What is Scales, pitch and chord for?

Gtrance · Post by **Gtrance** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:33 pm

Hello

I've had live 5 for sometime now and am quite familiar with how it all works. I've only recently started to try and learn what exactly chords and scales are and just about understand the basics. (so long as I have an online tutorial in front of me all the time

)

Anyway I'd thought I'd see what the midi effects chord, scales and pitch do. I've read the manual and i understand in theory what they do but I cant see why you would use them in practice. As far as I can tell, the chord effect is just to save me the hassle of pressing three keys together when I can just press one and let the effect do the others for me. Is that right?

But the scales effect? So I can set it so that if i press one note, actually a different note would be played. Why would I ever want to do this?

Obviously I'm missing something and I'd love to know the practical uses of these effects so then hopefully they will make my music making that bit better (and hopefully easier)

Cheers

Welkin · Post by **Welkin** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:59 pm

try running an arp in front of chord effect thats followed by a scale effect, set the arp to bpm sync. speed it up to 16th or 32nds...can you play chords that fast and in key flawlessly?

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:34 pm

the SCALE effect is my new favorite of late.

simply put, in application if you wrote a bassline with scale setting X and copied that same scale plug-in to another track you can randomly bang away on the keyboard and still stay in tune. So, put scale plug-in X in front of all your musical tracks (not drums) and they will ALL be in key and sound great.

I've also used it when playing with other people. If everyone uses the same scale plug-in setting then everyone will be playing in key, it's REALLY cool for that. It allows you to skip ALL the music theory and play the right notes.

Pitch I mostly use for +/- 12, 24, 36 settings, to change octaves. Suppose you had a note sequence and you wanted to make a bridge or chorus out of it, bump it up by 7 for a few measures, then by 4 for a few measures and you just made a classic 'I-IV-V' change, the basic chord changes used in rock and blues. Or just have two sections, one that's normal, one that's pitched by 2, 5, or 7 back and forth and you have a nice progression going on from the same material.

Chord is like you said, but put in front of arps and whatnot you can create new sounds from 'happy accidents'.

abletoff · Post by **abletoff** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:59 pm

Scale it's absolutely cool but sometimes it stops working - at least on my machine - and I've yet to figure out how to use the matrix - i simply random click by now

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 6:05 pm

the horizontal axis is the input, vertical is the output.

check out the black keys setting... on the horizontal axis all the notes have boxes above them, on the vertical axis only the black keys have boxes next to them. it's a bit odd to look at at first.

CaseyDC · Post by **CaseyDC** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 6:30 pm

DeadlyKungFu wrote:the SCALE effect is my new favorite of late

I've also used it when playing with other people. If everyone uses the same scale plug-in setting then everyone will be playing in key, it's REALLY cool for that. It allows you to skip ALL the music theory and play the right notes.

Making it sound like we know our shit. That was an awesome tip. Now I couldn't do without it.

dave dominey · Post by **dave dominey** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 6:35 pm

up a fourth would be five semitones

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 6:38 pm

dave dominey wrote:up a fourth would be five semitones

thanks for correcting that, I must be missing a finger on that hand.

Gtrance · Post by **Gtrance** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 9:07 am

DeadlyKungFu wrote:the SCALE effect is my new favorite of late.

simply put, in application if you wrote a bassline with scale setting X and copied that same scale plug-in to another track you can randomly bang away on the keyboard and still stay in tune. So, put scale plug-in X in front of all your musical tracks (not drums) and they will ALL be in key and sound great.

I've also used it when playing with other people. If everyone uses the same scale plug-in setting then everyone will be playing in key, it's REALLY cool for that. It allows you to skip ALL the music theory and play the right notes.

Pitch I mostly use for +/- 12, 24, 36 settings, to change octaves. Suppose you had a note sequence and you wanted to make a bridge or chorus out of it, bump it up by 7 for a few measures, then by 4 for a few measures and you just made a classic 'I-IV-V' change, the basic chord changes used in rock and blues. Or just have two sections, one that's normal, one that's pitched by 2, 5, or 7 back and forth and you have a nice progression going on from the same material.

Chord is like you said, but put in front of arps and whatnot you can create new sounds from 'happy accidents'.

Think I understand. Got a feeling I still havent fully grasped how it works for full understand the practical uses but from what you've put, I am excited to get to grips with it. Suddenly an avenue of new possibilities are opening up for me

peeddrroo · Post by **peeddrroo** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 9:13 am

plus you can use scale for cool tricks such as muting impulse slots.

pulsoc · Post by **pulsoc** » Sun Oct 22, 2006 5:21 am

peeddrroo wrote:plus you can use scale for cool tricks such as muting impulse slots.

Ooooh I never thought about that. Program a bunch of scales on/off to midi buttons and mute impulse slots. Cool!