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Instacomposer 2 introduction price

audioschmaudio

By audioschmaudio
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Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler

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v1 was interesting but I set it aside pretty quickly.  There were some quirks in operation and I just felt it was "too random" and the parameter tweaks to change the generators were unpredictable and un-intuitive.  I tried the demo of v2 and frankly found it much the same.  The demo is very limited though, allowing only two tracks among other things (like it was for v1).  Even though I am a sucker for midi generators, I am not getting the $10 upgrade.

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Starship Krupa

Starship Krupa

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23 minutes ago, Brian Lawler said:

Even though I am a sucker for midi generators

Do check out WA Production's Loop Engine, if you haven't yet. I think it's still in its introductory period and under $30.

When I demo'd it I didn't really know what I was doing (still haven't figured the whole thing), but managed to get a nice set of changes.

It's great for "I just need something to get the ball rolling," not so much "I hear a song in my head."

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Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler

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I think I have an old version of Loop Engine  and didn't look too closely at the latest.  I will have to do that.  As far as chord inspiration, I always go back to Scaler.  It is pretty unbeatable IMO, but I am always game for a change of pace.  Every couple months I load up Chordjam and try to figure out how the hell to get what I want from it.  For Arp-Sequencers, Stepic is amazing (but really deep- tutorials required). I have also just rediscovered Stochas, which is free.  What sets these two apart from the crowd is probability settings per note and MIDI CC sequencing.  They will turn your 8 bar loop into 64 bars of uniqueness with minimal effort ?.  A surprise contender for idea generation is Melody Sauce 2.  V1  was a dud, but V2 was a major upgrade, adding a lot of variety and tweaking.

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Milan

Milan

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32 minutes ago, Brian Lawler said:

As far as chord inspiration, I always go back to Scaler.  It is pretty unbeatable IMO, but I am always game for a change of pace.

How do you use Scaler? Do you just load a scale and then drag the chords and then edit the inversions and voicings afterwards? I like using Feel Your Sound Sundog, it gives you a chord page with a grid with different inversions and you can hear and select the inversion you want right away. In Reaper, there's a Chord Gun script that does something similar to this. But I know that Scaler is very powerful, so I'm interested in hearing how you use it.

Another tool that's very powerful, but unfortunately not too intuitive is Rapid Composer. It's worth checking out.

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Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler

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I am pretty sure Melody Sauce goes for $29 fairly often (I think I got version 1 for @20 and don't recall the upgrade.  Maybe not such low prices with Stepic though.  Feel Your Sound is very good too- God have have a lot of MIDI gens...  Rapid Composer too, but it is just so deep I feel like you have to "live" in it for a long time to really get the benefit, and I can't stick with it long enough before I get frustrated and go to the simpler tools.

I use Scaler primarily for chords, so I do the entire sections in scaler (inversions, etc) and drag them over one at a time.  Maybe I just don't know it well enough, but I don't think you can build in rhythms to the chord sets at the bottom of the Scaler window- they are all equal lengths.

Edited by Brian Lawler
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dubdisciple

dubdisciple

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6 hours ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

Anyone has experience with version 1?

I tried to like it, but it had three big problems for me:

1) workflow. Although some complain about built in sounds in scaler, they are helpful during composition phase. Yes, I could make a kontakt template to route everything, but then i still have to jump back and forth between two plugins to flesh out basic ideas.

2) the results are random and often mid asf and mostly robotic. Getting something usable is like hitting lottery in my experience.

3) It seems to be overly geared towards EDM. I like EDM but only usable results for me were in that umbrella.

 

I do occasionally visit it because I have found with ALL of their midi products, their examples undersell capabilities. It took me forever to properly learn how to use instachord because apl their examples were repetitive trance songs.

 

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audioschmaudio

audioschmaudio

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7 hours ago, Yan Filiatrault said:

Anyone has experience with version 1?

I think it's okay. A bit like Captain Plugins with the difference that you have all tracks inside one plugin rather than having to jump between Captain Chords, Captain Melody and Captain Deep. But with Captain Plugins I got better results, have more control and it can generate its own sound, with some presets using the Phase Plant engine. Plus Captain Plugins also comes with Captain Beat which is an awesome beat machine.
My biggest issue with Instacomposer is that it requires a DAW that supports multi-MIDI-channel output. Ableton Live doesn't, so as an Ableton Live user I have to use a hack to route each track from Instacomposer to an individual Ableton Live MIDI track. I hoped that they'd find a workaround for that in version 2, like they did with Loop Engine, but unfortunately it doesn't seem so.

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GTsongwriter

GTsongwriter

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I own InstaComposer.

I got took on a scam ride based on it could "produce music similar to humans because of it's programmed to mimic human creation", which turned out to make it sound the same after hitting the randomize button several times, you'll end right back where you left off.  It's not real randomized music, it's patterns that they have a database of and the system just shuffles those around which ends up sounding the same over and over again!

Do you want to sound like someone else?  If you and another artist is using this product, you'll both sound similar as they use a limited list of presets in a database.

I spent a week or two with it to find out I wasted my money on this scam!

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dubdisciple

dubdisciple

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Also, the process is generative, so the likelihood of having same song is low. Unfortunately that means you have to aort through a lot of random nonsense for anything useful.  Someone with more time than me will figure a hack to maximize ideal results

 

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GTsongwriter

GTsongwriter

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I can never seem to find Scaler for $10.  I'm a hobbyist on a hobbyist budget and I don't put my songs out there to make money.  It's only for fun on YouTube.  Making music isn't a business model for me.  Too much competition.

I hardly use Scaler anyways as it's so frustrating, because it keeps changing my flats to sharps or my sharps to flats (it's one of those directions).  I couldn't find a setting solution.  Has this been fixed in a update or does it still demand one or the other when searching for chords in the search box?

 

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dubdisciple

dubdisciple

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3 hours ago, El Diablo said:

I can never seem to find Scaler for $10.  I'm a hobbyist on a hobbyist budget and I don't put my songs out there to make money.  It's only for fun on YouTube.  Making music isn't a business model for me.  Too much competition.

I hardly use Scaler anyways as it's so frustrating, because it keeps changing my flats to sharps or my sharps to flats (it's one of those directions).  I couldn't find a setting solution.  Has this been fixed in a update or does it still demand one or the other when searching for chords in the search box?

 

I can empathize with financial struggles, but Scaler is one of those products that provides tons of value at it's price range even at full price, even though it always seems to be on sale for $29, which is more than reasonable. 

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