it can listen to what you’re playing on the keyboard and extract out the chords…it will extract out a progression too if you play a few bars worth of different chords.
When you have your chords in a progression it will present you with a buzzillion scales that match the progression.
From there you can branch off to explore all manner of other chords that will match up with whichever scale you choose to look at.
You can drag and drop chords to create a progression from scratch.
You can edit the chords to any voicing you want, with any tension notes you want, diatonic or not, dissonant or not.
They have half a dozen ways to explore chromaticism…including modulation to a new scale, progression by mediants, modal interchange, neo-reimmanian voice leading, etc… Palettes of non-diatonic chords are presented whereby you can quickly explore chromaticism in a chord progression.
You can put it in a keyboard locked mode where whatever chord or scale is selected, all incoming midi will be coerced to conform. One mode in particular basically takes all the white keys and turns it into the currently selected scale. This is great for experimenting with exotic scales…at least initially.
Where I think Scaler could be better…
I’d like to see more intelligence about avoid notes
I’d like to see more intelligence about chord function
I’d like to see more intelligence about reharmonization options.
Yes, I cannot believe the negative attitude of some of those people there. I’ve been on that forum since they started. All the ones with negative comments have never tried Scaler2 and don’t understand or they feel threatened for some reason by what they think it is. Ridiculous.
I’ve spent my entire career surrounded my artists and musicians that are much more able and naturally talented than I am. Most of those people hated any technological advances. DAW’s, sample packs, digital pianos et all. Few of those artists are around now, whilst I have been lucky enough to forge a career in music. So I get it, but the truth is those that embrace change don’t get left behind.
I understand you completely. Good part of my career has been as a sessioner and educator as well. I grew up my early 20s surrounded by cassetes portastudios, analog synths, spring reverbs, valves and open reel multitracks with barber blades as my “sequencer”. Not to mention “not editable” learning material that you had to hold in your hands to read (books, magazines …)
I was always in love with the advancement of technology, to the point that the community of local musicians nicknamed me as “Beep Beep” when I walked these streets at my 17 saying that music would soon be created on a computer
Many of those anti-tech musicians came to me a decade later, to learn how “Beep Beep” made music on a Commodore, Atari ST, MC-500, Mac and PC while getting success and topical jobs. Now them, with their snowy heads, thank me for having guided them to the “enlightenment path” .
By the way, I already had a Scaler in the late 70s a plastic gadget called Casio VL-Tone that allowed me to rhythmically sequence scales and licks with two fingers, to my taste.
Very similar in my case. I worked for an animation studio in Portland during the Eighties. When digital audio first came out they were very slow to think in might be viable. I bought one of the first portable DAT recorders from Tascam back then and they would not believe the audio would be usable. I kept turning in sound tracks that would sync to the mag machines with no compensation and everyone said it can’t work. Within a couple months they were paying me rent on the DAT machine for production use. That went on for quite awhile.
Nice story! thanks for sharing, a what a coincidence, a similar thing happened to me with a DA-30 and an AIWA HDS-100 Portable DAT-Recorder with an advertisement TV producer facilities in Caracas (long before this dictatorship). They used an old Nagra, but my DAT had better sound and more portability. I think the same thing is happening to a some old cat with Scaler 2, but this time there will be no renting it at all, just tell them to go to Plugin-Boutique-Scaler-2 and convince themselves…
the same happened in my field; translations
I started in the 2000 when the first CAT (Computer Asssited Translation) tool jumped out and many peers hated it, claiming machines would have killed the job
afyer a few years all used CAT tools improving their productivity
about 1-2 years ago the MT (Machine Translation) jumped out and again many peers hated it, claiming machines would have killed the job
nowadays all use MTs further improving their productivity
a plastic gadget called Casio VL-Tone that allowed me to rhythmically sequence scales and licks with two fingers, to my taste.
