Scale Assistant is probably the one feature I am most focused on, not because I would need it, but because goo Scale Assistant can make life ridiculously easy and I really enjoy using it.
Little story: I came to Cubase from the Reason 11 as that is good first step towards creating music. I stayed with it for a couple of months because while great to learn, there are stuff I wanted to try and so I came to Cubase 10.5, which is really sublime program, but it was lacking Scale Assistant that would be easy and enjoyable and so I needed to have reason at hand and to import into every project their “Scales and Chords”, because as simple as it is, it is the single greatest thing on that program and I abolutely adore it. So then, when I heard that Cubase 11 will have Scale Assistant, I was really happy, until I learned more about it and tried it.
What is killing Scale Assistant in my eyes is that it is implemented as if it were afterthought in the creative process and not a beginning of the process. What makes the Cubase great IMO is that you can have different workflows that suits different people: My workflow is quite “futuristic”, what means that I want to make music while touching as little buttons and stuff as possible. In other words I want to be able to explore the music and then record it when I find what I like. To implement current Scale Assistant to this workflow is pretty weird and a little problematic, because it is tied to editor and not to the project itself and while that is great, I don’t see how it is useful for most of the people myself included. Like you have implemented “live” feature, but hide it in the editor? From my time with the Cubase I take editor as being “postproduction” stage of the production, because there you should be tinkering with details and not for recording stuff, like I am currently “advised” to do.
Editing scales after recording is little weird since I am not even sure what notes to play if I am not knowing what scales I am in and so it is just weird. Also why should I need to create empty space for that particular instrument just in order to be able to record that instrument with scales active?
**What should change?
- I would like to be able have Scale Assistant in main Project window and to be able to assign this assistant to all or selected tracks.
- If you insist on having Scale Assistant in editor, then separate it and keep in the editor only functions that are tied to editing and functions for recording and so on add to main project inspector.
- I would like to have maybe a little bit more intuitive design of the Scale Assistant with some easy to understand graphics to see what exactly have changed from scale to scale**
I don’t want to be that guy that says “Do what YX is doing” but I am strongly suportive of changing the Scale Assistant to be so intuitive that even toddler would be able to use it without really understanding theory. Sorry for a long rant.
