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Is there an app that plays chords by pressing a single note on a hardware controller?
Is there an app that plays chords by pressing a single note on a hardware controller? Bonus points if I can set the key and it’ll play major and minor chords appropriately.
Addional bonus points if it’s an audio unit that I can plug directly into a synth. But an AB midi app will do fine.
Comments
ScaleBud is one I come to think of.
http://keybudapp.com/scalebud
I am using multiple instances of Rozeta Scaler with different transpose settings at the moment.
But this looks interesting:
ChordPolyPad.
Can it be controlled by MIDI?
Definitely. I’m using a launchpad pro for input. Just want to sketch out ideas. Ideally I’d get the following chords from playing a scale, I ii iii IV V vii VII dim.
Yeah I believe ChordPolyPad can be setup to trigger chords from midi notes. These may be predefined ranges. I’ll check.
Actually found a really useful feature of ChordPolyPad this weekend.
I had a midi file in Xequence that I wanted to know the chords of. I put CPP in slideover view on the left so I could also see the chord track on Xequence. Each time a chord was about to play I’d tap on a CPP pad that would capture the chord, the velocities, and also display the chord type. Supercool!
The way I'd do this in ChordPolyPad is to put all my favorite chords in one preset, with up to twelve chords per octave and a different scale used in each octave.
By switching octaves on my pad or keyboard controller I could easily switch scales without wasting program change messages
With ChordPolyPad its midi notes only. See the pop up for range options (0-127) covers all pads on all 8 banks. You’d need to turn off the “Rec MIDI chord” button bottom left.
It’s a shame these can’t be triggered by CCs though.
There are several, but none of them are automagic like some VST s like Tonespace. Pretty much all of them require you to populate a bank that can then be triggered or in some cases sequenced.
Right now, for chord progression and discovery, along with the ability to sequence and trigger is a really powerful one called Suggester... really comprehensive.
There’s a really weird one called m-chordy that’s cool too.
If you are cool using the ipad as an interface and don’t need triggering or sequencing, hands down the most powerful beast is an app called ChordMaps2. The interface is pretty nasty, but the amount of power in that bastard is amazing...
But again, there’s not much that will detect your played note, use it as a root, and poop out interesting chords. The new one by Laurent May end up there if it gets some midi mapping goodness...
Navichord is perfect for that IMO. Quickly make your chords saved to pads and play them with any controller, I even used Xequence pads or my Nanokey Studio pads to trigger Navichord pads which played AU synths in AUM. You can also record midi back in Xequence. It’s a bit complicated to setup however, you need to understand properly midi routing on iOS, but midi learn helps a lot with midi controllers.
Can Navichord pads be set up to play with CCs?
Yes !!!
But you will only have global velocity per chord with your midi controller pads/notes/CC. If I understand correctly CPP allows for individual velocity for each chord note. This is one thing missing in Navichord for that purpose IMO. That feature should be added here:
And as you can see you can change notes octave position but can’t enter your own voicings.
What you need with CPP to convert input notes to CC is Midifire, Streambyter AU or Midiflow.
I should also try CPP
Cool stuff. Cheers!
Check my edited post above, there are also other things to consider IMO.
Hope @brambos considers some kind of Chord app with the same degree of sophistication as the other apps like navichord and ChordPolyPad etc.
StepPolyArp will do the job as an AU.
Edit. Developer has released a new one called Quantichord, worth a look.
http://dev.laurentcolson.com/quantichord.html
Nice.
It's a pity that none of the countless chord apps can handle single-fingered chords
This principle is quickly understood, makes a lot of fun and opens up very fast ways to discover new chord sequences.
It doesn't even have to be a complete arranger. A simple app would be enough for me, which converts single finger chords (e.g. according to the Yamaha principle: C key = C major chord, C key + left black key = C minor chord etc.) into normal chords.
Of course it is better to learn conventional chord playing, but for lazy people like me this would be ideal
Yamaha principle? That's an interesting approach! Where exactly is that coming from?
Cool. Never heard about that.
Sounds like a great new MidiFire challenge
Can you provide a list of finger-to-chord translations?
This must have gone under the radar, but this sure sounds exactly like what is being asked for.
From the quantichord page:
Very cool. I had been wanting this for a long time. My hardware synth has a chord memory (play a single note and it plays the chord you snapshot), but it is "dumb" chords, it won't switch the majors to minors and keep in key. I'd used some of the chord apps before, but it took a lot of headscratching to create a set of chords that all were in key, and midi learning each to be triggered by their root note. It would be fine for a song you wrote, but cumbersome for exploration.
does thumb jam do this?
How about Infinite Looper? Or SideCar for that matter, but if I understood Patrick correctly the functionality of all his "other" apps is going into Infinite Looper.
Nanokey studio has a single key chord option called easy scale. All the black keys are chords and white keys are notes
Are those 4 squares next to the chord the Octaves for each of the 4 chord notes? That would be a way of voicing the chord? Inversions at least.
I have found Nave's blade keyboard very useful for chord stuff, you can use it to control other apps. It has a one finger chord functions that allow you to pick from a bunch of different intervals and triads. Select a key and mode and the chords actually follow the scale mode (ie D minor will play both the major and minor chords in that scale, instead of other apps where you pick minor and every chord played is minor)
Another vote for ChordPolyPad.
Yes you can make good voicings that way with chords that the app is able to recognize. That is enough to create good stuff, and midi pads allow for velocity triggering and you can always edit individual notes velocities later. But you can’t create your own voicing to have some more specific harmonic color. I tend to now play my chords mostly with nanoKEY studio/two hand playing, Xequence two rows keyboard or with Midiflow keyboard for AB. I feel this works nicely for creation/production. Midi pads/chord apps are great for some live playing situations, chords rythmic playing, soloing with chords background on 25 keys keyboard, and to program your own chords and not being closed in scale systems.
thanks for the tip