Hello all,
New to the forum, so I wasn’t sure of the best place to post this…
I’ve been programming a lot of guitar parts and I’m looking for a way to speed up the process. First, a little background:
I have MANY guitar libraries, know my theory, and play some guitar, however my theory knowledge far surpasses my ability to play a flawless performance, especially on more advanced parts. What I would LOVE is to be able to input the exact voicings from a fretboard input. None of the libraries do it correctly. Often they will read a note and the auto-scripting chooses the wrong string and kills a note, when it’s absolutely possible to play it on a guitar. Then there’s the whole “User Chord” thing, but this adds a lot of extra work, obviously. I’ve looked all over for any simple MIDI tool that would allow me to this, but haven’t really found anything. When I drive the library from Scalar, it seems to solve this mostly.
I really love Scalar 2 for a lot of reasons, and have been searching the forum and tutorials because it seemed Scalar comes close to solving a lot. I’m not a complete expert at Scalar yet, but there are a few things that seem like it’s the closest to what I want so far, so questions:
Is there any way to choose the POSITION of the chord? Inversions / changing octaves isn’t really yielding the expected result. Setting it to “guitar voicings’” isn’t really doing it either. For example, when Jazz comping, if there’s one chord for 2 bars, a lot of guys play the chord, then switch positions for the same chord. I put in a simple D9, and it’s playing a super high voicing. Switching octave -1 gets down into the keyswitches, when there are at least 2-3 other shapes it could do in between, and I don’t see a workaround.
The fretboard shows all notes at all positions in the same color. It would be helpful if the actual voicing being triggered from a pad was highlighted somehow. Is there a preference for this anywhere? Haven’t been able to find it if it exists.
Sorry for the long post, but any simple tips, tools, etc. would be highly appreciated. I realize Scalar is a composing / chord suggestion tool, but anyone that comes up with this seemingly simple way to input MIDI into accurately voiced guitar parts and playing techniques will make a mint, and Scalar seems to be 90% there already. I’d really love it if I don’t have to throw $800-$1500 for a Jamstik, but it may come to that.
Thanks in advance…