Ableton Forum

Hey lovely music makers.

I have been searching for something to help with chords/chord progressions for a while now, and recently settled on Scaler. Being pretty new to music production in general, I wasn't totally sure what features I was looking for, so I kind of just went with what people seemed to like. I considered others, such as Cthulu, Instachord, Captain Chords, Sundog, but I didn't want a whole new production tool, but rather something that integrates nicely with Ableton. Scaler seemed to have that balance.

And Scaler does have some really nice features. The way it lets you choose chord sets (pardon my ignorant language) is awesome. The only thing it's missing is the ability to play the chords back into Ableton so that I can hear the chords with my instruments/effects/etc. Scaler seems to only allow you to use the built-in piano, synths, strings, etc. I know you can export little midi clips from its sequencer thing, but that's pretty limiting. I want to be able to play directly into an Ableton track.

So my question is: am I missing something here? Is this, in fact, possible with Scaler? Or is there another VST that people recommend that does everything that Scaler does but lets me play the chords into Ableton?

Thanks in advance!

there is also a good M4L option:

http://fabriziopoce.com/progressive.html

Thanks, fishmonkey! I will check out J74 Progressive. M4L is a big plus because I am a coder.

tone61 also recommended Chord Composer and convinced me to take another look at Sundog, which I had previously dismissed because I thought the demo songs were cheesy and it isn't a VST. rookie move, I guess.

Also, tone61 reminded me that what originally inspired me to start this search was seeing https://www.islainstruments.com/product/kordbot/ and not wanting to spend money on more hardware So it actually doesn't matter to me if its a VST. I just want to be able to design chords/chord progressions that I can play into Ableton. So an external tool might actually be better than a VST.

J74 is great, and cheap (so pretty safe purchase IMO), +1.

WaveDNA Liquid Music is probably the best tool (at least the most advanced) that integrates with Live through M4L.

The Ableton haters always pop out on threads elsewhere about Liquid Music, to shit on it because it has the M4L integration (which they perceive a minus, LOL), so I think it is fair to mention M4L MIDI devices are way better for a Live user than VST plugins or standalone apps.

VST plugins load as instruments and require setting up routing to use them with a another VST instrument. Standalone apps require virtual MIDI Cables, are less integrated (don't get BPM like a plugin inside the DAW), and you end up even forgetting you ever bought them, because they don't show up inside your main DAW's plugin browser.

Back in Live 9 M4L devices took a while to load the first time, but in Live 10 they work just like VSTs.

maxforlive.com has many devices listed, usually the commercial devs list their stuff there too.

I own Scaler, AUtotheory. J74 and Liquid Music yet I still find Cthuthlu to be the best and most inspirational of all the chord plugins. Especially if you invest in some of the Cthuthlu preset banks like the ones from ADSR or Snow Audio that make finding chord progressions within a specific key a breeze.