens a whole new era.

1 Like
8

Hi,

I’m seeing the same behaviors reported by TMacD above.
Clicking on the “+” sign in a box in Section C inserts a rest (why?) and that rest is then not removable via the right-click menu. And all of this makes Sections A and B go away. It’s non-sensical to me.

In case it matters, I’m observing with Scaler running in BItwig 4.2.3.

BTW, I want to mention the Scalar version, but I don’t see it anywhere. Could we please have the Scalar version report itself (ideally in a copyable way) in the About box?

9

For Scaler version Click on the Scaler logo on the upper left - Version is always in the about box on the lower left—

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Screen Shot 2022-04-21 at 8.58.59 AM
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Clicking on the + sign takes you to the chord edit page. This is expected. you just asked Scaler to add a chord - it adds a rest until you make up ypur mind. You can always go back to the main page by the boxes on the upper right.
Screen Shot 2022-04-21 at 9.00.25 AM
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Remove rest by right clicking on it and choose remove from the menu.
Screen Shot 2022-04-21 at 9.00.04 AM
I’ve never not had this work.

10

Thank you very much jamieh, your explanations help me to think about this more clearly for sure!

Comments:

  1. Right you are about the version number! I didn’t even see it because it is so faint and small. Even now knowing that it is there, trying to read it borders on the impossible w/o a magnifying glass. I seriously suggest that the version number be made notably larger and pure black for legibility. There’s just no upside in making a struggle out of it!

  2. SInce clicking on the plus sign enters a mode, I suggest making this perfectly clear by a) having the hover-help say “Enter Chord Edit Mode” rather than "Add New Chord’, and b) label the Chord Edit Mode page with the words “Chord Edit Mode”.

  3. While in Chord Edit Mode the right-click Remove will not (at all ever, for me here) remove the Rest. After I return to a different page, then it works. I suggest that it work in Chord Edit Mode as well (since it is offered in the Menu).

  4. I question whether adding a Rest upon entering CEM really helps anything. I’m constantly getting Rests inserted when that is not my intention. My pref would be that Rests be added intentionally only, e.g. from the right-click menu,

Now, I understand that one might say that all becomes intentional once you achieve a perfect understanding (and memory of same across all time) about what the interface does and doesn’t do, when and why. I tend to a different view though, which might be expressed as “say what you do, and do what you say”.

IOW, the need to learn and remember various surprises is a negative rather than a positive. YMMV.

Thanks again for the guidance!

11

I agree with the request to add tool tips to the menu buttons

but I do not agree with labelling the buttons with these labels as it could make the buttons too large on the interface.

An alternative may be to slightly redesign the interface to include a menubar at the top of the window with these buttons on the menu bar. The labels on the buttons may then be increased, but I would also like to see hot-keys introduced for navigating around Scaler.

It may be useful to add a prefernce to swich between adding rests and not doing so.