Studio Instruments - Chords

Welcome to the forum.

The Cakewalk Studio Instruments include e-piano, electric bass, strings, and drums. For the piano, bass, and strings, you can select a chord, or a pattern, but it does not provide information about the chord progression used in the pattern.

If you're looking for a backing band, maybe look at Band in a Box.

http://www.pgmusic.com/bandbox.htm

It's specifically designed to provide accompaniment for you.

Thanks for the repsonses.
 
Yes, I looked at BIAB by PGMusic and it probably is pretty much what I need. What I dont need is the price tag!
 
To be fair it may be good value - but still lots of $.
 
I've been playing with the free trial Mixcraft download - its great, but suffers the same problem ie loads of great backing but not chord specific.
 
I'm really surprised the techy people at Mixcraft and Cakewalk havent developed this. The pattern/riff libraries are great - if only they were chord specific it would be brilliant and would appeal to another sector of the market ie folks like me and other BIAB users.
 
I guess technically this may be more difficult than it sounds - but even if all they did was label the existing patterns, and maybe duplicate them in other chords it would be excellent. Of course users would have to appreciate that pitch/key shifts would change the chords - but thats no big deal.
 
Or maybe allow a user group library.
 
Anyhow, if anyone else has any other ideas I would appreciate it. I'm only intermediate standard musician, and I dont need tons of complex backing - just something where I can control chords.
 
thanks  

RobertB - thanks for that idea with pic.
 
Provided all the SI patterns copied over show on the staff or PRV I could identify the chords, and then mark them or change them to suit, as you say.
 
Trouble is by the time I've done that, I could pretty much have written the thing from scratch.
 
It is a good idea, and as an exercise for a middling musician like myself it would be good practice - but I think it would be too time consuming. I will give this some more thought though.
 
It is one step up from Mixcraft, because that product only shows staff or roll view of midi tracks created on the fly, not for library loops.
 
BTW I just noted PG have reduced their product price by $120 as a special, so TBH is probably the obvious choice.
 
I still think there must be a techy way of manipulating existing patterns to produce a designated chord. Adding in 7ths etc might be tricky, but doable I'd have thought.
 
I think there is software which analyses imported tracks (wavs/MP3s) to show chords so it must be doable.
Even if the patterns were simply renamed to show the chords this would be a huge step IMHO.
 
Maybe I'm an odd customer. Not for the first time.
 
thanks