CUBASE 7 ~ CHORD TRACK ALONE IS WORTH THE UPGRADE.

Just WOW! oh my GOD, This is like having Karma that you can actually control.
live transform is ridiculously awesome. ability to restrict chord or scale level note this is ingenious.
7.04 might be a little power hungry but I absolutely love this feature, this is the 1st DAW that actually inspires you to create. WOW! good job steinberg.

Kool!

:slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:
{‘-’}

I agree with the OP. Chord track is a great tool for starting ideas and more.

Couldn’t agree more… I’ve had Cubase 7 since it was first released, but I’m just now starting to truly grasp the incredible power of the chord track/editor!

+1

I was really cynical of it when I was looking to upgrade to C7 (based on pondering over initial Steinberg videos etc) as I hate the idea of automatic composing (yuk/hiss) :angry: but I think my jaded impression was likely to do with my own experience of taking a more ‘live’ approach to music making and not fully understanding its potential (i.e. only playing around yourself, exploring and having fun can do that)! :stuck_out_tongue:

As such, since owning C7 and messing with it in my own way I’ve since come to love it, because you don’t have to let it dominate/take over; you can basically take from it what is useful to you (and the way you work), whether its just sketching out ideas or trying out progressions/different voicing’s etc, I think there is something in there for everyone and I think Steinberg rock for introducing it! :sunglasses:

Kat :slight_smile:

Well - I tried the tutorials on the Cubase website about the chord track, and it is indeed very exiting.

However - there is one thing in the part 2 tutorial I just not seem to get to work. When playing the cord track after adding the Piano and Drum parts the media bay is opened and the “Link playback to chord track” is activated. Then a bass loop is chosen and the (media bay) loop is played back while the loop in the main screen is running (so you hear the Piano, drums and the bass loop in the media bay on top of that).

But how much I tried I cannot do the same on my system. I can play back the bass part in the media bay and I can play the looped part in the main screen (Piano and drums), but I cannot play the looped part in the man screen AND the bass part in the media bay together. As soon as I start the looped part in the main screen the media bay goes silent and stays silent until I stop the playback on the main screen.

I think it has something to do with the control room, because when I use a simple direct routing to my monitors the previewer works fine (and yes I know about the “Use phone channel as preview channel” setting - I tried checked and unchecked). Am I stupid and missing something (although I read trough the help files and found nothing referring to this problem)? Or is this just “the way things are”?

Anyway - chord tracks are still very nice…

[Edit]

Well - disabling the control room and re-routing the outputs, and after done that that re-enabling the control room again (so everything goes back to the initial setup) seems to fix the problem. Very strange. Why should disabling an re-enabling the control room would fix something like that? Oh well - as long as this works it is fine by me. Maybe I just missed something and was just as stupid as I thought I was… :wink:

[/Edit]

I really have no use for the chord track, but just to see how useful it could be to those who don’t know harmony, I experimented with using a chord track to harmonize a voice lead.

The results were ridiculous, to say the least. Cubase 7 is using some pretty strange logic to assign voicing. But it could work if you do “experimental” music… :laughing:

I like the chord track a great deal, and it’s very useful, I already use it in most of my pre-production composing!

But I really think each chord should be an event with a length, just like all other events in the project. That’s the one thing that I find annoying, just seems counter intuitive to make it work differently, and then stack all the chords below each other when they overlap (I know you might not see them otherwise but it just doesn’t work for me).

Mike.

What is that logic?

I noticed a strange thing with the chord inversion. My first chord was played as a root chord, then as the song progressed it moved upwards to 1st inversion when the same chord recurred, then it stopped changing. Actually, I liked it in that instance, that’s what I may well have played, but I wish it had stayed the same or that I could control it, it was slightly illogical.

Mike.

The behavior depends on whether you have Basic and/or automatic selected for the voicings. With auto voicings off you get the most manual control over voicings, and access to inversions and drop voicings from the pull down menu. And if you merge the chords into a midi track there are the editing tools in Key Edit.

A misconception about the chord track is that its a crutch for people who don’t understand harmony, and while it can be, it also provides shortcuts to entering and editing notes. Very convenient.

I would agree about the misconception you suggest. The chord track implementation has many more facets than a crutch, and is particularly useful for those who don’t have a keyboard to hand and/or can’t play chords on keyboards (e.g. guitarists) but who understand harmony perfectly.

Also a godsend for extracting chords from a midi part so you can play along without transcribing the chords by ear, super quick this is when composing with multiple people! Then you can move between the two worlds of midi parts and chords by drag and drop too.

The only feature I haven’t yet managed to get working well is using the chord track to retune things so they follow. This is of course mostly because it’s missing polyphonic retuning of audio, and I don’t just work with midi.

Now, if Steinberg implemented the new Melodyne ARA system then we could use DNA to polyphically retune even the audio. That’d be the ultimate tool for me in preproduction and arrangement work.

Mike.

I use cubase since 2003, an “not official” :confused: copy I confess (Never got I cent using such copy). Then I Bought the versions between C5 to C6.5 and now 7. Definitely this feature is one of greatest key features in this release specially for some users (like me) with have some musical background but not keyboardist. It’s much easier to write ideas :wink:

cheers

Pedro

I don’t need an “assistant” to do voicing, and neither does any other musician who knows what he/she is doing. If in order to achieve good results you’d need to use manual control, then what’s the big deal about the chord track? I always use “manual control” to harmonize (i.e. my own brain.) Which means I don’t need the chord track.

Like I said, the test was to see how “smart” the system is (and it was therefore set to full-auto) and how it would help people who don’t know how to harmonize. I can safely say that it failed that test.

A misconception about the chord track is that its a crutch for people who don’t understand harmony

It’s not really a user misconception. More like what Steinberg wants people without a solid harmony background to believe. And I bet that group includes the vast majority of their customers.

At least we agree that it isn’t quite so…

Totally agree. I generally use it to quickly sketch out a progression and easily A/B try out different substitutions etc. Then I pull the chords into a midi part, work with the voicings there, and chop it up so it is not just a single hit. The chord track along with the chord tools in the Key Editor really saves on mouse clicks over manually entering single notes - something my arthritic index finger appreciates. :stuck_out_tongue:

Also it is useful simply for documentation purposes. I used to always (well not really always, and I usually regretted my lapses) write the progression in the notepad. But now it just lives there on the chord track.

I think we’ve established you don’t like it, so don’t use it [period] but ‘other musicians’ can think for themselves (thank you) about how they can benefit from its presence - it has absolutely nothing to do with 'knowing what they are doing’ but more so a willingness to find ways in which to embrace it as a creative tool in their work flow (even if its just fleshing out ideas and trying different voicing’s).

The chord track is clearly designed to appeal to musicians on all levels, hence features like full auto/manual control etc. As I said before, there is something in there for everyone - you can take from it what is useful to you according to the way you work; or just ignore it (in your case).

I just think its sad to belittle other users (i.e. 'musicians knowing what they are doing’ ) who are really just more open minded than you clearly; but each to their own etc, forums are for opinion and contrast is good!

Kat :slight_smile:

‘Hitting on all cylinders’ Kat.
A major +1
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Thanks for your support curteye :slight_smile: I really don’t like being negative as I’m a hippy at heart, but after reading papi61’s comments I couldn’t restrain myself! :blush:

Hmmm… I never forgot what my music teacher once said to me (I was about 6 or 7 I guess - man - that’s about 50 years ago)…

“Learning a lot of theory is a sad compensation for the lack of creativety…”

I always remember that saying when somone wants to show an difference between “us” and the “unwashed uneducated amateurs”…

Sorry - I could not resist… I am just a bit joking of corse… :wink:

Glad you did, because you nailed it. The negativity was introduced by papi61 anyway with the patronizing implication that anyone who finds the chord track useful is somehow not a real musician.