KVR Audio

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:26 pm

Hi Everyone,

I am considering purchasing one of these chord progression tools. Does anyone have any thoughts regarding the relative merits of these three programs, or is there another one (around this price) that I should also be considering?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Michael L · Post by **Michael L** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:35 pm

If you give more specific information about your skills and goals, someone could give a more useful recommendation.

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:40 pm

My main goal is to quickly generate and test different chord progressions for use in building new songs. I don't really play keyboard that well, so would like to simply audition different chords and progressions by pressing a few buttons, with the ability to change those chords and progressions easily to fit the sound in my head.

Michael L · Post by **Michael L** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:58 pm

A terrific Mac app called Suggester does just that:
http://www.mathieurouthier.com/suggester_osx/index.html
This one is free:
http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/#demo

mgw38 · Post by **mgw38** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 2:06 pm

This is exactly my workflow when I start a track. I am getting a lot of milage out of Sundog Studio for that. It has a "Chord" window where you choose the scale and then have a button for each chord that works in that scale. You can just click around and check out what progressions works. I absolutely love that. When you are done you simply drag the midi into your DAW.

Sundog Studio is designed as a full prototyping tool where you can add melody and bassline to your chords but I really only use it to come up with an initial guess for a good chord progression. Once it is in the DAW I usually fine tune it, do an inversion here and there, maybe add a tension note, and the like. Almost everything I have done so far started that way.

Cognitone Synfire has similar functionality included but that's at the different price level and goes far beyond what Sundog Studio is designed to do in terms of prototyping.

I also have Scaler but I never really got comfortable with that. I don't have Captain Chords (although it is on my shopping list).

mgw38 · Post by **mgw38** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 2:08 pm

Michael L wrote:A terrific Mac app called Suggester does just that:
http://www.mathieurouthier.com/suggester_osx/index.html

That is a nice one!

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 2:09 pm

I'm on Windows, but I completely forgot about Tonespace - thanks!

mgw38 · Post by **mgw38** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 2:54 pm

Played around with Suggester a bit, that is definitely a good one. I still think that Sundog Studio is the best option. For some reason the layout in Sundog lends itself more towards finding good progressions faster.

Never really liked Tonespace. But it is free.

bharris22 · Post by **bharris22** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 3:37 pm

Thank you both for your help!

xbitz · Post by **xbitz** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 5:05 pm

Push...

formulas are here: http://www.smithfowler.org/music/Chord_Formulas.htm , RapidCompose also very good

untimelyman · Post by **untimelyman** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 5:22 pm

RapidComposer. It does everything the above programs do and much much more.

Pictus · Post by **Pictus** » Thu Jul 05, 2018 6:28 pm

Sundog is excellent, another option worth mention is

jonljacobi · Post by **jonljacobi** » Fri Jul 06, 2018 1:02 pm

I think if the goal is to get the sound out of your head, you need a blank slate such as an instrument, not something that might drive it out with its own choices. If you do use any of these, do yourself a favor and record the original thought by humming or whatever before you start.

benheman · Post by **benheman** » Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:49 pm

They're all good, but Suggester is the simplest...no learning curve!

GreyLion · Post by **GreyLion** » Sat Jul 07, 2018 4:06 am

I have Sundog 3 and the basic version of Rapid Composer and like them, though I haven't fooled around with them enough to really say that I've evaluated them. Attila, the dev for RC, is extremely responsive, and we had a fair amount of back and forth about him modifying the UI to make it resizeable for 4K use, and he implemented almost immediately and modified that as a result of our discussion. Big thumbs up for him as a dev!

I crossed off the Captain plugs because they insist on being connected to the net at all times as a copy protection mechanism. Total deal-breaker. Check their forum to see their justification and just how 'pleased' their customers are by this policy.

Sundog Song Studio v. Captain Plugins v. Scaler?