I’d love for Scaler to be able to output to multiple midi channels*, and being able to set which notes of a chord get sent to which channel, like a ruleset, for example:
If note = root, send to channel 1
if note = 7th, send to channel 2
if note = third, send to channel 3
etc.
or:
Lowest note (pitch) in chord to channel 1
2nd lowest note to channel 6
Highest note to channel 3
Or anything along those lines
*channel, not port, in this scenario you would still send everything out of the same port, but split over any of the 16 midi channels.
There are a variety of ways that this can be achieved, but as you state not internally in Scaler at this time. The approach depends on what your DAW capabilities are. Most DAW’s recognise channel number in the MIDI stream, but Ableton Live (for example) does not. So even if Scaler could allow channel definition by rules, Live wouldn’t recognise this from a single port (there are some caveats to this, for FAPP it’s the case)
Of the several ways to achieve this (and setting aside Divisimate for now) a possible solution with Scaler as it is, is to process the rules externally to the DAW, then feed them back in.
One rational for using ports is that if your DAW was Live, these are recognised, whereas channels are not. See a trivial example at
It would be nice. The developers have mentioned they are looking various multitimbral functionality options for future versions.
In Cubase you can “explode” a track by pitch and then assign the notes to different MIDI channels/instruments. Perhaps your DAW has a similar function?
I assumed that this post was splitting a track by pitch, as in MIDI note number, presumably because then it could be given different voices in orchestrated pieces, a la Divisimate,
If this was his goal, then my understanding is that, although you can use a rack to split MIDI notes, there is no way to then to route the split MIDI to separate tracks as far as I can see… hence, for example, the poor man’s dodge proposed by @yorkeman.
Since a track can only receive from a single source, to do this requires a sending track to be able to specify different targets according to the splitting rules. You may be able to do tis in Max for Live, but I’m not familiar. with that, but with vanilla Live, I can’t see a way it can be done.
It’s maybe not as mad as it might sound at first glance e.g.
{1} Take an example of ‘thickened II’ chord in Common Progressions, and you render these to on a single MIDI channel to a violin patch. It doesn’t sound right - the lower registers maybe should be cello and the higher registers by violin. This is what products like Divisimate do, and they need to assign note number ranges to channels,
{2} Sending out on multiple midi channels has been requested on the board more than once to give a better rendering if chords are creating guitar sounds. Notes of the same pitch can sound quite different on a guitar depending where they are fingered - not a concept relevant to a piano.
As I noted before you can play 1 octave of a C major scale in more than a dozen fingerings and although the pitch is the same for each they all sound different.
{3} What’s a chord ? If it’s two or more notes played together, then this can occur as a dyad or a continuo part along with some other notes, and it is likely that you want them to be rendered with different instrument sounds - an orchestration thing.
{4} You might have an octave in a progression (is it a chord?) and want the lower note to be played by a bassoon and a higher one with a flute.
As a general case, as several posting here have covered, you might wish a part from Scaler to be voiced by different instruments and this is not possible with a single channel.
Aah, I wasn’t thinkin of orchestration as I would do that in my DAw: different way of working, nd I wasn’t thinking about the issues on guitars as I thought that was a different (though related ) problem). As I said, probbly a bit stupid…
It’s known as Divisi writing in orchestral orchestration. A violin section splits the notes up between violins 1 and 2, violas, cellos and basses. Same for all other sections. Anything that makes that process faster when you are writing to your DAW makes life easier for you. That’s why there is Divisimate out there but it costs a whopping $130. While it does way more than Scaler in the Divisi area it’s a delight to have it show up in some configuration in Scaler. Nice move, Devs! Looking to explore this more in the coming winter months.
Live is an odd beast. Why Ableton thought one MIDI channel was sufficient is beyond me. I’ve been using Bitwig instead and it works as all other DAWs do. Each track to whatever MIDI channel you need.
