plug-in. However, it is possible to switch into Mid-Side mode,
which splits the four frequency bands in two, with separate
Mid and Side controls for each band. This can be great when
working on a full mix for dialing in the low end just to the
center, while enhancing the top-end with additional width.
The plugin also has built-in sweepable 12dB/octave high- and
low-pass filters, with an option to engage steeper 48dB/octave
filters. This allows for the user to temper the additional
low-end energy that you might be adding. Finally, Sugar has
a saturation knob, which lets you dial in a little additional
harmonic distortion. This dial can get cruel quickly, but set to
the Drive position and with only a little dialled in, can bring
that little something special to a signal, in much the same way
as a good tube or tape simulator might.
The tools which inspired Sugar were used on all sorts of
signal sources, with results that almost always sounded larger
than life – and Sugar nails that vibe. We managed to create
some wonderfully large vocal sounds, turning even weak male
vocalists into powerful parts of the mix.
Across drums, Sugar can add a lot of excitement, bringing
punch and sizzle exactly where it’s needed, but one of the
surprising elements was how useful we found Sugar when
used subtly across a mix buss. One of our favourite processing
methods using Sugar has been to route all the instruments in
a mix to one instance, and all the vocals to another, blending
the two enhance signals in the final mix bus. Seemingly,
whatever sound we threw at it ended up enjoying a liberal
sprinkling of the effect. While sonic enhancers such as this
one can easily be overused to cook your sources, it certainly
comes in handy now and then to breathe some life into certain
sterile sources. In the cases where it does come of use, it is
certainly a fun and easy plugin to mess around with.
PLUG-IN
BOUTIQUE
SCALER
Scale Detection &
Generation Plug-in
You’ve got a mac, you’ve got a DAW, some VSTs, plugins
and a banging pair of speakers. In most cases, that's all you
need to get started with making some music. But some of us
start off with a shaky background of music theory. Scales,
chords- everything going over our heads just a little bit.
Well, Scaler is just the plugin for you! It's a plugin that by
description, works by detecting the best-fitting scale for an
incoming MIDI note sequence, suggesting sets of chords to
fit it, and enabling those chords to be strung together into a
progression.
Depending on your DAW, getting started with Scaler (VST/
AU) will or won’t involve a simple setup procedure. Once
you’ve got it up and running, load one of its many genre-
based preset chord progressions or hit the Detect button
and feed it some MIDI in real-time by playing your MIDI
keyboard or via a clip on the hosting track. Scaler captures
the incoming notes and chords as a series of blocks in the
panel below the keyboard, and suggests a number of scales
and modes to which they belong, ranked by the number of
notes and chords in the sequence that fit each suggestion,
and complete with mood descriptions (‘Jazzy’, ‘Bluesy’,
‘Sentimental’, etc). With a scale or mode selected, its chords
are laid out in the next panel down as another set of blocks
- either the seven diatonic chords in Diatonic Chords view,
or every chord (including suspensions, extensions, etc) for
every degree of the scale in the Chord Variations view, along
with possible substitutions. Once you have a set of chords
that you like the sound of, you can sequence them into a
progression in the Progression Builder by dragging chord
blocks (from the input set or the suggestion set) into the eight
mouse/MIDI-triggerable slots. The controls below are used
to shift each block up and down in octaves and set them to all
possible inversions
Amazing right?!!! It is an amazing tool to help us in starting
to write music by making it an intuitive and fun process. I
found myself learning and applying theory concepts even
faster as this app not only makes it easy to come up with
chords, it also makes learning theory fun and engaging! Even
for the experienced pro, it helps to discover and stumble
upon interesting new progressions that you otherwise
wouldn’t normally use.
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com
45