Ableton's "Scales & Chords" vs Reason's

[Sunsiare]

Hello All!

I have been a happy Reason user since the early 10’s, years after years I have learnt to appreciate that piece of software and it’s intricacy. The learning curve was quite steep and long (I’m not particularly gifted) but finally, later this year, I will release a few EPs that are all 100% produced / mixed with Reason (+ some plugins suite), they sound decent / pro enough and I’m quite happy about that!

Like everybody else, I’ve also tried other DAW such as Logic, Reaper, FL Studio and of course Ableton. Ableton is obviously a catch, even to these days I’m quite impressed by how quick and easy it is to translate an idea into actual sound and so on. But as soon as I go deeper into the production phase, I’m always having some kind of “If I were on Reason I could have done this or that and now I can’t” thoughts, get frustrated and always end up going back to Reason.

However, If I’m not deleting my copy of Ableton it’s because there is one single thing that kept me using it in parallel, something I haven’t been able to reproduce on Reason with Players, is achieving the same results as when I experiment with “Scale” and “Chords” (and often both) available into Ableton's “MIDI Effects”

I’m not musically literate so it’s difficult to explain precisely here what I’m looking for but basically with Ableton “Scale” and / or “Chords” I quickly get very interesting melodies or sounds, especially with the “Byzantine Scale” which is by far my favorite and suited for the type of music I do. I tried a while ago to play with Reason’s “Scale & Chords” but I don’t recall once getting interesting results, most of them I’d say where “cheesy” or “random” at best.

There is an old thread about it here but it didn’t really helped at the end. I even bought the MicroTune plugin which I really like and use often but doesn't help me in this situation.

So I’d have a few questions about it

- Is there something I’m missing? Do you people are able to get interesting results with Players? Can you please share your experience?
- Is there a way to “convert” all these “.adv” and turn them into something usable by Reason’s Scales & Chords?
- Is there an efficient way to be able to use these Ableton's feature while keep Reason as the central DAW (as, not as a slave with Rewire and not by using Reason as VST in Ableton).

Thanks a lot in advance,

[selig]

Byzantine/Double harmonic major is easy to create using the Custom mode in Scales and Chords. None of the scales are "random" - a scale quantizer is a pretty basic thing. The only basic difference between any two such devices would be the scales they offer, and with the Custom mode you can get any desired scale out of Reason.
Yes, there are some advanced things you can do with Live's Scale, like assigns all notes to "C" (how useful is that?), but for common workflows Reason shouldn't be letting you down.

What else besides the Byzantine scale are you lacking in Reason?

[Sunsiare]

Thanks a lot for your prompt reply!

What else besides the Byzantine scale are you lacking in Reason?

That's the only thing honestly. I'm just puzzle by how easily I can get something "interesting" (super subjective, I know) with Ableton Scale, it often open-up some ideas that I try to replicate on Reason but it can be tedious and kill the creativity process in the middle.

None of the scales are "random"

Wrong wording. What I meant is that the results I have from Player is often really far from what I have in mind initially.

[PhillipOrdonez]

They do the same thing. You can look up the Byzantine scale pattern tones and semitones and just do a custom scale in Reason and save as a patch for future use? Just transpose by semitone with another free player if you don't want to learn the pattern yourself and want to do it in another key.

Other than that, they aren't doing anything different, specially on the scale side of things. I don't remember how the chord midi effect in live works compared to reasons, but it can't be too different and not something you couldn't do in Reason. So it is pretty strange that you are getting different results.

[Sunsiare]

They do the same thing. You can look up the Byzantine scale pattern tones and semitones and just do a custom scale in Reason and save as a patch for future use? Just transpose by semitone with another free player if you don't want to learn the pattern yourself and want to do it in another key.

Yes you are right, I think the best solution would be to create a patch for each Major Scale (why not Minor as well?) and do a Patch for each of them. But I'm hitting a wall and I might need some help.

In the old thread here, Territan gave a beginning of a solution:

Scales and Chords does have a "Custom" setting that you can use to program in whatever scale progression you want. For the Arabic/Double Harmonic, start from the major scale of your choice, and flatten the second and sixth notes.

And then give an example for Ab which seems to work ( 0), but I'm completely lost if I'd like to do it for B or G...etc

[PhillipOrdonez]

They do the same thing. You can look up the Byzantine scale pattern tones and semitones and just do a custom scale in Reason and save as a patch for future use? Just transpose by semitone with another free player if you don't want to learn the pattern yourself and want to do it in another key.

Yes you are right, I think the best solution would be to create a patch for each Major Scale (why not Minor as well?) and do a Patch for each of them. But I'm hitting a wall and I might need some help.

In the old thread here, Territan gave a beginning of a solution:

Scales and Chords does have a "Custom" setting that you can use to program in whatever scale progression you want. For the Arabic/Double Harmonic, start from the major scale of your choice, and flatten the second and sixth notes.

And then give an example for Ab which seems to work ( 0), but I'm completely lost if I'd like to do it for B or G...etc

B would be exactly the same, just transposed one semitone up. Put a free player available in the shop (AB transpose, for example) and set it to plus one semitone. If you want G, then it would be 2 semitones down instead.

[Sunsiare]

Ok I think I understand now! I'm going to experiment a bit and see how it works.

Thanks A LOT for your time both!

[PhillipOrdonez]

Ok I think I understand now! I'm going to experiment a bit and see how it works.

Thanks A LOT for your time both!

Cheers.