For me, and I guess many of you, have found it a bit confusing to deal with so much data and that in many cases the data is duplicated, triplicated, quadruplicated...
So I decided to do some cleaning and put some order in the chaos that I had organized in my library, so I decided to extract data from the notes of each of the MIDI chord files, using a script that I built in Python.
I loaded the collected data into a spreadsheet for analysis.
These collections are usually divided into styles, and obviously many of the chords are duplicated in the different styles.
After removing all duplicate chords, the list was reduced to 9726 files.
Even so, within this list, there are different scales and intervals, and therefore, the chords that are labelled by scale, key and interval are in many cases the same as others that are in different scales, keys, etc.
For example, the chord A#maj in interval v of the scale D# major is the same as in scale D minor, interval v, and as G major, interval biii and G minor, interval iii.
I beg your indulgence, if I have not explained myself well. I'm not an expert in music theory, but that's what I've seen in the spreadsheet.
Therefore, I have also eliminated these duplicate chords, leaving only one and with a reference number of 4 decimal places, which I will later use in the Patcher Chord Player. In the end, of the +20.000 chords, only 3766 different chords have been left, without duplications.
In the spreadsheet attached here, you can find the cross-references between the chords, the different scales, keys, intervals and the reference number I have assigned to them.
And this is what I wanted to present to you here, in this Patcher preset, 3766 Chords.
I have managed to organise the logic of all the musical notes of these 3766 chords in 6 instances of Fruity Formula Controller.
The chords have between 4 and 6 notes.
Each of the FFC instances controls 1 of the notes of each chord.
When the set of 6 FFCs receives the signal to play a chord, it will be a 4-digit decimal signal corresponding to the cross-reference list I have attached here.
For example, if all 6 FFCs receive the signal 0.004, they know that they have to send the notes of the chord A#sus2 to the MIDI Player and that the MIDI Player will then send them to the Synth of your choice.
Why is it a BETA version?
At the moment I have finished the first part, which was to store the logic of all the chords in the FFC and manually, by means of 4 knobs, to be able to trigger all the different chords.
As there is no established order, when you turn the knobs you can find from magnificent transitions to a bit more strange chords.
Still, the results can be very interesting. For example, if you play with the DARKER knob, what it does is to eliminate, to remove gradually the higher notes, leaving a more balanced result and especially very useful to create Drones.
- 3766 Chords.jpg (92.6 KiB) Viewed 707 times
To control the bass can also help.
Important, FL Studio instruments are not very specialised for atmospheric sequences, even so I think they sound pretty well, and changing them for DIVA, Spire, Serum, HIVE, Pigments... the results can be very very interesting.
The next step, will be to create a matrix, between keys and intervals, so you can select the ranges where you want the 3766 to trigger the chords randomly.
If you have any comments or bugs that I didn't detect, don't hesitate to let me know. I'll be travelling these next few weeks, but I'll keep an eye on the forum.
The size of the Patcher preset with the 3766 chords, various instruments and effects from FL Studio is only 275kb.
28/02/2024 The "Chords List & References.zip" has been removed. I am working on a new chord list and correcting quite a few flaws.