How to Trigger chords with a note?

[Dehaan]

In OVOX i want to trigger chords when I sing a single note. is it best to make it so chords are triggered by their root note?

I dont know much about music theory.
For instance if i want to trigger an E minor Seventh, should i trigger it when singing an E? a G? B? D?

[BertKoor]

Try it out. It will sound different with the base note you sing being pitched up or down and the amount it gets pitched. Also for your brain it matters how natural it feels to sing a note and getting accompanyment.

I don't think this is a "theory" question, but never mind that.

[jancivil]

"is it best to make it so chords are triggered by their root note"
looks like a music theory question to me. However I don't know what 'trigger an _' does. If it's some software algorithm that is supposed to create the chord from one single note entry, chances do not seem very good it's going to understand more about the question than 'here's triad or tetrad from the root of the chord/your note'.

Is it best, short answer is maybe, maybe not. This is a question of a musical idea: 1) have your own idea or punt
2) there are no guarantees. Specifically, no principle is a guarantee of quality through itself. Maybe if that's all that ever happens it'll tend to dullness after a point but chances seem high the person who operates this way will also have no concept of voice-leading so all the chords are root position on a guitar...

Also, too: few people will care about these problems.

[FreakyMusician]

Do you mean what he does in this video?


About the music theory part, if you don't have a clue about music theory I would suggest playing with it. Try in root chord position in some chords and first/second/third position in others, you're not limited to anything today, especially if the genre you are creating is based on energy and not theory, like experimental or other free genres.

What kind of genres are working on?
Maybe you can get some ideas about their use of chord inversions here on the forum or youtube, you might have a better starting point for your research that way.

[jancivil]

from the video it appears that there are conventions such as "minor pop" which apply to its reading of the notes in a MIDI as pertains to its arpeggiator; ie., it's not necessarily deciding the note 'sung' is the root of chords, so it would be down to working with it. we don't know except in the using, here. Knowing the why of that 'minor pop' et al would involve knowledge of chords and chords voicing, at least.

[Ah_Dziz]

It just depends on what feels the most natural to you. You can have any note trigger whatever chord you like, but singing a B and having it trigger an Am7 chord might feel a bit awkward to you. If you are a highly trained singer then you can probably get the most milage out of assigning every single semitone to a chord that fits somewhere in your arrangement. I'm not a good enough singer for this. I tend to assign a chord to the lowest note I'm going to sing (so a G if I'm singing a c triad with the g in the bass) so I can just follow the bass and still have a nice little chord progression.