Scale question

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 7:02 pm

interesting idea, nolus

here's my live pack:

http://home.earthlink.net/~ohronny/Live ... ontrol.alp

If someone would be interested / willing to host this on a more permanent basis, please feel free.

The set within this project folder consists of four MIDI tracks

1- MIDI input
2- the control track - this is where to paste the scale clips
3- MIDI instrument track
4- just a track which holds one of each clip -- not used for anything and could be deleted

This is just a set to use as an example. The main thing is that by installing the pack you can get all the clips into your library. At that point you can set up your own system for exactly how to use them.

Just remember you have to drag them into either an empty track, or one which contains a scale plug (in default state) only...

Also I just noticed that you can only use positive values on the base envelope, even though it goes negative too. Seems like the envelopes for the scale device should be changed to better reflect the actual controls!

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:32 pm

I just did a little experiment by setting up a set with the first 8 bars of Nefertiti by Wayne Shorter.

It illustrates some of the shortcomings of this:

There are passing tones in the melody, so I couldn't play the melody as written with these control clips in place.

Similarly, you can't anticipate the next bar without changing the boundaries of the clips.

But I guess it's not really about being able to play freely!

I suppose the problem is that there is usually more than one choice of scales in any given situation.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 8:51 pm

mdifazio,

doesn't the EWI have a spare midi button somewhere? You could assign a button to turn the scale device on/off whenever you wanted to go chromatic for a while ?

mdifazio · Post by **mdifazio** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:04 pm

longjohns wrote:There are passing tones in the melody, so I couldn't play the melody as written with these control clips in place.

Similarly, you can't anticipate the next bar without changing the boundaries of the clips.

But I guess it's not really about being able to play freely!

I suppose the problem is that there is usually more than one choice of scales in any given situation.

I ran into this as well. Maybe its useful to think of this as a comping track for the keyboard challenged (that's me raising my hand).

Maybe this goes on a left hand zone in the effect rack.

For lead lines, you'd need to blend the non filtered input in to cover the passing notes.

My original thoughts about this were to augment a melody with some appropriate chordal overlays anyway so I'm happy regardless.

The problem is that unless it is blended in, a passing note will get adjusted. I see no way using envelopes to "un-click" one of the little boxes.

mdifazio · Post by **mdifazio** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 9:32 pm

Machinate wrote:mdifazio,

doesn't the EWI have a spare midi button somewhere? You could assign a button to turn the scale device on/off whenever you wanted to go chromatic for a while ?

There are up to 88 assignable spares. I would think it would be all or none, like a patch change as you suggest.

There is another brand of wind controller that allows polyphony, but I don't think it follows the changes the way I am proposing. What it does do that is interesting, and can be done with the EWI, is to assign the bite pressure to control the chord inversions.

I was thinking of mapping bite pressure to the percent boxes in the midi chord effect. These could be scaled, inverted, etc.

The end result (I hope) is that I can play appropriate chords and control inversions in real time.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:26 pm

I'm hoping to find a magic combination of arpeggiator, chord, random, note length etc. to make a melody generator rack.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 5:09 pm

another unpleasant thing with this: if you are just noodling away, you're likely to play through note sections where you are hitting two or even three successive notes which are all re-mapped to the same note. sounds very unnatural.

but that's just a thing about the scale plug, not really related to this method of using it i suppose.

but i think it is still useful in some situations - as a safety net if you already know the scales, or as noted above, to create comping chords (i think having a sampler set to 'retrigger' should eliminate any doubled up notes from sounding)

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 3:48 am

Just saw this, a nice demo of the scale plug in on the Ableton site.

Download the Dennis DeSantis pack here
http://www.ableton.com/pages/2007/denni ... _live_pack
save it to the desktop, use the File-Install Live Pack command
open the .als file in your Library under DEMO SONGS
go to page 3 in the tutorial on the right.

He made a rack with macros to form chords. The marcos hook into a chord plug in, the chord plug in 'shift' knobs are set to 0, +7, +3, +10, +14 and the rack macros are set to the volumes on each of those 'shift' knobs.

longjohns · Post by **longjohns** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 5:47 am

longjohns wrote: (i think having a sampler set to 'retrigger' should eliminate any doubled up notes from sounding)

not sure what I was on about there.

?