A-List Guitarists and minor keys - where are they?

[Seckin]

Now I might be missing something blatantly obvious here but what's this thing with the minor keys?

I was hoping to buy A-List Pop Chords and the acoustic one as well in this May Madness sale and I downloaded them for a trial but I can't seem to get over the fact that I cannot simply select a minor key and play on with it.

Say I have to write a rhythm guitar section for a piece in A minor, I select the key of A and bam! No A minor in there. In fact, no minor scales anywhere. It's just the major scale. Do I have to select the key of G just to get an A minor chord for my song IN A minor? Really? And then there's no option for automating the key button so it could automatically switch back to the key of A when required in the song.

Unless I am missing the obvious here, I see no way in anybody having any practical uses for these "A-List" guitarists here unless they only work with major scales. Let alone pay all that money for just that: An a-list studio guitarist who does not know a thing about minor keys. Same with the acoustic version!

Well, somebody please enlighten me if I'm the clueless one here. I hope to be, yet I just checked the operations manual as well, seems to have ignored the topic all together.

[JiggeryPokery]

Play a minor chord.

[cpetersus]

Soooo a little music theory is helpful here (which is about all I have). When I want to work in a minor scale I simply select the relative major scale of the desired minor. So in your example, if you want to work in A min then select the relative major of A min which is C major. A brief Google search will give you the relative major of any minor scale.


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[chimp_spanner]

Yup, all you need to do is play a minor third. Also if you flip the racks and enable the full chord selection, you can play 7ths, 5ths, diminished and suspended. A-List devices are fantastic! Also to pre-empt the next question, make a new note lane (shortcut numpad 3) and put your pattern/strum changes there. There's a guide on the back of the device as to which patterns are in which ranges

[buddard]

Soooo a little music theory is helpful here (which is about all I have). When I want to work in a minor scale I simply select the relative major scale of the desired minor. So in your example, if you want to work in A min then select the relative major of A min which is C major. A brief Google search will give you the relative major of any minor scale.


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He means that you actually just have to play a minor chord on your keyboard! So if you want to play A minor you hold down A and C keys (and the E key if you want, but it's optional). In Reason 9 you will probably be able to automate this further by using the Scales & Chords Player. Haven't tested it though, since I don't own any of the A-List devices.

We looked at the A-List chord diagrams for reference when we designed the chord recognition in Step Note Recorder, in order to be somewhat consistent with them.

[cpetersus]

Soooo a little music theory is helpful here (which is about all I have). When I want to work in a minor scale I simply select the relative major scale of the desired minor. So in your example, if you want to work in A min then select the relative major of A min which is C major. A brief Google search will give you the relative major of any minor scale.


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He means that you actually just have to play a minor chord on your keyboard! So if you want to play A minor you hold down A and C keys (and the E key if you want, but it's optional). In Reason 9 you will probably be able to automate this further by using the Scales & Chords Player. Haven't tested it though, since I don't own any of the A-List devices.

We looked at the A-List chord diagrams for reference when we designed the chord recognition in Step Note Recorder, in order to be somewhat consistent with them.

Actually, I mean that if you select the relative major of the desired minor then you can single finger play chords in the correct minor scale. If I get bored today them I will create a video.


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[buddard]

Actually, I mean that if you select the relative major of the desired minor then you can single finger play chords in the correct minor scale. If I get bored today them I will create a video.

Yes, I know, and that's great! I just wanted to point out that it's not necessary to know the relative majors, you can also play the straight chords if you're more comfortable with that. That also gives you access to the 7, sus4, ..., chords that you have to choose explicitly.

[Seckin]

Yup, all you need to do is play a minor third. Also if you flip the racks and enable the full chord selection, you can play 7ths, 5ths, diminished and suspended. A-List devices are fantastic! Also to pre-empt the next question, make a new note lane (shortcut numpad 3) and put your pattern/strum changes there. There's a guide on the back of the device as to which patterns are in which ranges

Thank you cpetersus! All I know about music theory is self-thought and I know that the notes in a major scale and those in its relative minor are the same but it had never dawned on me that the chords should be the same too. Come to think of it, how couldn't they? I guess I've never had any reason to think about that up until you told me now. So thank you for the reminder. I still think they could have added the minor scales option anyway, since it uses the same samples, wouldn't think it would require any more ram usage than it currently does but still cool.

Also thank you guys for letting me know that I can simply play a minor chord instead. That seems to be the more practical option for me for now.

[cpetersus]

You're welcome and I totally agree. It's a simple usability item that should be fairly simple to implement. If you don't have your relative minors memorized then it can take a minute to google it. You add up a bunch of those little things and that's when you loose that creative spark. Propellerhead is actually one of the better companies when it comes to flow and usability. It surprises me that they haven't tweaked this yet.