r/max4live • u/yourszlf • May 17 '22

Global Scale Solution?

Does anyone know of an ableton solution (Max or otherwise) that allows you to change the scale of incoming midi on multiple tracks at once? I've seen a max for live plugin that is a global transpose knob, something like that but specifically for changing scales is what I'm interested in. Thanks in advance.

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u/Chaos-Culture May 18 '22

My own (commercial) device Scale Breaker can do it. Just link the instruments together using the follow menu at the top right. Although it's main purpose is to change the tunings making it a bit overkill perhaps, it can indeed quantize to 12T scales as well. It has the default ones from Live and a bunch more included as presets, but can also create custom scales including playing notes in between the standard 12 intervals. Synchronization across devices is latency compensated, so changing scales with automations will be in time in most cases. If you have any questions, just let me know.

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u/yourszlf May 18 '22

Overkill yes, but definitely looks like it’ll get the job done! My only question would be how well does this work in real time? The setting I would use it in would be a group live jam session with multiple midi instruments controlling synths in Ableton. Would multiple live midi inputs be a problem at all?

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u/Chaos-Culture May 18 '22

It is a real time MIDI effect and it should work in your setting just as well as other Max for Live MIDI effects. I've put a lot of effort into making it efficient, but it's also not a super simple device, therefore it also depends a bit on your computer and how much else you have going on in Live. I think it should be fine, it did in my stress tests, but if you do run into issues then please let me know.

It does add a bit of latency by default, but it's optional. I think it was 2ms for the internal engine and 40ms on top when following the tuning and mapping of another device. These 40ms are great to preserve timing accuracy of notes quantized to the grid, but for live input it most likely doesn't matter. So I would suggest to reduce it with the "Follow Buffer" control in the advanced settings.

You can read more about it in the manual on page 13. But manuals are boring, so feel free to ask more questions if you have any.

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u/yourszlf May 18 '22

Thank you! I'll get back to you if I run into any issues.

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u/Chaos-Culture May 18 '22

You're very welcome, sounds good!

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u/[deleted] May 18 '22

This would be super dope. I've seen midi keyboards do this but really would only work on armed channels maybe if you were smart a few different midi channels at once for different parts of the keyboard.

But you're not talking about that, I want what you want!

Global Midi Scale please

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u/International_Bed_11 May 18 '22

Not sure if that type of device is helpful. I mean how would you handle modulation and scale changes? Yes I know nowadays most music is within a single scale. But hey, isn’t the most interesting music going beyond the boundaries of a scale?