Setting playback timings/durations

In this tutorial I am outlining how to set playback timings inScaler 2.5.

You can set or change the global playback timing in the SETTINGS page (click on the little gear wheel at the top right to open this).

Click on CHORD DURATION setting to set a base for playing back every chord/block in the patterns.The default is 4 beats (i.e. when playing back the Scaler patterns every block will play for 4 beats).

You can select a global setting between 1/2 a beat and 16 beats.

You can further adjust the timing for each block on the EDIT page.

Click on the + on the righthand side of PLAYBACK TIMINGS to open the PLAYBACK TIMINGS panel.

Note that each block has an individual timing which is set to a multiple of the golbal setting (i.e. if the global setting is 4 beats then x1 = 4 beats and teh block will play for 4 beats).

Click on the x1 to open a menu of timings and click on a timing to apply it to that block.

The timings are are fractions, expressed as decimals, of the timing set in the global SETTINGs. So if the global setting is 4 beats then a timing of 0.25 is every beat in a 4 beat bar. If the global setting is every beat then 0.25 is every 1/4 beat (i.e. a semi quaver).

This gives you the flexibilty of setting an individual timing for each block in a pattern.

You can also change the number of times a block will repeat before moving to the next block in this panel by clicking on the REPEAT number (in blue).

An alternative approach to controlling playback timings (and repeats) is to bind patterns to midi clips, which I have outlined here.

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Things getting clearer now, thanks a lot.

Really good teaching. I believe it will help many new friends.

Just discovered a little wrinkle when u=you want to select several blocks on a Windows implementation.

I wanted to select the first, second and fifth block in a pattern and set the timing to x2.

I lassoed blocks 1 and 2 and the holding down the CTRL key I clicked on the fifth block.

The bottom left-hand corners of each block displayed a (very small) number indicating that it had been selected.

I then simply opened the PLAYBACK TIMINGS panel and changed the timing to X2. All the blocks changed.

I know this is standard Windows functionality but I forgot.

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Nice post. I really like how Scaler gives numbers for the chords selected. It allows a lot of flexibility and makes it easy to drag chords into the DAW or to other Patterns with the chords in a different order.