Scale Rider

An arranger keyboard's MIDI note re-tuning mechanism

Ever noticed how lame the concept of an arranger keyboard actually is? You get a couple of shitty accomp styles with just 5 accomp instrument channels, a bunch of old-sounding samples and now you're supposed to impress your audience... wow. "Come on, buddy, make us the entertainer!" ...Oh boy... Let's face it, guys: we're not in the 80s anymore! Still this concept hasn't improved much to this day. Even the new Yamaha Tyros and Genos models are based on this antiquated concept. Yes, you can create your own styles, now, and yes, the accompaniment samples sound better than 20 years ago, but they're not your own, they're too static, you can't change them much over time and basically, you only play them back. That's why I think it's about time to break free from those limitations, so I extracted only the re-tuning mechanism used to adapt the accompaniment styles to your playing. Scale Rider does just that. It's basically a stripped-down arranger keyboard – without the arranger and all its preset intros, endings, variations and fill-ins, as well as the hundreds of styles and sounds that don't represent your own individual creativity. Think of it as a MIDI note frequency quantizer: the re-tuning mechanism for the accomp styles in an arranger keyboard. The "Master" module analyzes incoming MIDI chords on one channel and several "Part"-modules re-tune incoming notes in various ways along the scales that match those chords on other channels. The advantage: You're not limited to a couple of short accomp phrases and a handfull of accomp instruments anymore. Instead, you are free to use whatever you want as an input source: from MIDI phrase players to step sequencers, live playing or even complete MIDI songs in your DAW. Just put the "Master"-module of Scale Rider in a live-input channel so it can listen to the chords you play and put the "Part"-module between your MIDI note generators and your synthesizers and there you go.