New Music Gear Monday: Plugin Boutique Scaler Chord Composer Plugin

All songwriters face writer’s block from time to time and search for anything anywhere for inspiration. If that’s happened to you, one excellent place to refer to is a new plugin from Plugin Boutique called Scaler that’s uses “Creative Chord Composer” as an apt description that’s almost guaranteed to get you thinking about music in a new way.

Scaler can determine what key and scale you’re in and suggest chords that match your music, or it can inspire a tune from scratch by providing a set of initial chords in an unexplored key. With the onboard bank of 1,728 scales and modes including genre and artist presets, there’s more than enough to keep the juices flowing. Once you’ve determined a scale, Scaler lays out basic diatonic chords for you to audition, and lets you take things further with dozens of chord variations and voicings to try out. From there you can drag and drop chords into Scaler’s sequencer, change up octaves and inversions, and record or drag the progression into your DAW.

The plugin features 12 unique voicing types giving you a potential 1,728 Scales and modes, provides over 50 artist chord sets from the likes of Carl Cox, MJ Cole, CeCe Rogers and Mike Huckaby, and offers over 50 genre and mood-based chord sets such as Chill, Drum & Bass, Jazz, Soundtrack, EDM, so it can accommodate virtually every taste in music.

The other great thing about Scaler is that if you only have rudimentary keyboard chops that are limited to simple major and minor chords, the plugin will suggest altered versions that will have you sounding much more sophisticated immediately. Plus, it’s a great way to learn new chordal patterns and structures at the same time.

Plugin Boutique’s Scaler works on both Mac and PC platforms and with just about any DAW you can think of. Best of all, it’s only $49, and also has a trial version available for you to check it out. Check out the video below or go to the website for more info.