Seeking advice on which Instruments would be good to group together on channel 1, 2, 3, 4
What instruments would be good to group together? types of Strings, woodwinds, Brass, etc.
My guess would be to group lows (bass cello, horns, tuba,) on channel 1, strings and flutes on channel 4, etc.
Davide Carbone has made some great tutorials. In the Multi-Out he shows an example but not the channels.
Scaler 2.7 New Features | Live Sync, Multi Out, Parallel Harmony, Autoplay and Content - Deep Dive
Itās a good question, because itās more involved than might appear at first sight.
Check out
The answer is very genre dependent; if you are looking at an orchestral / cinematic genre, then this is the whole mega topic of orchestration. You may get some ideas from Spitfireās BBC SO template for Live
https://www.spitfireaudiothepage.com/templates
BBC So is free by the way ā¦ Iād download it anyway. Spend a few minutes looking at this
remember, Ā£0 !
The midi streams you get from Scaler can be duplicated and transposed to send to different instruments, so one Scaler channel might be split to a Tuba and a clarinetā¦
If you are seriously into cinematic stuff, then I suggest looking at the wonderful and hugely absorbing Divisimate, but itās not cheap.
However, If you are into EDM, ambient, melodic trance etc, the instruments are arbitrary if they are synths. Here you might look for a division based on whether the patch was something with a short attack and decay like a pluck, or a pad with a long attack time. You might feed one channel through Bluearp for an arpeggiated line.
This is a good starting point, Thanks!
Yeah Divisimate is on my list. I wanted to learn how to do this in Scaler2 with Multi-Ou because itās limited (i think) to just 5 distinct channel outs because of chord structures)
So far, Scaler2 + Kontakt
Iām not sure if the Scaler2 Divisi is also suppose to work with 4 notes played from the keyboard, or only the Chords out from Scaler2.
example: If 4 notes from the Keyboard
chnl1 Note 1 Bass
chnl2 Note 2 Cello
chnl3 Note 3 Strings
chnl4 Note 4 Flute
everything after the first note is random and usually the flute is never audible.
So Iām looking for a Cakewalk tutorial on how to set this up correctly.
I got it when it had an offer on, but if you are aspiring to Zimmer type tracks, itās amazing and fun to use.
Re Scaler, the manual says
"When Multi-Voice Output is enabled, the MIDI Output Channel setting is ignored. When a chord is played, all notes are played onto the Channel 1 and each individual note that compose the chord is played onto channel 2 to 15. The lowest note is played on Channel 2 then every following note is played on a consecutive channel. For example in a C maj chord containing the notes C, E, G, Scaler will play C on the channel 2, E on the channel 3 and G on the channel 4. All 3 notes will also be played on channel 1"
So your low note comes out on channel 2. This is spreading a chord by channel, but although that might be useful in some cases, in others it may be pretty restrictive. With Divisimate you have have a melody area and the chord area, and normally triads are fine. It can spread the triad over different instruments and the ātransformersā allow pitches to be altered for any instrument. No doubt you have looked at tis on the NextMidi website.
I also use Cantabile Solo which has great midi routing capabilities. Itās USD 68, but gives a lot more control over the Scaler routing. An advantage for me with Live is that you can split channels, as Live has a problem with channel routing, so Multi Voice doesnāt work as intended. Cantabile is a host, so you can direct your splits to an input channel, which Live does recognise.
I donāt think that you have this problem in Cakewalk.
To get a very brief idea of the Cantabile midi functions (all wired up graphically, os easy) have a look at
Think I got it SOLVED - the issue is specific to Cakewalk.
There are several different types of MIDI INPUTS.
āAll External Inputs OMNIā is working as expected. ~ good, because the stuck note were making my ears bleed.
~ thanks for helping!
Honestly despite trying out the Multi-channel output of Scaler I still drag the MID out of Scaler and do it by hand. The Multi-output can be useful for one section, so the string section and split the notes across bass, celli, viola and violins, just for one example. And then you would have to sync another Scaler for the other sections or what have you.
But to me I just use Scaler to create the rough sketch of a piece, using itās built in piano sounds or occasionally another sound internal to Scaler. Then I drag and drop the chords onto a scratch track. And I copy and paste that data by hand to various instruments and then edit the MIDI data in my DAW. I find that far faster and easier and once Iām past an initial sketch, I typically disable and then hide Scaler all together. I would typically then play a melody in by hand or just enter the notes in the piano roll, depending on how complex it is.
Just my preferred way of working anyway.
iām a fan of once i have the MIDI i need for a given part - i drag it into my DAW and assign the instrument, and depending on what iām doing, generate the audio for the later mix activities.