Scaler 2 + EZKeys 2: Can They Play Together?

Scaler 2 General Discussion
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I’m trying to crack the workflow on getting Scaler2 chord progressions into various 3rd-party plugins in Studio One Six, so I can play with different sounds and grooves. My primary goal is getting Scaler 2, EZKeys 2, and S1 to play nice together.

It looks to me like there are 2-3 ways to get Scaler to work with 3rd-party instrument VSTs. The first is to generate a chord progression, with or without a groove, in Scaler, create a new track with a different instrument as the output, set Scaler as the input on that track, and play/record it in Studio One, thus generating the midi track. The second method is to do this live, connecting the Scaler 2 track and, say, a Kontakt instrument track and recording the chord output in real time. Method 3 is to simply MIDI Record a chord progression in Scaler, drag and drop the Scaler 2 midi chord track into an empty S1 track, and then just copy and paste that midi event onto other tracks as needed.

Do I have that part correct? I’m asking, because it seems Scaler 2 requires me to play through and record a progression in order to generate a midi track. I just wanted to check that.

But here’s the bigger question. I’ve got my Scaler chord progression. I want to use it in EZKeys 2 to generate a great piano groove for a song. Is there any easy way to get the Scaler 2 progression into EZKeys?

So far, it seems there’s no direct way to do this - I think I need to save my Scaler 2 file as a midi file, then import it into a track with EZKeys, or into EZKeys itself. Or I can play and record the Scaler 2 track as input on the EZKeys track. But it doesn’t appear that I can drag & drop the Scaler 2 midi chords into EZKeys, the way I can drag/drop from Scaler 2 onto an S1 track.

Sorry for belaboring this. It’s a long way of asking: Has anyone got a great workflow for Scaler 2 + EZKeys 2 + S1?

1 Like
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Look at my latest mini-tutorial…
:wink:

for example this one

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You absolutely can do this. You can drop it in either the track view or the Bandmate tab in EZkeys.

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Thank you for this. I may be doing something stupid, but in Studio One, I can’t open two plug-in screens at the same time. If I have my Scaler VST on Track 1 open, as soon as I open my EZKeys VST on Track 2, Scaler closes. Am I doing something wrong?

Or are you using Scaler and/or EZKeys in standalone mode?

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I can’t help with Studio One. In Live you can set up multiple VSTs to be visible but drag and drop works with just one VST visible as well. Drag the MIDI from Scaler over the track with Ezkeys and the Ezkeys gui shows instead of Scaler.

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Don’t drop the MIDI on the track, wait for the Ezkeys gui to open.

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Ableton Live has an option that lets you have all GUIs opened (or just the clicked one)

try the Studio manual to see if that option exists

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Success! Thank you, Claudio & Bagatell! For future reference, it couldn’t be simpler:

  1. In Studio One, to keep multiple plugins open at once, you pin them with the pin icon on the upper right of the VST gui.
  2. In EZK, open the Bandmate screen.
  3. In Scaler2, select the progression, then drag-drop it into the EZK Bandmate.
  4. Drag-drop the chords from the Bandmate upper screen into the middle-section of the piano roll.
  5. Switch EZK’s Groove chooser, find your groove, drop it into the bottom portion of the piano roll.
  6. Drag & drop the whole thing into the DAW track.

Maybe there are steps you can cut out, but thanks to you, I found the big thing I needed to find. THANK YOU!!

2 Likes
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Yes, but, don’t forget that if you select then drag-drop that series, just chords are transferred, not all the variations that you might have added in Scaler
AND
you can skip Points 2 and 3 doing D&D directly into the EZK chord area (without using Bandmate), paying just attention to drop them in the top part of the chords area

If you drop them in the lower part of the area, you drop waves ONLY, not chords; maybe it can be useful as well, but I don’t know how

P.S. I think that Bandmate was not intended this way, but rather a fast way to have a base (you can add a piano or a bass on the fly) to jam on, or to test quickly some idea

I currently use Broomstick Bass to do that, but Bandmate is more advanced

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This has a drawback anyway: if you keep the chords and patterns into EZK, you can use EZK to drive other instruments selecting MIDI out
If you move the whole thing into the DAW track instead, you lose this useful option
This applies also to Toontrack’s bass and drum, BTW

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