I agree, key switching is terribly clunky. It can be useful, but the ability to just say, make this pattern 11 chords long, combine pattern 1 and 2 into a single pattern, play all patterns in succession (without key switching) would be so great.
And again, I’d love to be able to see an entire song without having to scroll to see what chords I’m triggering. I love to improvise a bunch of chords in detect mode, then play around with them, experiment with order etc. It’s frustrating when I can’t see some of the chords I’m triggering.
Guys I am going to post another video on YT today. In it I look at chaining midi patterns and how you can trigger and bind more than 8 chords at once. You can even see them all in PAD view. If you Command Select you can select more than one pattern and it will bind all selected patterns. If you go to pad view you can see that. You can also play through all the patterns. There are some quirks in PAD view which we need to address (such as not being able to play through) but once you have seen this video I’d like feedback on whether its a good solution otherwise we may need to think. Problem is now we have key switches and keys lock wanting to take up some keys which restricts the lengths of patterns. Anyways I will post video when I launch it.
Thanks, looking forward to that for sure. I just tried command selecting patterns while the full multiple lane/pattern window was expanded and while visually (the pattens were illuminated blue), the keyboard display at the top still only showed the first patterns trigger keys. Also, although I can command select patterns, I can only bind one lane at a time.
If I collapse the multiple lane view and command select patterns it works. I can see the extended range on the keyboard display showing the trigger keys for all 3 patterns. Is this a bug? Am understanding correctly that it should work when the multiple pattern lane is open as well? I hope so because being able to see it all laid out is pretty important I think.
Thanks for your communications and I’m looking forward to the video
@jtnyc Yes exactly. I am hoping to have this all functioning in 2.1
That is that PAD view shows them all bind and there will also be a play button there and it will play through the lot. That’s how it should work. PAD view could be thought of as song mode.
Welcome @tedhaber
See attached. In PAD view the keyswitches to switch lanes (Patterns) are C1-B1 highlighted in green.
There are some great improvements in PAD mode coming in 2.0.9 including playthrough and additional controls.
As I read some of the comments and think through my own experience and your videos, I wonder if there’s a disconnect in how some (me included) expect Scaler 2 to work. In most if not all videos you tend to bind the keyboard at every opportunity, and have the skills to play in exactly what you want. I suspect the pattern isn’t more than a prompt and chord palette in your case.
People like me with more limited playing ability maybe expecting to work in a more Maschine / DAW way with a set of loops or segments we can line up and click play and they word. I’ve never even tried to bind in a pattern to play it in to make a verse (for example) and would lift the midi into Logic and double it up there.
I hope that makes sense and it’s a thought not a criticism. Happy to expand it useful, if not feel free to ignore!
Ha! I can’t play either - that’s one of the main drivers for making scaler! Having said that its more a composition tool for me but we are working to integrate it better into setups like Maschine and MPC. I think we will try and implement assignable pads so you can play them however - always via bind. I use patterns now too, especially with edit mode and pad view its much more a song sketch than the original scaler ever was. Is this a useful response?
You certainly reach for the keyboard a lot more than I do! Looking forward to developments. Let’s not forget the huge strengths of Scaler 2 such as the performances. The patterns thing is just destined to be a bone of contention (as is the lack of Song Mode in Maschine from NI). I tend to think in terms of songs, and want to be able to do something like set a four chord sequence, duplicate at one key press, tweak something in one of two chords on the repeat then add a bridge to a chorus (eg). My mechanistic approach wants me to be able to cue up something like
Pattern 1 (Intro)
Pattern 2 (Verse)
Pattern 3 (Chorus)
Pattern 2 (Verse)
Pattern 3 (Chorus)
Pattern 4 (Bridge)
Pattern 5 (Chorus)
Pattern 6 (Outro)
Never mind wanting more than 8 chords in some of the patterns (eg the intro might build from a small number of chords that get more complex performances or voicings on the repeats).
Obviously I’d also like jam with it! I realise this is rather a fantasy;-) Already Scaler has made a difference to the art of the possible for me, and long may it continue (preferably with some more melody / bass ideas, showing my bias towards songs!)
10 upvotes for MIDI mapping of chords to MPC or Maschine pads (or really just dynamically assignable notes so people could create templates for each respective pad-based MIDI controller). I’ll volunteer for the creating the Maschine Jam template once this feature becomes available
Hello, First of all congrats for this great tool. Voting too for a Jam capability. My workaround so far has been to run Scaler 1 for that. When arranging being imposed key switches kinda kills the fun.
When your idea is to use 2 chords from pattern 1, 7th from pattern 4, back to 6th chord of pattern 2… I let you imagine. Even though I understand the idea behind your concept.
The trick could be with the current design that if a Pattern goes from 8 to 16 or more chords, then it reduces the number of key switches accordingly and obviously in the grid, the next pattern would also start later.
On the right click over the Pattern button it could display - add 8 chords / Remove 8 Chords
