The Creative Chord Composer
Scaler is a unique and inspirational MIDI effect that makes finding chords and progressions intuitive and fun! With note detection, scale selection and chord suggestions, Scaler is a comprehensive but easy-to-use toolbox that will help anyone make better music.
A first of its kind, Scaler can determine what key and scale you’re in and suggest chords that match your music, or it can inspire a tune from scratch by providing a set of initial chords in an unexplored key. With the onboard bank of over 2,000 scales and modes including genre and artist presets, there’s more than enough to keep the juices flowing.
Once you’ve determined a scale, Scaler lays out basic diatonic chords for you to audition, and lets you take things further with dozens of chord variations and voicings to try out. Theory buffs can also get an insight into each chord’s harmonic function.
Ready to put together a progression? Simply drag and drop chords into Scaler’s sequencer, change up octaves and inversions, edit the voicing, and record or drag the progression into your DAW.
Benefits
- Discover your music’s key and explore alternative scales and chord sets
- Choose from hundreds of keys, and get the harmonic flavours of pro artists
- Easily audition chords and find alternative voicings and common substitutions
- Quickly build intelligent progressions by dragging chords into Scaler’s chord sequencer
- Drag chords and progressions from anywhere in the plugin out to your DAW
Detect
- Discover your track’s current scale with MIDI keyboard or piano roll note detection
- Get an insight into the emotional content of matching scales
- 12 keys across 23 scales and modes giving you a total of 276 options to choose from
- 12 unique voicing types giving you a potential of over 2,000 Scales and modes
- Over 100 artist chord sets from the likes of Carl Cox, MJ Cole, The Temper Trap, Mitekiss, CeCe Rogers and Mike Huckaby
- Over 100 genre and mood-based chord sets such as Chill, Drum & Bass, Jazz, Cinematic, EDM…
- Check how closely a given scale matches your detected input
Fretboard
- Keep an eye on notes and chords going through Scaler with real-time visual feedback
- Visualise the chosen scale as highlighted notes on Scaler’s piano keyboard or guitar fretboard
- Audition chords from your chosen scale with a choice of eight internal sounds
- Play and record one-finger chords using Scaler’s Bind MIDI function
- Use the arpeggio or strum features to perform in real time and synced to your DAW
- Assign any VST / AU instrument to Scaler to control your favourite synths
Explore
- See the basic diatonic chords that can be built from your chosen scale
- Browse Chord Variations for each note to get suspended chords, extended chords, dominant sevenths and jazz chords
- Quickly get a sense of each chord’s harmonic function in progressions
- Discover chord substitutions that lend variety to your progressions
- Experiment with different chord voicings to spread notes across the keyboard
- Mix and match from hundreds of artist and genre-based chord sets
Build
- Drag and drop chords from your palette into Scaler’s Progression Builder
- Edit, transpose and invert chords for even more voicing styles
- Audition your progressions and make changes with drag-and-drop
- Save your own chord sets to the preset bank for later use
- Export MIDI to your DAW simply by dragging and dropping
How Does It Work?
Scaler is a plugin instrument capable of outputting MIDI as well as audio. With regard to the latter, a piano, guitars, strings and several sampled synth sounds are built in for scratch work, so you can quickly get a chord progression together for export as a MIDI file entirely within it.
Obviously, though, the idea is to trigger other instruments via Scaler, and how this is set up depends on the host DAW. For VST hosts, Scaler loads as an instrument plugin onto a MIDI track, the output of which is sent to a second track (hosting the target instrument) using the DAW’s routing system.
For Audio Unit hosts (ie, Logic Pro), the included ScalerControl MIDI effect plugin is loaded up instead. This is identical to the regular Scaler, but sits in front of the target instrument on the same track, outputting MIDI directly to it. It’s certainly the more elegant of the two approaches, although it only captures the raw triggering notes to the track, not the chords output by the plugin.
New Features in Version 1.5
- Fretboard Display: Designed in conjunction with world-leading guitarist Joseph Greer from the ‘The Temper Trap’.
- Arpeggio and Strum performers: Fully fledged arpeggio and strum features to greatly enhance live performance.
- Scale Lock: Effortlessly create melodies locked to the scale of your currently selected chord set.
- Chord Editing: Edit existing chords or create new chords from scratch using the keyboard or fretboard display.
- Parallel Harmony: Generate instant parallel harmony by selecting your favourite chord and laying it out across the keyboard.
- Relative Chord Finder: Transpose chords by any diatonic or non-diatonic interval whilst retaining their shape.
- Scale Explorer: Explore scales that contain the currently selected chord - great for modulation.
- Undo Redo: Undo or redo chord and voicing edits in your progression builder.
- Multi-Select: Select multiple chords in any order to drag and drop to the progression builder.
- 21 New Genre and Artist Based ChordSets: The Temper Trap, Mitekiss, Royalston, Joseph Greer, deliBass, Matt Ridgeway, and new Cinematic chord set
- 4 New Internal Sounds: Electric Guitar, String Ensemble, Acoustic Guitar, Harmonic Guitar
