Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
App for helping with voice leading
hello forum,
Is there an app that can help with voice leading? I found these two:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nabla-pro-voice-leading/id1368047492
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/harmonious-music-theory/id1335459208?ls=1
I could just buy and try, but maybe there is more, or better?
I always just hammer some chords on piano or guitar until it fits, but I think I want to try voice leading more, for a smoother transition between chords.
Comments
Tonality’s Circle of Fifths AUV3 has a voice leading option and the app in general is a great music theory tool
Okay, thanks! I have that one already, but I didn't use it in AUM yet. I will take a closer look.
There’s also a tool in the chord pads where you can tap two chords in sequence to have the second voice-led from the first. Double tap the clear button to see all the tools as in the screenshot above.
Harmonious looks very interesting (rare to see a theory app with that level of depth), but I'm not seeing anything on creating progressions, or voice leading. I'm probably going to buy it though, so I will check out.
Honestly though voice leading at a fundamental level isn't that hard. Try to have your outer voices be independent (which means they don't move in lock step, but you have lots of divergent movement), avoid parallel octaves/5ths as these tend to sound a bit meh. More sophisticated voice leading is where you have 2 (or more) voices which are independent in both direction, but also rhythm - and that's when you get really nice counterpoint (e.g. multiple independent melodies). But if you're just doing block chords, or arpeggiations, you don't really have to worry about that too much.
That said there's no particular reason why you have to have counterpoint. It's a stylistic choice. A lot of rock music is just parallel 5ths (power chords - though part of the reason these work is that the distortion gives you a lot of extra harmonics that stand in for your other notes), lots of C19th piano music ignores the rules of voice leading and sounds just fine. If you want smooth harmonies that don't stand out it's pretty much a must - but if you don't, that's fine too.
Actually I might try nabla as well. Voice leading is pretty tedious, particularly when you're trying to see if a particular progression would sound good. Will let you know.
@raabje
Coming from a guitar point of view + definitely more of a jazz harmony background than classical, I found this kind of hit the nail on the head.. especially the law of conservation of energy.. this is my number one rule.. move as little as possible to get to the next chord in a progression.. fantastic exercise to start with any inversion of your first chord and then try to connect to the rest of the chord progression with as little movement as possible.. you will learn your inversions very quickly.. even ones that you (intentionally or not) avoid.. 😁
As a guitarist, I love finding a great sounding chord and then moving my fingers one at a time to explore neighbouring notes.. move a finger up or down a fret or two and listen.. change strings, rinse + repeat.. you’ll find some amazing sounding chords.. stuff you’ve never played before.. chords I don’t even know the names of ( or even care to)..
Obviously, the same thing would work on the piano too.. many more possible fingers to move..
Use your ears.. they’re more experienced than you give them credit for.. think about all the music you’ve heard in your lifetime.. the music you like.. the music you dislike.. it all gets registered consciously or subconsciously..
All that being said, I do like the Tonality Chord Pads voice leading feature.. fairly quick + easy to move from one chord voicing to the next..
Of course I still think Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro is fantastic for learning real-life piano (+ guitar) voicings.. (not simply endless stacked thirds for extended chords).. IMHO, the best app on iOS for Jazz Harmony..
I snapped this screen shot from The Jazz Piano Site
https://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/jazz-chord-progressions/voice-leading/
>
Whaaaatttt? I did not know about this tap 2 chords thing. Sweet. I love this app so much…
Thanks for sharing @royor good find.
That site is filled with free knowledge. Here’s the piano lesson home page.
https://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/
Just learn the inversions for the chords in the key (and modulated keys) that you play in. Once you know them without having to think about it too much voice leading gets a lot easier.
Also, practice playing left hand parts without using the root note of any chords being played with the right hand. If you can keep the left hand movement to a minimum you don’t need to worry about how complex the right hand part gets.
If you play extended chords, consider leaving out the fifth. It makes inversions a lot easier.
Glad you like it @Poppadocrock!
Just to reiterate what others are saying, @raabje definitely don't just rely on the auto-voice lead tool. It is very rigid, and while it may point you in the right direction, your ears should be your #1 guide. You could try the auto-voice lead to start, and then customize it by editing the notes (add, remove, or even reorder some). You'll begin to develop a feel for what sounds good and what doesn't, and how small changes modify the overall sound.
That said, if you're into mathematics and algorithms behind music, the tool is based on this very interesting paper on minimal, bijective crossing-free voice leadings: https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/files/publications/scalesarrays.pdf
You are all too kind, thanks for this information, great! I will dive into it, will take some time. This will help me to make a jump start with voice leading.
Tangentially related, but might be useful...
The Chordulator Mozaic script has options to choose chord inversions that keep the lowest or highest note as close as possible to the previous chord. For instance, with the lowest note leading, a Cmaj triad (CEG) followed by a Gmaj triad would voice the G chord as BDG because B is the closest note to C.
If you record the midi out from this it's easy to edit in leading or transition notes between the notes selected for the chords.
Note: with this script you don't play chords. You play single notes and the chords are constructed for you based on the scale settings.
Audanikas playing surface makes trying out different voice leading really easy, bonus is you can see it visually, but that may not be what you’re looking for.
I do have Audanika, and the Soundprism versions before that. I tried to analyse the chords that are used, with the chord recognizer audio unit from Tonality (from my memory). Lots of major or minor 7 chords, if I remember well.
My "problem" with Soundprism is that is sounds so sweet, or ethereal, so I don´t use it that much. But this was before voice leading got my attention.
And @wim, that Mozaic script, I will check too. Lot of homework to do now....
I installed both apps I mentioned in my first post. The Harmonious app, lots of theory explained, in a academic way. Could be interesting, There are some diagrams inside about voice leading, but mainly from a theoretical point of view.
Nabla, I don´t know, it freezes when I use the app, maybe my error as an operator. No clue what is happening. No need to unlock the pro version. So I will go back now to Tonality.
Wow so many things I don't know. I guess I've focused on guitar too much but have never heard the term Voice Leading.
I do that too on piano
Here is an intro to some Barry Harris chord movements,
https://www.freejazzlessons.com/barry-harris/
Look at the difference between classical or jazz guitarists and rock guitarists. There’s so much less movement up and down the neck compared to rock music (in addition to the much more careful harmonic approach), and that’s due to voice leading.
Basically it’s a lot easier to make that movement of the same block chord up and down the neck than it is on a piano keyboard.
But, but… This changes everything!
Ok, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration.
It’s just that I’ve been dreaming of this feature for a while and never discovered it. No offense, Bryce: your tools afford increased discoverability.
The way I’ve used the voice leading button is: get into edit mode for chord pad, enter chords (which may or may not work directly from holding a pad while sending MIDI input; I’m still having issues, there), hold that button and press the origin chord and then the destination chord. Works for strummer pads as well.
Thanks to this, I was able to create a series of chords that I made into a short piece, in AABA form.
Now, to be fair, some of our chorder tools have some support for something like voice leading. Scaler has an option to “minimize movement” and Suggester matches a chord’s voicing to the previous chord.
Of course, there’s a lot to this which has to do with open voicings, like Drop-2 and Drop-3. I’ve found explanations from “Open Studio Jazz” videos quite helpful.
(Also useful there, some videos using Barry Harris’s approach in a very practical way and some “Crunchy Quartals” that I find really fun to play.” Wish Tonality listed those. And had an option for regular quartals which didn’t voice them as sus chords.)