Plugin Boutique Scaler v1.8.0 WIN & OSX
Size 327.8 Mb

Scaler v1.8 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 v1.8 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

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

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

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

Fretboard

Keep an eye on notes and chords going through Scaler v1.8 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

How Does It Work?

Scaler v1.8 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 Scaler v1.8

40 New Chord Sets: R&B, Synthwave & New Artists Chord Sets

3 New Synth Sounds: Dusty Nostalgia, HeavyHitter & SqSaw

3 New Pads Sounds: DreamOn, SteelyEssence & WidePad

5 New Arpeggio modes: Up/Down Repeat, Down/Up, Down/Up Repeat, Doubled Up, Doubled Down

“Random” strumming mode: Randomly switch between strumming up and down.

Copy/Paste Voicing: Extract the voicing of any chord and apply it onto another chord to match the number of voices and octave at which it will playback.

Voicing Lock: Preview any chord using one of 2 modes:

Dynamic Grouping: Play chords within the same area of the keyboard to maximise compatibility by automatically choosing voices and inversions.

Extracted Voicing: Preview any chord in Scaler with the last voicing you extracted.

New Arpeggio Note Length: Perform Arpeggio in full, half and quarter notes to emulate a staccato effect

Bug fixes and performance improvements