Creating midi harmonies

Hi, I have laid down a midi track and want to create harmonies with the midi track but can’t work out how to do this?

I have a chord track laid down, and known how to create harmonies from audio tracks using variaudio but can’t seem to do this with midi?

I’m sure I’m missing something obvious…

Can you double click on the MIDI track to open it’s Editor?

Then copy & paste each note in the appropriate areas either below or above the ones that you’ve copied.

Might seem the long way around, but you didn’t give a whole lot on info to work with, so this does work, albeit somewhat time consuming.

However, if you want to create harmonies on a new separate track, there’s a bit of a different way to do that.

I’m trying to create multiple tracks which accompany one single melody track using harmonies. This is fairly simple with Variaudio and audio tracks so I’m guessing should be straightforward - if not even easier! - with midi but can’t seem to get it to work. Variaudio automatically creates harmonies based on the accompanying chord track (so harmonies are in the right key).

I can achieve this via manual manipulation of the midi notes but am looking for a quicker shortcut as I do this loads. This will possible halve the time it takes for me to finish a track.

Aloha A,
Here is an approach. (a lil ‘kludgy’ for sure but might work for you).

Do your harmonies as single line audio tracks and then use that Audio—>MIDI feature
in Cubase that can turn single mono audio tracks into MIDI tracks.

I have not ever used this feature but have seen it done in a couple of tutorials.

Hope this helps and Good Luck!
{‘-’}

I would have thought there is an easier way than going back and forth between audio and midi, if I am starting with a MIDI melody and a chord track.
I will follow this post to see if somebody has a solution, because I have not found it either.

There must be a way! Variaudio works by analysing the audio data and converting it into a midi signal (although the midi signal is “attached” to the audio data) so surely there’s a way of doing this with midi?

Try this. Create a new instrument or midi track and copy the part you want to harmonize onto it. Open this part in the Key Editor and select all the notes. Then drag them up (or down) while holding the alt key to create a copy of the part above the initial part by a few notes. Repeat until you have as many lines as you want in your harmony part. In the track’s Inspector go to the Chord Track tab and enable the Follow Chord Track feature.

This didn’t really work, all the notes just go a bit random and weird - tried voicings, auto, chords & scales and none worked

That’s odd, it should work. I’ve attached before and after screen grabs.


As you can see, the notes are just a line of random mishmash that has been copied several times. And in the inspector, “Follow Chord Track” is turned off.

This shows what happened after I turned on the Follow Chord Track. As you can see all the notes were moved to the notes in the corresponding chords. My chord track was set to basic voicings, so they are just boring block chords.

If this isn’t working for you, maybe some screen shots would make it easier to see what’s happening.

Ok trying again - when I select “Follow Chord Track / Chords” an options box comes up which gives me options to “Follow Directly” or “Synchronise Track Data with Chord Track First” - I’m selecting the second option - there are 2 further options within this - “Analyze Chords” or “Apply A Known Chord” I’m going for the first option.

Will try screenshots but can only paste to wordpad at the moment

So?? Did it work??

Wouldn’t it make a difference if the melody to be harmonized has scale notes, not just chord notes? Wouldn’t this method move them?

Sorry still haven’t got this to work, went back to old school method and just did it manually, will try this again when I have more time!

Thanks for your help though

I’ve got a solution that is bit faster than manually moving all the notes, though it only works when music is in one key/modal (if there is a key chance you have to do it again for that). Unfortunately I’m at work right now, so don’t have Cubase right in front of me right now, so this is just how I remember how it works:

Copy your lead midi line to new track, then open key editor and on the left hand side there is the “transpose” toolbox. There you can choose to transpose the track from one key or scale to another. So let’s say your song is in A harmonic minor, and you want to create minor third harmony you just choose A harmonic minor as your current scale, and set A harmonic minor as your target scale and then choose transpose by 3 semitones. It gets it mostly correct. Unfortunately it doesn’t do any thinking for you, so if you want bit more clever harmonizing you just have to do it manually (or combination of manual and this method that I told you).

I know this is a steinberg forum, but if seem some cool features in Sonar. Like snap to scale. Midi functions… Maybe check it out.