TIP - MIDI Chord Capture for Harmony work
In an effort to generate MIDI chord data
prior to entering the piano roll view (PRV), I came up with a workflow that seems the most efficient use of time. As I have seen other posts regarding this over the last several months, I wanted to share what I did in hopes that this will help others.
First, there is a free VST called "Tonespace 2 Chorder" by mucoder (
http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/) which can be run in standalone mode as well as a DAW. It has its own internal sound generator, and several options to how it can be run (what chords it will generate, trigger via mouse/MIDI controller, etc.). I will not go into details on its options, but will provide details of how I set it up for this use. The MIDI chords generated by this can be sent to the DAW host, but this also bypasses its internal audio generation, so that data must be passed to another VST to be heard. Below is a screenshot of the setup used within the VST:
Note: On first use, the "midi in" has a "Configure..." option, but the pop up window actually appears
behind the VST, so the VST must be dragged to one side to set this for your particular MIDI controller. You can also choose to fire Tonespace with a mouse via the "trigger" dropdown. I have set chords to fit the chosen key, and will fire in root position (most common, and PRV can be used once recorded to change inversions manually).
Capture of chords within SONAR - With Tonespace set up as above, I routed the MIDI output from Tonespace to an instance of Cakewalk TruePianos. When soloed and armed for recording, it appears as below:
When recorded, the MIDI data is then captured in the Tonespace MIDI track. Once captured, this data may be moved to any track, edited with PRV, etc.
One important note (shown in the first screen capture) - Tonespace has songs internally created, so prior to use the
stop button must be pressed at the top of the VST to prevent these notes from being passed to SONAR. Tonespace always initiates with this armed and linked to the transport, and I have not found a way to stop this yet.
In case this will help others, I have also included the
cwp file I created for this. To use this cwp file, Tonespace 2 must be installed, and the MIDI controller (or mouse trigger) will need to be adjusted to work within your particular setup (mine is set up for a Roland A-300PRO).
As an aside, there is also a free VST called midiChords (
http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/midiChords/) which allows for much more defined MIDI triggering, but is also more complex to set up for my particular needs. I simply wanted to have MIDI chord data readily generated prior to editing in the PRV.