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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 1,728 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, 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 12 scales and modes giving you a total of 144 options to choose from 12 unique voicing types giving you a potential 1,728 Scales and modes Over 50 artist chord sets from the likes of Carl Cox, MJ Cole, CeCe Rogers and Mike Huckaby Over 50 genre and mood-based chord sets such as Chill, Drum & Bass, Jazz, Soundtrack, EDM… Check how closely a given scale matches your detected input

Keyboard

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 Audition chords from your chosen scale with a choice of four sounds Play and record one-finger chords using Scaler’s Bind MIDI function 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 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 and three 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 1.2

Humanise Velocities: the velocity of each note within chords is randomised to provide a more natural playing style. MIDI Export Length: select length of MIDI notes for export and drag and drop. Improved Progression Builder: Now handles up to 16 chords & chord progression is now played at DAW tempo. 21 New ChordSets: Classical (8), K-Pop / J-Pop (6), Neo Soul (6) 11 New Scales: Lydian augmented scale, Acoustic scale, Major locrian scale, Ukrainian dorian scale, Hungarian gipsy scale, Melodic minor scale (asc), Half-diminished scale, Phrygian dominant scale, Persian scale, Neapolitan major scale, Neapolitan minor scale

New Features in Version 1.1

Change Bound Octave: Choose which octave to bind to trigger chords directly from the bind MIDI button. Split Keyboard: Ability to play second line when midi bind is active. Accompaniment: You can now play a melody line or bass line along the chords you trigger through Scaler. MIDI CC Through: Scaler now allows MIDI CC message pass through for better control of your external instruments. Trigger Multiple Chords Simultaneously: Trigger multiple chords at once and create complex harmony by combining different voicings. 10 New ChordSets: EDM (5), Drum & Bass (5)

System Requirements Mac OS X 10.7 and later (32 and 64-bit compatible) Formats: AAX Audio Units (AU) VST Windows Windows 7 and later (32 and 64-bit compatible) Formats: AAX VST

Scaler 1.2 Compatibility Windows FL Studio 12 - OK Cubase 9.5 - OK ProTools 12.8 - OK Studio One 3 - OK Ableton Live 9 - OK Reaper - OK Bitwig Studio 2 - OK Maschine 2 - OK - No MIDI routing Reason - OK - No MIDI routing

Mac Cubase 9.5 - OK ProTools 12.8 - OK Studio One 3 - OK Ableton Live 9 - OK Ableton Live 10 - OK Logic Pro X - OK Reaper - OK Bitwig Studio 2 - OK Maschine 2 - OK - No MIDI routing Reason - OK - No MIDI routing