Chord Sequencer

[jim]

When away from the computer, I often find time to do some creative thinking on designs for new features in Numerology. Yesterday, during a car-ride to Santa Fe, the topic was a Chord Sequencer module, something that has been brought up now and then, but which I had not yet 'gotten serious' about. I was lucky enough to be able to bounce some of these ideas off a friend who is highly experienced as both a musician and a teacher. We came up with what I think should be a very useful model, and one which I hope to implement very soon after 2.0 is released.

Here is a condensed version of what I have so far:

- It will be a variant of the PolyNote, but instead of a 'grid' you would specify chords using a combination of menus and buttons.

- Chords would be specified based on some small number of parameters, closely following the traditions of western music theory. This specification will be very familiar to anyone who has had such training. For instance a C major 7th chord would be represented as something like "C Maj 7". --You would specify the chord in such terms (Key, Scale Degree, Mode & Chord 'Type'), and the sequencer would display both some 'name' for the chord, as well as some sort of display of the notes that would be generated.

Now, before I go further, I should mention that the goal of this module is specifically to make it very, very easy to build and experiment with chord progressions the "old fashioned way", not to push the outer-reaches of tonality. I want to make it flexible, but not at the expense of its primary goal.

- Probably, all chords would be specified relative to a single key -- making it easy to build I-IV-V progressions and the like.

- You will be able to easily invert the chord (up or down, of course ;) )

- In addition to a main MIDI output, there will be individual outputs for each 'voice', which should make for some interesting synthesis options.

- There will be some way to temporally offset individual notes in a chord, to get an arpeggiated or strummed feel when they are played.

- You *may* be able to add a few manually-specified notes (3 or 4) to 'customize' the chord, thus handling special cases.

There are many other notes I've made, but I want to hold off on them a bit longer. With this post, I am inviting comments on these proposed features, as well as suggestions on how you might want to use such a module.

Cheers,
Jim

[kodama]

I'm kinda spoiled by Live's chord plugin, in that you can just choose transposition and velocity (and it sounds like you would add midi channel and delay) to each note, then group them parallel in a rack, distribute their selection range, and then just sequence, play, or modulate the selector to change chords. Then you load and save presets for each chord device as needed.

I realize that 'preset' means something different from N2's presets in this context.

I would be interested in seeing your version, if different, and then would use it or just sequence Live midi FX racks.

[adamj]

How about chord spacing? A lot of times I don't just stack thirds when building harmonies.

I haven't seen any software that supports chord spacing yet... so here's how I thought it might work:
I pick a range (in octaves maybe, or semitones) and the number of notes. Then the chord generator evenly spaces the notes.

The range should be optional. If omitted, then it will just stack thirds as usual. But if I select something like C Maj, 2 octave range, 4 notes, it would do something like c3 g3 e4 c5 instead of c3 e3 g3 c4. Make sense? I think it would be a nice feature, and it seems simple enough.

I'd expect most chord generator parameters, including spacing, would be controllable via another sequence or LFO.

Adam

[jim]

I do want to have a way to support wide spacings, as well as some other 'special' cases (inversions, of course...).

Cheers,
Jim

[gvh]

I personally think your proposed chord sequencer would be a godsend, pretty much as described. Some form of support for chord spacing would be necessary, I think.

I would have two different uses for it:

1. Much more fluid experimentation with chord progressions than I can imagine with any of the other tools I use.

2. More quickly adding chord-based pads than with PolyNote, without using a second synchronized sequencing package.

It seems like a very natural extension of the product to me.

Perhaps you were looking for more detailed feedback than that, but I wanted to express my enthusiasm for the potential feature. :-)

[sbaishya]

I would find a chord sequencer useful. Your proposed design sounds very interesting.

[necho]

My music features a lot of simple chord progressions (dub-style) - I'm proficient in basic music theory, but I'm a crap keyboardist!

I like Live's chord plugin, but its quite limited..... I often use a modded version of the Akkord sequencer from the Reaktor EI2 bundle.

But a Numerology chord sequencer would be a god-send..... I've actually spent a LOT of time trying to perfect a design in Reaktor, but with little success.

so - a VERY desirable feature...

[adamj]

necho:
it's coming, look over here: http://five12.net/showthread.php?t=253

[Graeme]

So, looking at this feature, what would be nice is to be able to specify chords either:

-as Chord-Root plus Chord-Type
(eg. Give me a D chord, of the Minor type)=Dm

or,
-as Key plus Scale-Degree of Chord-Root plus Number of Notes

(eg. Give me the diatonic Chord, that is from the key of C major, starting on II, consisting of 3 notes)=Dm

and perhaps the 'missing' parameters would appear automatically depending on your input.

...Is that where this feature is heading? It's interesting thinking about what could happen from mixing and matching these techniques!

[jim]

The primary mechanism will be as the degree from the base key, but I should probably also print the actual note that will be played.

Cheers,
Jim