Chords of scale

[fastfx]

I'm looking for a device that lets you pick a scale, then when you play through that scale it plays the minor or major chords of that scale.

At the moment, I find if you use the scale plugin, and the chord plugin, it only plays the type of chord you selected in the chord plugin.

Is there anything out there that does this?

I'm sure there's a max4live device or something out there for this?

[chapelier fou]

It might be obvious, but : do you put the chord effect BEFORE the scale effect ? Should be fine.

[fastfx]

No that's not what I mean.

A scale is made up of major and minor chords. If you put the major chord plugin before the scal it's only going to play major chords. Not major AND minor.

[chapelier fou]

If you put the major chord plugin before the scal it's only going to play major chords. Not major AND minor.

not true...
It will force to scale, so will play Major, Minor or diminished according to the scale.
I don't know if the scale effect 'rounds' up or down, but maybe having a minor chord loaded in the chord effect is preferable.

[fastfx]

Ah interesting. Ok I never knew that. Will have a play around! Thanks

[f.poce@tiscali.nl]

If you have Max for Live I have shared a tool set which, given a scale, defines a rack of chords in the scale using the diatonic method (it also does scale and chord detection and real-time harmonization). It's called Harmotools, it's a free download and it is here: http://fabriziopoce.com/download.html

PS: I also produced a more sophisticated Max for Live tool set for programming and experimenting with chord progressions and arpeggios. It is called Progressive, it is a paid device and it is available here: http://fabriziopoce.com/progressive.html

Gr
Fab

[Buleriachk]

The best solution to this problem I've found is Cthulhu, which allows you to define any kind of chord you want (up to eight notes) to be played with any key of the keyboard/Push. It is also a VST, so can be used with other programs. It also has an arpeggiator, which works very well indeed:

http://www.xferrecords.com/products/cthulhu

(Fabrizio's devices are excellent as well, but work a little differently.)

[Willyum]

I don't know if the scale effect 'rounds' up or down, but maybe having a minor chord loaded in the chord effect is preferable.

It will round up or down based on where you chose the little orange squares to be. Every note is represented in that matrix.. example: if you go to the d column and move the orange square up.. d will ALWAYS play d-sharp (e-flat)... if you move the square down 1 box it will ALWAYS play d-flat instead of d.

[chapelier fou]

ah yeah you're right.

[antarktika]

You could also try tonespace, it will do what you're asking for, and as a bonus, is free: http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/

[fastfx]

All good shouts. Will investigate!

[MegasonicTeenageWarhead]

Thanks to everyone in this forum, ridiculously helpful thread for those uneducated in music theory like myself.

[regretfullySaid]

If you have Max for Live I have shared a tool set which, given a scale, defines a rack of chords in the scale using the diatonic method (it also does scale and chord detection and real-time harmonization). It's called Harmotools, it's a free download and it is here: http://fabriziopoce.com/download.html

PS: I also produced a more sophisticated Max for Live tool set for programming and experimenting with chord progressions and arpeggios. It is called Progressive, it is a paid device and it is available here: http://fabriziopoce.com/progressive.html

Gr
Fab

I ended up buying Progressive last night because of this post and I have to say that it's a fantastic tool and will be a game changer when I get back to writing music.
It's very well thought out and the variety of scales and progressions available provide endless combinations of great starting points.
Seems like this is worth the hundreds of dollars people are paying for glitch plugins.

[Willyum]

PS: I also produced a more sophisticated Max for Live tool set for programming and experimenting with chord progressions and arpeggios. It is called Progressive, it is a paid device and it is available here: http://fabriziopoce.com/progressive.html

Gr
Fab

I ended up buying Progressive last night because of this post and I have to say that it's a fantastic tool and will be a game changer when I get back to writing music.
It's very well thought out and the variety of scales and progressions available provide endless combinations of great starting points.
Seems like this is worth the hundreds of dollars people are paying for glitch plugins.

Now because of this reply, I am interested too, But I have a couple of questions first...

The software developer 'f.poce@tiscali.nl' may never show up in this thread again, so if anybody knows the answers to my questions, please chime in...

I'm new to M4L and have never purchased a pack... Do 3rd party packs 'break' with Live updates like many of the midi scripts do?
Right now there are a bunch of people angry in the Push forum because this latest Live update broke their favorite custom midi scripts. Now they're all running to get the creators of the scripts to do updates.

I know the notes of the keyboard, I can figure out some chords, play around and eventually come up with a 'progression'... but I know absolutely nothing about l, lll, lV or what it means (I have a slight idea, I'm not completely clueless)... Are these things (theory) stuff I must know before using your program, and if not, is your program setup in a way that I will start to understand it?

Last question...
I mostly do Hip Hop, Funk, R&B, Blues/Jazz music (I do it poorly, but that's what I do). I saw in the videos that you have 'Progression Styles' in a drop down box and I saw stuff like 'Pop', 'Nostalgia', heard a lot of Classical and it looked like the list was pretty long. I know enough about theory to know any progressions can be adapted to pretty much any other style of music. But being someone who doesn't know enough to do the actual adaptations (yet), Are there 'Progression Styles' included in your package that would help with urban styles of music?

[regretfullySaid]

Well, urban styles is pretty vague but I'd say it's generally based off pentatonic blues and that scale is included so I'd say yes. Did you look at his videos and read the pdf manual he provides on his page? I think those would answer your questions.

Once you understand what the degrees of I, II, III, etc simply are then I don't think there's much left to make the tool esoteric. At the base it's using a variety of standard and non-standard choice of chord progressions, and then giving you some extra options between static and dynamic variations.

Id' say the videos and manual cover everything simply and clearly and what you didn't know about some theory you'll learn, and it isn't as complicated as it may look either, so it's not like it's like taking a college course or anything.

As far as how much M4L devices break...I've only used it in the past year so I'm not sure how often some may need to be updated. I think it happens more often with pythons scripts because the syntax may need to be more specific, and M4L is more of a 'supported' format (not that Ableton will give any info themselves about updated API info ) so if updating does need to be done with M4L patches it may be easier plus Max updates could help out with that.

As far as this one I used it on the 9.1.3b1 beta and it's fine. Definitely worth the hefty 12 bucks.