Is there a plugin/app that detects piano/guitar CHORDS?

[Lagrange]

Subject line is pretty straight forward..

[Lagrange]

I found a plug (midifier) that detects single note but not the whole chord.. (from a sample)

C

[Lagrange]

I also found these but they are for VB enviroments I think...

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~chinghuc/pitch_ ... rithms.htm

C

[Sepheritoh]

Sorry

You ask for detect, not create.

Sonar has a chord analyser built in. It realy does not do a great job IMHO, but sort of works.

Band in a box can detect chords as well as a stand alone app.

[tahome]

Transcribe is great for this. www.seventhstring.com

--th

[Mr. Tunes]

Someone once told me your ears can detect chords but i have yet to believe it

[runagate]

Widi
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... 26rls%3Den

[Lunch Money]

It is important to understand that Transcribe! does not attempt to do the whole job, processing an audio file and outputting musical notation - this would be nice, but is a currently unsolved research problem. The spectrum analysis feature is very useful for working out those hard-to-hear chords, but you must still use your ear and brain to decide which of the peaks in the spectrum are notes being played, which are merely harmonics, and which are just the result of noise and broad-spectrum instruments such as drums. If you have never worked out even a simple piece of music by ear then Transcribe! will probably not help you (see How to Transcribe), but if you do sometimes work out recorded music by ear then Transcribe! can make the job a lot quicker and easier.

In other words, don't expect perfect results. I've yet to hear of or encounter a software that can detect chords. It's quicker and easier to just do it by ear with a bit of practice. I don't have a perfect track record, but with some patience, it's usually easier than you'd think.

Greg

[skipscada]

It's quicker and easier to just do it by ear with a bit of practice. ;) I don't have a perfect track record, but with some patience, it's usually easier than you'd think.

Just out of curiosity, how do you do it? I'm not very successful. I try to pick out bass notes first, and most importantly the one everthing seems to return to (which if I'm lucky/right will be the keynote). The scale and most likely chords follow logically from the keynote, even with my minimal theoretical insights. With a minimum of trial and failure, I usually get close, but often feel I fail to get essential details in place - 7ths, 9ths etc, alternative fingerings of common chords, alternative tunings... I never bother to loop anything, though I suppose picking out single chords or short parts and looping them would be useful.

To my relief, it seems I'm not the only one who has problems - there are so many bad transcriptions around. My fear is that a VST would only get as far as I get myself (probably a lot faster though), but would fail to fill in stuff that are important to the overall feel of the song. Speculation on my behalf.

[runagate]

I'm not joking - Widi can do a decent job.
Plus the monophonic real-time mode is great.
There's no way to do it perfectly every time but if you mess
around with the control parameters you have a very good chance of it
working well.

[Sascha Franck]

To analyze chords by ear (or easier: along with an instrument you're familiar with), try the following:
- Find the root (usually played by the bass). If it's unclear, it might be that the bass isn't playing the root note. In that case, you need to try some possibilities.
Fortunately, usually in a pop/rock/soul/funk context, the roots are played by the bass and there's very few exceptions.
- Now try the thirds. Just play them along with the chord in question. Minor third = minor chord, major third = major (or dominant) chord. In case either of them sounds a bit "unclear", chances are that it's a sus4 chord (usually a major/dominant chord with the 3rd replaced by the 4th). In case both seem to fit, chances are it's a 7/#9 chord.
- Next try the 7ths. Same procedure as with the 3rds. In case either of the 7ths is sounding unclear, chances are it's a 6th chord.

With these three things checked, most progressions become more or less self explanatory, assuming you got a bit of scale/chord theory knowledge.
So all the further possibilities (9ths, 11ths, 13ths) will just be obvious. Whether they're used or not is another matter. You just gotta play them along - in case they "melt" in, they may be in use with the chord in question.

I didn't mention 5ths because on most chords they're obsolete - of course there's altered chords and min7/b5 ones, but usually those stand out a lot, so finding out a mismatching 5th is easy.
The key things to find out about a chord progression are root, third and seventh.

Oh well, of course, finding out about the *exact* voicing used will be quite harder, but I doubt some software will do a much better job.

[Hink]

great post Sascha...thanx...

[Tony Ostinato]

Its a lot easier now than it used to be. I started on record players and what a hassle moving the needle back 4 bars over and over and it wasnt none to good for the record either, and make sure the player is at the right speed!

got easier with casette but some machines had slow rewind times and occasionally youd get lost, much better when locators were added and even "looping"

now its a lot easier, load the song into nuendo and use time warp to match up the tempo and loop. i go about 4 bars at a time and just keep constructing till done.

computer programs would need to be very cognitive to seperate in their "minds" the drums from the other instruments, notes from harmonics etc, and its easier to do things like drive cars.

they can do mono pith detection well because they just count the zero crossings.

im suprised polyphonic pitch detection ever works at all, even a little.

[Sascha Franck]

im suprised polyphonic pitch detection ever works at all, even a little.

Yeah, that's truly amazing, made me wondering as well - I actually thought that'd be something to remain pretty much un-doable for quite a while (until some really advanced AI programs find their ways into our machines).
I'm certainly going to try that Widi thing out, even if I'm sure my ears will still do a better job.

Btw, if anybody needs some ear training, there's great programs around that you could set up in a way to exactly meet your requirements. For instance, in case you've got problems finding out the differences between fully diminished and half diminished chords, you can tell them to only ask you for those.
I'm still using Emagic's HearMaster for such tasks, but it's not distributed any longer (since years even). I think "Aura" should be rather similar.

[Hink]

Its a lot easier now than it used to be. I started on record players and what a hassle moving the needle back 4 bars over and over and it wasnt none to good for the record either, and make sure the player is at the right speed!

yeah I sure remember those days, I did the old trial and error thing back in the day...but then I had a turntable (and lps that were scratched to hell ) and an 8-track (cartidge) with the 8-track it was easier to learn all the songs on that program , though mine did have fast forward and auto-stop (it recorded too).

Of course then sometimes it was even harder because the guitarists often were in different tunings and some things never seemed quite right until I learned some open and alternate tunings. Which didn't come for me until 20 years later. In the 70's I was really big on the stones and deep purple...the constant arguments on what was right wore thin as a school boy with other wannbes...especially with songs like smoke on the water and brown sugar...now I know of course not only was I wrong, but so was everyone else...