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.
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.
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
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).