Play/Record in same Scale

Sergiu

What would be the simplest way of setting all the synths/melodic lines to be played and recorded in the same key?

Is there also a trick for hardware synthesizers to be played in the same Key? This video intrigues me, because even they are different synths over there ( a Korg microstation and a Sequential one..) they both sound in the same key...no matter what keys Danny is pressing.

Sergiu

Key Control unit can do that but it is not available anymore
https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/8a33zz/key_control_key_and_scale_mapper_for_midi/

Danny_Mammy

the first thing he is playing is just c major/a minor.

Sergiu

Can Scaler2 be mapped as some sort of "Master" key/ scaler to all midi outputs?

jebni

I'll preface this by saying that music (in terms of theory, technology and simply playing it) isn't a particular strength of mine, just something I enjoy, but I don't see why playing in the same key on multiple keyboards, "even though they're different synths," is any more of a challenge than playing in the right key on one synth. What difference is there? Unless there's something I'm not aware of, it's not as if they're a bunch of different orchestral instruments that require transposing in order to play in the same key.

I only watched for a minute, but maybe the guy is just, you know, playing the right notes. There is one moment where he leans backwards and does what appears to be a random chord jab without really looking (is that what you're surprised by?), and it's slightly dissonant but quite nice and fits quite well, but maybe that's because he happens to be playing white keys only, as @Danny_Mammy notes.

For someone who can't reliably play scales on a keyboard, playing everything in C major, A minor, Eb minor pentatonic and F# major pentatonic are my go to's (i.e. all white keys, all black keys)… when I'm not randomly mashing keys, that is.

wim

On iOS it's simple as can be. Just run the hardware midi inputs through a scale quantizer such as Rozeta Scales or the Mozaic Simple Scaler script before sending the notes on their way to their destinations. Bang away on any notes and and it'll all sound in key.

As for the video, it looks to me like ... he simply knows what he's doing. The sequencers are set to the same key, and he knows which notes to play by hand. Not hard really. I didn't watch the whole thing, but in the beginning he was just plinking on white keys, which are generally going to sound fine with any sequence that uses those notes.

RonnieOmelettes

Some of these modern rock n roll bands even play completely different instruments in the same key - it's all a mystery to me. It's as if they've got some sort of common system they've agreed to use.

Sergiu

Thank you Wim! I would really love to watch a tutorial on that matter! Major problem is ( maybe I don’t know how to set it up) is the midi keyboard controller…that I would like to play the selected scale/key and not only if I play the app keyboard on the iPad . > @wim said:

On iOS it's simple as can be. Just run the hardware midi inputs through a scale quantizer such as Rozeta Scales or the Mozaic Simple Scaler script before sending the notes on their way to their destinations. Bang away on any notes and and it'll all sound in key.

As for the video, it looks to me like ... he simply knows what he's doing. The sequencers are set to the same key, and he knows which notes to play by hand. Not hard really. I didn't watch the whole thing, but in the beginning he was just plinking on white keys, which are generally going to sound fine with any sequence that uses those notes.

Sergiu

interesting point of view …personally to my ears and as an overall composition , my ears prefer in Key melodic lines…it gives that piece of audio a unity of some sort…” the story is better told that way”🙂 @jebni said:
I'll preface this by saying that music (in terms of theory, technology and simply playing it) isn't a particular strength of mine, just something I enjoy, but I don't see why playing in the same key on multiple keyboards, "even though they're different synths," is any more of a challenge than playing in the right key on one synth. What difference is there? Unless there's something I'm not aware of, it's not as if they're a bunch of different orchestral instruments that require transposing in order to play in the same key.

I only watched for a minute, but maybe the guy is just, you know, playing the right notes. There is one moment where he leans backwards and does what appears to be a random chord jab without really looking (is that what you're surprised by?), and it's slightly dissonant but quite nice and fits quite well, but maybe that's because he happens to be playing white keys only, as @Danny_Mammy notes.

For someone who can't reliably play scales on a keyboard, playing everything in C major, A minor, Eb minor pentatonic and F# major pentatonic are my go to's (i.e. all white keys, all black keys)… when I'm not randomly mashing keys, that is.

espiegel123

i am having trouble understanding why one would need special tools to play in key the same key. Is this for people that don't know how to play in key?

Sergiu

Maybe my mistake…same scale! My music theory is really poor.> @espiegel123 said:

i am having trouble understanding why one would need special tools to play in key the same key. Is this for people that don't know how to play in key?

wim

@Sergiu said:
Thank you Wim! I would really love to watch a tutorial on that matter! Major problem is ( maybe I don’t know how to set it up) is the midi keyboard controller…that I would like to play the selected scale/key and not only if I play the app keyboard on the iPad . > @wim said:

On iOS it's simple as can be. Just run the hardware midi inputs through a scale quantizer such as Rozeta Scales or the Mozaic Simple Scaler script before sending the notes on their way to their destinations. Bang away on any notes and and it'll all sound in key.

As for the video, it looks to me like ... he simply knows what he's doing. The sequencers are set to the same key, and he knows which notes to play by hand. Not hard really. I didn't watch the whole thing, but in the beginning he was just plinking on white keys, which are generally going to sound fine with any sequence that uses those notes.

It's easy. Route the midi input from a hardware controller to the scaler app. Route the scaler app to a synth. Any note that you play on the hardware will be forced into the scale that you picked.

For multiple controllers you have two options:

• If the controllers all send on different midi channels then you can route them into one scaler app, and route the scaler app to all the synths, but filter out all but the channel you want to control each app. AUM and Loopy Pro make this easy.

EXAMPLE
Hardware 1 (ch. 1) --> |============== | --> Synth 1 in AUM (filter all but midi ch. 1)
Hardware 2 (ch. 2) --> | Rozeta Scaler | --> Synth 2 in AUM (filter all but midi ch. 2)
Hardware 3 (ch. 3) --> |============== | --> Synth 3 in AUM (filter all but midi ch. 3)

• If the controllers don't all send on different midi channels then you need to route each one to a separate scaler app instance and each instance out to the needed synth.

EXAMPLE
Hardware 1 (ch. 1) --> Rozeta Scaler 1 --> Synth 1 in AUM
Hardware 2 (ch. 1) --> Rozeta Scaler 2 --> Synth 2 in AUM
Hardware 3 (ch. 8) --> Rozeta Scaler 3 --> Synth 3 in AUM

* All Scaler instances set to the same scale

Any scale quantizer app should work about the same way.

Sergiu

Great support Wim! i suppose pretty much same routing applies within ios synth apps.> @wim said:

@Sergiu said:
Thank you Wim! I would really love to watch a tutorial on that matter! Major problem is ( maybe I don’t know how to set it up) is the midi keyboard controller…that I would like to play the selected scale/key and not only if I play the app keyboard on the iPad . > @wim said:

On iOS it's simple as can be. Just run the hardware midi inputs through a scale quantizer such as Rozeta Scales or the Mozaic Simple Scaler script before sending the notes on their way to their destinations. Bang away on any notes and and it'll all sound in key.

As for the video, it looks to me like ... he simply knows what he's doing. The sequencers are set to the same key, and he knows which notes to play by hand. Not hard really. I didn't watch the whole thing, but in the beginning he was just plinking on white keys, which are generally going to sound fine with any sequence that uses those notes.

It's easy. Route the midi input from a hardware controller to the scaler app. Route the scaler app to a synth. Any note that you play on the hardware will be forced into the scale that you picked.

For multiple controllers you have two options:

• If the controllers all send on different midi channels then you can route them into one scaler app, and route the scaler app to all the synths, but filter out all but the channel you want to control each app. AUM and Loopy Pro make this easy.

> EXAMPLE
> Hardware 1 (ch. 1) --> |============== | --> Synth 1 in AUM (filter all but midi ch. 1)
> Hardware 2 (ch. 2) --> | Rozeta Scaler | --> Synth 2 in AUM (filter all but midi ch. 2)
> Hardware 3 (ch. 3) --> |============== | --> Synth 3 in AUM (filter all but midi ch. 3)
> 

• If the controllers don't all send on different midi channels then you need to route each one to a separate scaler app instance and each instance out to the needed synth.

> EXAMPLE
> Hardware 1 (ch. 1) --> Rozeta Scaler 1 --> Synth 1 in AUM
> Hardware 2 (ch. 1) --> Rozeta Scaler 2 --> Synth 2 in AUM
> Hardware 3 (ch. 8) --> Rozeta Scaler 3 --> Synth 3 in AUM
> 
> * All Scaler instances set to the same scale
> 

Any scale quantizer app should work about the same way.

wim

@Sergiu said:
Great support Wim! i suppose pretty much same routing applies within ios synth apps.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by that.

Sergiu

@wim said:

@Sergiu said:
Great support Wim! i suppose pretty much same routing applies within ios synth apps.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by that.

If I would have to use only Ios synths routing is the same ,right?

wim

@Sergiu said:

@wim said:

@Sergiu said:
Great support Wim! i suppose pretty much same routing applies within ios synth apps.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by that.

If I would have to use only Ios synths routing is the same ,right?

I still don't get it.
Controlling iOS synths from what?

Sergiu

If I would have to play in scale, more than one ios synth on the Ipad and all routed to a midi keyboard controller> @wim said:

@Sergiu said:

@wim said:

@Sergiu said:
Great support Wim! i suppose pretty much same routing applies within ios synth apps.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by that.

If I would have to use only Ios synths routing is the same ,right?

I still don't get it.
Controlling iOS synths from what?

wim

@Sergiu said:
If I would have to play in scale, more than one ios synth on the Ipad and all routed to a midi keyboard controller

Yes, no matter what, the basic process is to route the midi to the scaler plugin, then from there to the synth or synths.

Think of it as our little magic box that makes it sound like we actually know how to play. 😎

Sergiu

@wim said:

@Sergiu said:
If I would have to play in scale, more than one ios synth on the Ipad and all routed to a midi keyboard controller

Yes, no matter what, the basic process is to route the midi to the scaler plugin, then from there to the synth or synths.

Think of it as our little magic box that makes it sound like we actually know how to play. 😎

Indeed! For me it's not about being able to play,but make those 5 min tell a story that can tickle your sensors

uncledave

@wim said:

@Sergiu said:
Great support Wim! i suppose pretty much same routing applies within ios synth apps.

Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by that.

The examples shown were for synth apps running in iOS, specifically for AUv3 synth apps running "in AUM".

jebni

@Sergiu said:
interesting point of view …personally to my ears and as an overall composition , my ears prefer in Key melodic lines…it gives that piece of audio a unity of some sort…” the story is better told that way”🙂

Absolutely, but I think you misunderstand my point, which was trying to explain why someone could do what’s shown in the video without too much effort or scale-related software assistance (which I’m certainly not knocking, because I lean on the latter all the time, as well as chord-suggesting tools).

My point was that a little bit of basic keyboard orientation goes a long way. You don’t have to know lots of fancy scales to be capable of playing a melody in key on multiple keyboards, or more accurately, to avoid notes that are off key. (Because as every second person on YouTube will tell you, playing a good melody isn’t just about randomly playing the correct notes from your scales up and down and around like a bad guitar solo — as someone who’s been a beginner level player for 30 years, that’s something I’m all too familiar with 😂…)

So if you’re writing your own music and just want to plonk away in a basic major or minor key without sounding off key, you can do the same as the guy in the video and play in a scale that’s easy to remember: playing in C major or A minor means simply using all the white piano keys only. Any white key you hit will be part of those scales. And based on where in the white keys you choose to start the scale, you can use different modal scales, which I think gives you a total of 7 scales from just the white notes. Most electronic keyboard instruments can transpose, so you’re not limited to those particular base notes, either. But yeah, tools that can lock you to a scale are great!

While plenty of people make do with these fun limitations and sometimes do absolutely genius things with them (going far beyond eliminating the bum notes from your plonking), there’s obviously a much wider universe out there, especially when you take harmony into consideration, and which note intervals good good, or memorable.

But even if you don’t know much about that stuff (for one, I’m pretty ignorant about it), I think there’s a lot of that kind of richness baked into what people might instinctively think “sounds good” when they’re writing music, even if they have no vocabulary or framework to coherently describe it. There’s a lot to be said for both instinct and music theory. I learn towards the former! 🎉

Sergiu

Oh thanks Jebni! i'll definitely remember your scale tips! > @jebni said:

@Sergiu said:
interesting point of view …personally to my ears and as an overall composition , my ears prefer in Key melodic lines…it gives that piece of audio a unity of some sort…” the story is better told that way”🙂

Absolutely, but I think you misunderstand my point, which was trying to explain why someone could do what’s shown in the video without too much effort or scale-related software assistance (which I’m certainly not knocking, because I lean on the latter all the time, as well as chord-suggesting tools).

My point was that a little bit of basic keyboard orientation goes a long way. You don’t have to know lots of fancy scales to be capable of playing a melody in key on multiple keyboards, or more accurately, to avoid notes that are off key. (Because as every second person on YouTube will tell you, playing a good melody isn’t just about randomly playing the correct notes from your scales up and down and around like a bad guitar solo — as someone who’s been a beginner level player for 30 years, that’s something I’m all too familiar with 😂…)

So if you’re writing your own music and just want to plonk away in a basic major or minor key without sounding off key, you can do the same as the guy in the video and play in a scale that’s easy to remember: playing in C major or A minor means simply using all the white piano keys only. Any white key you hit will be part of those scales. And based on where in the white keys you choose to start the scale, you can use different modal scales, which I think gives you a total of 7 scales from just the white notes. Most electronic keyboard instruments can transpose, so you’re not limited to those particular base notes, either. But yeah, tools that can lock you to a scale are great!

While plenty of people make do with these fun limitations and sometimes do absolutely genius things with them (going far beyond eliminating the bum notes from your plonking), there’s obviously a much wider universe out there, especially when you take harmony into consideration, and which note intervals good good, or memorable.

But even if you don’t know much about that stuff (for one, I’m pretty ignorant about it), I think there’s a lot of that kind of richness baked into what people might instinctively think “sounds good” when they’re writing music, even if they have no vocabulary or framework to coherently describe it. There’s a lot to be said for both instinct and music theory. I learn towards the former! 🎉