After all the discussion about how to use 8x8 pads midi controllers and me having experimented many different ways to use my 8x8 Maschine Jam, in the end I personally find it most intuitive to play Scaler’s section C chord matrix with a 2 octave keyboard. I am using a Korg NanoKey Studio - parallel to my main S49 keyboard - so the 2 octave Korg is dedicated to calling up the Scaler chord, while the melody can be played on the full size NI S49 keyboard. I suppose you could use any small midi keyboard with at least 2 octaves (one octave for activating the matrix row, and one octave for calling up the individual chords)
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Using my smaller MIDI keyboard as a mapper is something I haven’t tried, and I should do
The problem is to resist temptation to tickle plastic ivories on both keyboards of my Hammond… 
Maybe I’ll try tonight
The other eternal question inspired by the discussions around the 8x8 midi controller vis-a-vis Scaler section C matrix [ok, I need to get into the habit of referring to this as “pad view”, like the official Scaler manual calls it]
What is sensible to put into this matrix? Of course that is personal taste, and the genius behind this matrix is that you can drag & drop anything from Scales, to Songs, to Artists’ or your own (detected?) chord progressions into them.
Most of my focus in using Scaler is to learn chord harmonies and scales. When I say “learn”, I want to opportunistically play chords, know what name the chord has while I hear how it sounds. Learning by ear + eyes, so to speak.
You saw above that I like to drag different scales’ chord progressions into each row and then alternate while playing the row (i.e.scale). But it started annoying me that there were too many of the same chords, for example C maj in the left column. And also, leaving out too many “exotic” chords because the repetative ones took up space.
So I started building this one…
Each column represents a particulat note, say C in the left most, then progresses through the white keys D,E,F…B. And each row represents a particular chord type for its column’s root note. And I get these chords from this Scaler menu…
If you ever come to Australia you should come and have a play on some of our Hammonds - we have a few but the pride and joy is sitting in this corner complete with an original rotating Leslie speaker!
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SLURP!
Australia is a bit far away, but I can have a flight of fancy
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