Scaler and general Guitar stuff

Scaler 2 General Discussion
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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…

1 Like
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Exactly my thoughts. Sorry I can’t help, I watched Scaler 2 development since more than a year, but still think this app is way more oriented to keyboard players.

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Hi folks,
I too had wondered about how to use Scaler 2 with my guitars. It took the longest while to finally figure it out. As I understood Scaler more I decided to change my DAW software for this reasoning. I will just call it Product A rather than ppost negative comments about something others find useful for other reasons.
Anyhow, I moved to using Cubase Pro 13. What I have found is that, for guitars, I can begin a VST instrument directly opening it in the software. Then, using the Chord Progression and Chord Assistant tools I can quickly flip around, change and mix up chords that I began in Scaler 2. The speed and ease is what turned me to this solution. Scaler 2 is where I begin, but where I am now ending up is through exporting Scaler 2 chords and ideas into Cubase directly to my choice of guitars (or my real one) and then having the ability to quickly use the tools available in there.
Hope this helps.