beginner: working with patterns and chords

[Anthony Griffiths]

back in the 90's I had a yamaha qy300 sequencer - great little device.
as well as the usual 16 midi tracks one of its better features was an extra 2 tracks - a pattern track and a chord track. the device came with preloaded patterns that you could arrange one after the other to form a song and the chord track enabled you to change the pattern chords as it played. this enabled one to knock up a basic track in very little time as each pattern contained drums, bass, keyboards and more

is there a way to do this in cakewalk bandlab? ('ve heard about loops - are they the same as patterns? if I can't do this in cakewalk is there any other software that can do this? thanks for any advice.

[msmcleod]

Check out Band in a Box by PG Music:  https://www.pgmusic.com/

Although it's a separate app, it comes with a DAW plugin that integrates well with Cakewalk.  The DAW plugin is also far easier to use than the main application.

[rsinger]

Check out Scaler 2, it's a plugin that runs in DAWs. It can generate midi chord progressions and various patterns that you can drag and drop into tracks.

https://www.scalerplugin.com/

 

[Anthony Griffiths]

thankyou for the replies here:

@rsinger regarding the scalerplugin do you have to pay extra for the patterns? or can it take generic patterns obtained elsewhere?

Edited January 15, 2023 by Anthony Griffiths

[Max Arwood]

Not rsinger, but it comes with more patterns/stuff than you could imagine!

IMHO BIAB and Scaler are the top 2 in this category of generators. 

[rsinger]

Also, Scaler 2 doesn't have additional patterns you can buy. You get what they have.