The interface is freely resizable, and various piano roll folding options are available, so keeping everything in view as your chords start to vary in height is never a problem. Octave shifts the whole chord up and down the keyboard, and Flavor lets you add extra notes - the 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th and/or 13th. Inversion options comprise the ‘Default’ triad, and ‘First’ and ‘Second’, as well as the default ‘Minimize Leap’, which intelligently sets the optimal voice leading for the chord and all those following it. Complexity adds bass notes to the chord when raised from its default value of 4 (up to a maximum of 7), and thins it out at the top when lowered. With a chord selected, various individually editable parameters do become accessible, however. As powerful as these two systems are, they’d be much more so if they could be applied per-chord rather than only globally, as is currently the case. The first houses a huge list of preset rhythmic patterns, most of a decidedly dance music bent the second offers quarter- notes, and regular and dotted eighth-notes alongside the default legato option. Tension controls how closely Melody adheres to the notes of the key or chords, and thus how much dissonance is introduced and Pattern, which works in tandem with the Rhythm menu, reorders the notes with 106 arpeggiations and sequences. Shape determines the way in which Deep’s bassline relates to Chords’ progression (‘Follow the chords’, ‘Opposite movement’, etc). The parameters diverge with Deep’s Shape options, and Melody’s Tension and Pattern menus. Captain Melody takes its onboard sounds from Chords’ library, while Deep features 60 exclusive bass sounds alongside Chords’ ‘Plucks’. They also both draw on the same library of Rhythm patterns as Captain Chords. It’s like magic!īeing monophonic, as you’d expect, Deep and Melody lose the chord selection, voicing and inversion controls, but keep the Octave and, in Melody’s case, Note Length menus. But what’s really clever is that Deep and Melody are slaves to Chords, automatically updating their monophonic lines to follow the latter’s progressions as you tweak them in real time.
I would recommend Captain Chords to those who want to to simplify the chord creation process and generate new song ideas quickly.Built on the foundations of Captain Chords, Captain Deep and Captain Melody use the same underlying processes to generate bass and lead/ melodic lines. Its simple enough for producers with no music theory knowledge to write advanced progressions yet intelligent enough for experienced musicians to write elegant progressions. I was amazed with how easily Captain Chords allowed me to write new chord progressions and the degree of control it gave me over the chords themselves, the progression as a whole, the rhythms and sounds. Both of these features are amazing, as they allow producers to focus on sound design in their software or hardware instrument of choice while still having the flexibility and ease of use Captain Chords offers. Captain Chords' output can also be routed into analog gear.
The notes themselves will be playing inside Captain Chords, but the sound will be generated from the VST.
Rhythmsįor further flexibility, Captain Chords' MIDI output can be routed to a VST instrument like Nexus, Sylenth, Serum, or Kontakt. I like these sections, as they allow different parts of the song to be written and kept organized. There's multiple tabs inside the plugin that allow for chord creation of the verse, pre-chorus, chorus and drop. For those who want to go one step further, the plugin allows chords to be inverted, played in different octaves, or for the addition of a 6 th, 7 th, 9 th, 11 th or 13 th to the chord. Captain Chords uses correct voice leading for chords, and minimizes the leaps in notes between chords. This feature makes advanced harmonic variations on chords accessible for novice producers, and simplifies the process of trying out chord variations. For example, the i chord (A min) can be changed to a iSUS2, iSUS4, i6, i7 or an I chord. Simply select the chord progression that sounds good, and build the song from there.Ĭhords in the main grid can be easily swapped, or selected and modified to an suspended or extended chord. You can create chord progressions on your own by clicking in the main grid area and adding in chords, or selecting one of the many chord progressions available in the chords panel. To create a new progression in Captain Chords, simply select the key of the song and either a major or minor scale.