Guide Track?

[guitbuddy]

wow, the thread that wouldnt die!!! This Friday at Midnight on channel 6.

That looks cool Mark, like to read a review on those in mixcraft.

[rrichard63]

You might want to take a look at this as well:
https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... InstaChord

Havent tried it yet, but willing to take a risk at that price ...

Let us know what you find out. Plugins like this one need to describe themselves to the host DAW as instruments rather than effects, in order to be easy to use in Mixcraft. Not all of them do. See this thread:

http://forums.acoustica.com/bbs/viewtop ... =4&t=22357

for what happens when they don't.

InstaChord looks way cool. I hope it works as advertised.

[Mark Bliss]

Yeah, I was aware of that possibility Richard.
But I installed the demo and confirmed, it loads as an instrument and works placed before your chosen VSTi.

The demo version is fairly limited, but after messing around with it for a short period, I can confirm it works.
Not sure I can back all the hype of their presentation, but for the user who wishes to configure their keyboard to play one finger chords, step through progressions, or even just explore various "advanced" chord structures and such this may be of interest.

I think one area of interest is the effort to create a fretting/strumming mode for virtual guitar playing. For example, you can set it up with a "fretting" key that sustains the chords played and then sends a "notes off" message when released. And the "strumming" can be set to down, up, fast, med, slow, number of notes of the chord played, and more, and it looks like those settings can be different for each chord, controlled by more key inputs, etc. Quite configurable. Maybe too much so for me.....

It's kind of cool, dunno if its gonna be my kind of thing, but some tweakers might find it useful.

[rrichard63]

Yeah, I was aware of that possibility Richard.
But I installed the demo and confirmed, it loads as an instrument and works placed before your chosen VSTi. [...] some tweakers might find it useful.

I, too, tried the demo when I discovered there is one. Instabuy for me. I once tried to kludge together something like this with multiple free MIDI plugins. InstaChord is what I was looking for. The big advantage is for those who use multiple virtual stringed instruments from different developers with different strumming engines, each with it's own learning curve and foibles. This is just one learning curve to climb.

[Mark Bliss]

Well if you liked that....

I have been demoing another similar tool I personally find much more to my liking, and feel it better addresses some of the earlier suggestions in this thread. Its a few more dollars, but for me, after a quick test it was an "instabuy" as Richard says. I am finding it pretty useful as a guitar player turned keyboard whacker.

https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/ ... 933-Scaler

For a quick peek into how it may apply to the earlier conversation in the thread, pay attention to the last parts of this video for some general ideas: https://youtu.be/HWJ6Q5w5QAM

*Oh, and yes, it is seen as a VSTi and stacks in front of your chosen instrument just as the previous example.

[Rolling Estonian]

Well if you liked that....

I have been demoing another similar tool I personally find much more to my liking, and feel it better addresses some of the earlier suggestions in this thread. Its a few more dollars, but for me, after a quick test it was an "instabuy" as Richard says. I am finding it pretty useful as a guitar player turned keyboard whacker.

Oh, and yes, it is seen as a VSTi and stacks in front of your chosen instrument just as the previous example.

As a guitar player and really bad keyboard whacker, I can see this being very useful. Thanks for the share, have messed with BIAB and it's good for what it is, as is Guitar Pro but this as a vsti seems much more useful and more logical. It looks like a pretty intensive plug.

M

[Mark Bliss]

I've only farted around with it a bit, but it made me smile constantly.

I know some theory. I can find my major and minor triads, add a seventh or ninth, figure out the rudimentary inversions and even (slowly) figure out a basic score sheet on the keys.
But the utility of this thing was immediately apparent as soon as I started fiddling around with it. Its just one of those things where it clicks with me and makes sense I think.

Will update if I discover anything that would make me retract my recommendation, but right now......

This is pretty cool!
Gotta go try it out on various instruments.

Edit: OK. hold on. I need to explore routing further. I haven't figured this out yet, and can only get a piano sound using Scaler to trigger.... I may have gotten over excited and ahead of myself here.

[Topcheese]

Yeah, the thing about Scaler and other such "Utilities" is that you can't record the full midi output. The nice thing about Scaler is that it will let you drag and drop into your DAW.

I believe Scaler only comes with a few sounds internally, so that's probably what's happening. You can also disable the internal sound.

If I didn't already have Akai VIP, then I would be interested in Scaler.

Not to wander off-topic, but this is about the only serious bone I have to pick with MC.

[rrichard63]

Yeah, the thing about Scaler and other such "Utilities" is that you can't record the full midi output. ...

You can, but only by routing the MIDI output of one track through an external loopback driver such as Loop MIDI, and back in to Mixcraft on another track. This takes some figuring out to get working properly, and might (or might not) introduce a troublesome amount of latency.

[Mark Bliss]

Yes, sorry for the delay in getting back to this. Very busy life.

I was tricked by the piano sound when I first demoed Scaler. I thought it was the default Mixcraft instrument and that it indicated the output of Scaler would drive the VSTi of choice, but I was mistaken. This requires routing the output to another track, which as we know Mixcraft doesn't support at this time.

The Scaler plug in is still useful IMO, for things like examining chord structure, providing tips for keys and chord sequences. And you can build a chord sequence and export the MIDI then change instrument if desired.

And yes you can probably add a MIDI utility and create a workaround. I don't find that of a great deal of interest personally, as it just isn't worth the extra hassle. I want to get to work making music, not build a DAW out of box of Erector set parts...... (Showing my age ) There are other DAW's suitable for people who prefer to tweak endlessly with that stuff.

Yes, its something that needs to be addressed in future versions.

[rrichard63]

... And yes you can probably add a MIDI utility and create a workaround. ...

Yes, its something that needs to be addressed in future versions.

This has been requested and the request acknowledged -- perhaps multiple times -- in the Suggestions thread.

[Topcheese]

... And yes you can probably add a MIDI utility and create a workaround. ...

Yes, its something that needs to be addressed in future versions.

This has been requested and the request acknowledged -- perhaps multiple times -- in the Suggestions thread.

That's what I thought, but wasn't sure about. How do we learn about features they plan on adding in the next major version?

[Mark Bliss]

How do we learn about features they plan on adding in the next major version?

In my experience with Mixcraft, the team keeps future features and developing version info pretty quiet. Seldom even a clue.
But I can also say they do read and consider all suggestions here and have been pretty responsive to the user input provided over time. Many of the incremental changes, updates and added features over the years have come directly from these discussions and suggestions in this forum.

[Mark Bliss]

This has been requested and the request acknowledged -- perhaps multiple times -- in the Suggestions thread.

Yes, it's been previously logged and discussed.