What are the best tools for working with chords and scales (and why?)

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There seems to have been a trend in the last few years (that I've not been paying enough attention to) where DAWs now come with chord tracks/assistants/composers, as well as 3rd party tools that do similar. I've made some attempts to wrap my head around them recently, but I'm either stuck in my ways or probably doing it wrong.

Which ones are good, and what makes them good? Conversely, what are the shortcomings of composing melodies with these kind of tools?

Thanks in advance.

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This is part of a larger trend towards opening the world of music up to a wider and wider audience by making results easier and easier to get. This is of course done to sell more DAWs and makes perfect business sense, but it's also something I'd want no part of. If I were stuck, I'd rather pick a next chord at random and hope for the best. At least if it were a mistake, it would be my mistake, and I could of course correct it with ease once the reasons for the mistake were identified. Mistakes are important because they are memorable, they create memories and cause your brain to change for the better. Choosing from a bunch of excellent suggestions from the computer and having that impact your music for the better would be a short-term gain with long-term problems. It's a passive thing like choosing which TV channel has the most interesting program to watch on it.

Obviously, you can probably tell, I'm oldschool and somewhat biased. If you were to use such a tool occasionally, and were to look into the suggestions it made and figured out WHY it made them and why they sounded good, I'm sure it could be educational. But in the time it takes to do that research you may as well just learn and feel your way through music theory anyway. Convenience almost always comes with a price, especially when it's a convenience of thought.

No doubt I'm coming across as overly preachy, but in my mind there's a very real war on creativity going on, and if you want to stand out in the world of music in any meaningful way, your time is best spent learning. It's a case of information versus knowledge. If on the other hand music is just something you do for fun, my advice is worthless. But there are people on KVR who could music-theory me under a table and I've never even thought about using such a tool. You have all the notes ready for auditioning right at your fingertips, and there are plenty of razors for eliminating obvious no-go areas. All you have to do is play, listen, and feel.
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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I think I'm largely in agreement with you about this stuff, but being that I'm more engineer than music theorist, I wanted to approach the subject with an open mind with the hope that somebody could sell me on the virtues of the chord-centric workflow.

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Well you are relating to chord assistant in Cubase 8 pro f.e. or harmony improvisator (synleor) , i think those assistants or tools are quite helpful. I have basic knowledge of Music theory from books and i had 1 year lessons from a teacher. Sometimes i take a chord assistant and it helps me to show me the chords within f#minor for example as i dont know every scale. For this task it is very helpful. Not very helpful are suggestions , mostly they sound not that interesting to me, so my creativity is challenged which is the better way :)

A very nice tool for chord Progression and get an idea going is Soundprism Pro from Audanika. With the left Hand playing chords and the right hand playing a melody never was so much fun IMHO.

All i can say these are tools only, like a metronome or voice pitch correction. You can do so much without them. What counts even more is your creativity , your talent and your heart .

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l grew up playing wind instruments, so am at home with melody (and less so with parts) not so familiar with chords. I had some not-so-good theory teachers, and that experience stimulated me to try inexpensive iOS (Tonal Harmony Pro, Chordbot, Navichord) and OSX (tonespace, Cthulhu, B-Step) chord apps, as well as free online videos.
To me, a good app is like a set of exercises. A developer can design a good set of exercises, but you still have to work to understand the theory and apply it to your own work. The whole point is to feel the joy of musical creation!!!!
IMHO, the risk of an app is that a knowledgeable human teacher can customise their teaching to your specific needs, while an app that is wrong for you can waste your time. I also think it can take too much time to find the right app. Writing this post makes me want to look for a new teacher :hihi:
d o n 't
w a n t
m o r e

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I like Chordz And Cales, simple but effective.
More complex plugins have high learning curve

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Cubase has built-in midi assistants. Check also Band in a box, Synfire pro.
Notatation programs with assistants - Sibelius, Pizzicato, maybe Finale also has some similar plugins.

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what are the shortcomings of composing melodies with these kind of tools?
If you're going to rely on technology to suggest chords to you or sort scale-to-chord for you, you aren't relying on your own knowledge to arrive at your own thought. So, in itself it's a crutch. Chances are it's a crutch because you aren't ambulatory. At what point are you going to figure you can stand on your own two feet?
I honestly do not get why one would feel they should be 'composing' if they do not have the skills together for it.

Another thing is, even if one does endeavor to understand why this program has these suggestions one is likely to become constrained by a dull conventionality, again the lack of agency as a detriment.

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Sendy wrote:This is part of a larger trend towards opening the world of music up to a wider and wider audience by making results easier and easier to get.
Modesty aside, blame it on Avantgarde Sound's nChord.
It was the second half of 2012 and no one was talking about the subject but then nChord's first version was released. It first humbly sold in eBay (though after a couple months I created a small website: http://www.avantgardesound.com). Humbly but certainly nChord shook the world with a brand new daring approach to music composition: the concept of Hands-on (literally) Harmonic 'Design' was born. Chords became 'small custom entities' with harmonic particles for us to (literally) play with, big boy toys, sort of. In a matter of a months nChord became the trend setter and 'suddenly' "similar" tools started to show up. Even big budget developers started to (cough! :hyper: ) 'innovate'. The rest is history.

Naturally, I did not invent chords, I merely invented a way to approach their 'design' and progression, a way to deal with them, store them and play them with instruments from and for them, and this would have never been quite the same without the Lemur environment, of which I am a heavy user since the Bordeaux days.

When nChord was released, everyone was stunned Lemur was indeed up to the task of hosting this little AI harmonic design tool that could also function as 3 distinct realtime custom instruments at the same time, and with such sort of "harmonic elasticity" to them. To be honest, I am still surprised and keep wondering how the fvck did I pull it off :) Sometimes I stare at it in disbelief. Mostly, I feel very grateful, as I always wanted to contribute something of true value to music making; this was my ultimate desire in life, because, like you, I do believe in music.
jeffh wrote:There seems to have been a trend in the last few years (that I've not been paying enough attention to) where DAWs now come with chord tracks/assistants/composers, as well as 3rd party tools that do similar. I've made some attempts to wrap my head around them recently, but I'm either stuck in my ways or probably doing it wrong.

Which ones are good, and what makes them good? Conversely, what are the shortcomings of composing melodies with these kind of tools?

Thanks in advance.
I think the beauty of it is that you have now many approaches at your disposal. From creating a melody mentally, fiddling with notes with a guitar or simply whistling them. I think it's important to not lose sight of the ludic aspect of creating music. It is truly fun to vary the approach constantly, particularly at the initial stage when you are creating that basic chord structure, the riffs or the melodies. Look at these tools this way: they represent just another approach to the same purpose > using music to say/express something.

In the case of nChord, it will suggest ideas and it will constantly inspire you, but never forget that it only is facilitating the process. Ultimately, you are still the decider and you will never use a single note that does not fit your harmonic "speech". I was in fact utmost careful in preserving and protecting the composers' (users') free will no matter how smart or inspiring nChord can be. Its algos just facilitate the search for the 'right word', so to speak. Then it lets you "speak them", since it is also 3 multi-touch realtime instruments.

Cheers,
Avantgarde Sound
*For the love of the machine
http://www.avantgardesound.com


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Last edited by Avantgarde Sound on Thu Apr 30, 2015 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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The only problem I see, and I experimented, while using this apps for chord progressions is that you never understand why what you are doing works or not.

So some theory never hurst and may even make this apps more helpfull.
dedication to flying

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rod_zero wrote:The only problem I see, and I experimented, while using this apps for chord progressions is that you never understand why what you are doing works or not.

So some theory never hurst and may even make this apps more helpfull.
>> I'm trying to learn music theory, chord progressions, how to write melodies, etc. http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 9&t=434439
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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btw, AFAIK only the web app http://www.hooktheory.com/hookpad/new has borrowed chords functionality which makes it very handy
"Where we're workarounding, we don't NEED features." - powermat

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Guitars and keyboards :D

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Best tool is your BRAIN.

Yeah, I see all these 'chord helpers', 'chord choosers', song part 'suggesters' -- they're are all cool, all interesting and I have toyed with a few as they show up in the news.

But, really, I have to say, never before have I met and been aware of so many (mainly) young musicians who don't know the first thing about music theory. Technology will only take you so far, chaps. Someday the real piper will come to call and a sorry price will be paid for never learning much of anything, meanwhile putting all energy into pushing your thumbs into apps and gadgets all day long.

This is also a reason so much of the newer music I run into on the web is so downright awful. We have algorithms now that create much better music. Thing is, though, if you learn music theory, you can break rules intelligently and enter new territory that machines and algorithms can't. But you DO need to know what you are doing, and without learning, meanwhile relying on software and these new toys, you can't get there from here.

The vast majority of today's musicians/composers are mental midgets to the decades before this current century. A FACT.

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I enjoy dabbling with these tools. I like to vary my approach, and experimenting with different ways of arriving at melody and harmony can be quite entertaining. That said, I do have a firm grounding in music theory, and these other approaches are only meant as a diversion, not a crutch.
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