Scaler guitar for the world

Hey: We’ve seen the requests for the guitar section of Scaler. And been totally ignored. So how’s this. Scaler Guitar. Just a Scaler with a fret board only. And guitar voicing only. And lead riffs only. and different inversions of chords up and down the fret board. (Every guitar chord known to man and inversions)The ability to move notes on the fret board and save it. (Dropped bass string) And patterns that can be dropped as midi into your DAW. Patterns of bass, guitar, whatever. You would make bucket loads of cash and at the same time replace every guitar book ever written with something better. Like Scaler did but for guitar. Consider the piano community right now and then think why not guitarists too? You folks at Scaler have excelled in the piano chord gig why not venture out?

3 Likes

The Scaler Fret Board is a great way to edit chords. Scaler may change the names of the chords depending on the Scale you are using, but the notes will be what you edit in.

I’ve adapted to how Scaler works with guitar vocings and do most of my chord editing on the guitar display. The developers will look at improving this part of the program but for now I think it is just about the best chord editing system I’ve ever had the pleasure of using.

Some of the voicings are pitched up to accommodate some popular guitar VST instrument’s key ranges, but it is very easy to drop those an octave where needed.

I asked for the Guitar display to be made larger or scalable and a few other refinements. I’m sure the excellent developers will have a look at this in time.

Scaler knows most common guitar chords. The drop voicing are all standard guitar voicings. Rootless vocings and clusters are also possible. You can also use Extract Voicing and then Apply Voicing.

3 Likes

The problem- “I’ve adapted to the way Scaler works with guitar voicings”. No fretboard. But you wouldn’t see anything wrong if Scaler had no keyboard but only a fret board. That would be like if we used a drum set to edit chords. On a guitar we mostly call voicings inversions. We don’t talk about rootless voicings and clusters. Do you get it yet? Talk to a new guitar student. A true newbie. Ask him what he wants. And this is the problem. So, that’s why i make the suggestion.

5 Likes

I’ve been playing guitar for decades and studied both Jazz and Classical music. Rootless vocings are one of the primary tools of most guitarists even if they don’t know it.

Scaler is what it is and does what it does. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. In the meantime get a copy of Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene. Good luck.

1 Like

@Dannosaurus , I can’t disagree with your ideas here. I’m sure it would make a great product. I’ve been burned here before for responding with comments about economic realities, but here goes with my assessment of the picture, so this is an entirely personal view.

The real world question is ‘how can this be built?’. Lets assume that the all up cost of a c# developer with music domain knowledge sitting at a PC is £120k pa (probably too low) , and that there is 2 man years work (complete guess, but lets go with that - It’s probably more - especially getting the domain knowledge input.).

Scaler sells for £60 in the UK. Lets assume the development company gets 50% and the net margin on their share of income is say £10 per copy. That’s then what they have for future development.

Ok, £240k to build, so 24,000 copies to break even. Now to the funder, this doesn’t look a good deal at all. Make the numbers better by 100% or 200% - am I going to put a quarter of a million pounds on the table ?

As someone who has (more than once) put his kitchen sink and all his shirts into risky software ventures, the question one asks is not about what margin % you will make, but whether the multiplier you will make is 2,3 or 4 times your money.

I love your concept, but from a perspective of utter total ignorance about their affairs, I fear that for the Scaler folk as an out and out ‘big bang’ punt that would be a big bet.

There are alternative paths for moving towards your goal, and my guess is that we will see an evolutionary move in this direction from Melbourne, which of course may at some point then spawn a guitar specific variant on the back of how well such moves go.

All total speculation …

2 Likes

Thank you very much for the reply. Investment, cost analysis, risk venture- the music business needs to make money to survive- Intelligent,cool perspective and answer- thanks again.

1 Like

I think it would be great if Scaler developed a completely different program for the guitar and a different fee for it.

1 Like

I appreciate that Scaler’s development is based on real-life need and use by the devs for their own projects. That keeps it usable and practical for all of us. While I’d like more guitar stuff, for sure, it is an awesome product that I’m confident will keep developing and increasing in function.

1 Like

I don’t think this is a lost cause, it’s just that the evolutionary route is maybe more likely. The good thing is there is a ‘positive feedback loop’; {1} more guitar bits go in, so more guitar folk buy it (2} this boosts the business case for more features, so more development {3} go back to 1. Then at some point you have a guitar targeted product.

What helps is having requests for functions from seasoned axe men like you at each stage, as that enhances the additions. The Scaler guys are market focussed and do listen - but it’s not always a good thing to reveal too much about development directions because you tell competitors of your plans as well as users.

2 Likes

I’ve never had a product where the developers are as involved, present and responsive to the public be it on theses forums for via the extensive youtube videos they’ve produced.

I’ve seen things I asked for implemented and usually in a better fashion that I suggested. Other things have been improved and fixed to cover a wide variety of DAWs platforms.

Scaler Guitar Fretboard will, no doubt, be improved in time and making Scaler better for Guitarists will bring in more users. I find the current system very easy to work with. I’ve created and saved guitar specific chord sets. I love that the Drop vocings and guitar chords were added. From beginner to advanced, Scaler has good guitar features right now. Will those improve? I think they likely will.

2 Likes

I am ready to pay it twice :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I think we all agree. Scaler=awesome,fantastic inspiring, fun to use and we love to see things like this made. Many tough considerations are involved and sometimes we need to just step back and think about how much work, risk and effort you put in just to get here. Our best wishes to your further endeavors whether new or improved.

3 Likes

Well, I am certainly one who often asked for more/better guitar patterns and also for a Wakeman button just because I am unable to play anything but the doorbell :rofl:, but I think that Scaler will be likely still a keyboard-centered for some time, so I looked in other directions, and I’ve rather build up a cross-breeding system where multiple tools work together to have what I want

So now, for the guitar accompaniment I use Scaler + AAS Strum-GS 2, while for solos I use Bitwig Harmonize + the various Sounpaint guitars, and I am pretty happy

1 Like

Totally agree with this :sunglasses::heart::guitar:

1 Like

As a longtime software developer, musician, consultant, etc., I find yours to be a particularly well reasoned analysis. The one thing it omitted was the degree to which musicians are unwilling to pay for things in the first place: piracy is practically epidemic among musicians, so the numbers you cite don’t even include the hundreds or thousands of people who would simply pirate the program somehow. I realize having it on the App Store improves that situation a bit, but even then I think it’s a relevant factor to consider.

2 Likes

You are absolutely correct, and the internet is awash with ‘cracks’ on just about everything. It has to be a significant factor.

I was in the software product business, but I had no experience with the “pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap” end of the market. In our case, pirating as such was not a problem because the clients couldn’t really run them without support from us, so it wasn’t an issue, but for the Scaler folk, it must figure in their development planning as you rightly say.

1 Like

Hey folks. This is my last thought on the subject. I just bought ChordWizard 2.5 Gold for guitar, hooked it into my DAW through LoopBe1 and it is the bomb. A perfect guitar companion to Scaler. Don’t get me wrong. I still use Scaler for the heavy lifting but the ChordWizard only for guitar. In FL Studio it writes all chords and scales perfectly through the step editing mode. Seeya

1 Like

Check out my last reply on the bottom.