I could use some insights into using the Duration and Repeat functions.
I realize I’m not making use of this feature as well as I could be. I’d like Scaler to play more interesting harmonic rhythms and use the Rest feature more effectively. I want to get away from having progressions that can get too block-y with a change on the first beat of the measure, etc.
I’m experimenting with this but have workflows that get me what I want, but they’ve avoided working with this feature.
Some basic Harmonic Rhythm formulas would help. For example, chords on the upbeat of 8th notes in 4/4 time. Similar such formulas for generating harmonic rhythms could be worked out, I’m sure.
Another example would be chords in 16th note triplets with a rest patterns, a “funky strum” kind of sound. What would be the formula of Chord, Duration and Repeat to generate something like that? Including Rests, such a pattern might fill several Pattern Banks in an instance of Scaler. Can Rests be less than a beat? See how much I don’t know.
I am hacking away at this a bit, but, as I said, my workflows get me the harmonic rhythms I want.
If I work anything useful out with this I’ll post here. But, I often find others are miles head of me on any given topic or just have a good idea or two to share.
Thanks for reading. Nothing urgent here, but your thoughts and suggestions are always welcome.
I also spend a ton of time “hacking away” at the playback feature in live and static mode and agree there is gold to be mined in this area…especially with the COF preview mode.
Right now there is a lot of… try something and see what happens going on. Which while fun, in a “lets wander down this street” kinda way, it does burn a lot of time. In the short term, maybe just a simple document providing some additional details on the various playback settings (and those that impact playback), and how they work together.
As for posting workflows and explorations on this topic, if you spin up a thread outside the Feature Requests area, I bet others will chime in. I know I will.
I’m going to spend time on this and see what I can work out. Basically, I’m looking to create chords of shorter duration with specific harmonic rhythms. There’s so many ways to skin the cat that I just tend to take the fastest route, but I realized that I may be missing some good uses of Scaler in favor of what was easiest for me to work out.
I want to be able to convert the factional parts of the durations into musical divisions of the beat and measure and to also include rests to create more interesting patterns.
I’ll make time for this and post anything I find useful. Perhaps you and others will also spend time working on this and together we’ll find some useful things.
I tend to create chords and then play parts using Keys Lock at times, or use an arpeggiator within an instrument to play things. It certainly works fine, but doesn’t answer the questions I’m asking in this thread.
Anyway, let’s see what we find. I’ve seen some of the posts on various workflows and concepts and tried some, but none have addressed this general “how to” kind of question.
I’ll post again after spending a little more time with this. Thanks for your interest. Let’s see what others have to say.
Interesting Scaler Runs with Rest Functions and Durations in use.
Found time to start experimenting more with Duration and Repeat functions. I found I wasn’t using the Rest function enough. Wasn’t it Mozart who said some of the most beautiful moments in music are created by a well placed rest?
Anyway, I’m enjoying finding new workflows possible with Scaler.
In this example, you get very nice descending runs. Use any chords you like. Set Chords to play One Beat.
I found the Strum function, various Dynamic Voicings and other settings generate some interesting sounds.
As I start to explore working this way with Scaler, I think it would be useful to allow Duration of less than one beat. I’d be happy getting resolution down to one chord for a 32nd note triplet. Also, I was wondering if we could have, perhaps, separate settings for chords and rests?
I can play tempo tricks in the DAW to make something like that work, too, but it creates complexities when a song has to run at 400 BPM or something. This is more thought experiment than feature request.
I’m loving opening up new workflow possibilities with the program.
P.S. I just finally noticed that Scaler does allow 1/2 beat chords. Nice!
“Wasn’t it Mozart who said some of the most beautiful moments in music are created by a well placed rest?”
I believe so, but he would probably be turning in his grave listening to John Cage’s ‘four thirty-three’ …
In terms of efficient exploring, you probably already know this, but just in case:
You can use your up and down arrows to quickly move through the Playback settings in the upper dashboard as Scaler is playing. (for example, to seamlessly move through all the quantization settings one at a time while playback continues) Just click on the list but no where else and it will keep focus allowing you to move up and down.
In many cases, Scaler behaves very well when taking playback midi and running it back through Scaler using a different Perform settings. You have to explore a bit and when playing this way, some of the settings seem to behave counterintuitively…for example x2 slows things down when you would expect it to speed up.
While you can’t encode into a pattern, you can get some pretty interesting sequences.
Here are some hack examples of playing around with this recursive approach. Most are just 3-4 chords and some mouse clicks…no Keyboard required
