Feature Request: Modernizing Chord Track Recognition (Support for Power Chords, Omissions, and Modern Clusters)
Product: Nuendo / Cubase
Component: Chord Track & Chord Editor
Dear Steinberg Community and Development Team,
The Chord Track is an incredible tool for arrangement, but its underlying recognition engine desperately needs a modern update. Currently, the algorithm relies strictly on traditional, rigid Western music theory paradigms that require a minimum of three distinct scale degrees (triads). While this functions perfectly for classical harmony, it introduces severe friction into modern songwriting, pop, rock, and electronic music production workflows.
The Core Issues
1. Lack of Standalone Power Chord Support (5th / Dyads)
Because a root and a perfect fifth consist of only two notes, the engine classifies it strictly as an interval rather than a chord. The system refuses to natively label or recognize standard **“5”** or **“power chord”** designations on the timeline.
2. Failure to Parse Omissions & Modern Clusters
The engine struggles heavily with omitted foundational tones, frequently defaulting to an **“X”** or an empty box. For example, when playing a modern open voicing like a **Maj9 (no 3rd)** or a tight cluster such as **C#, D#, G#, C**, the upstream analyzer completely panics because it cannot find a traditional triad blueprint.
3. The “Custom Chord Symbols” Misconception
The *Custom Chord Symbols* pane in Preferences looks like a place to fix this, but it acts purely as a cosmetic text formatter for existing, recognized library formulas. Because the core engine rejects intervals and omitted shapes *upstream*, the data never reaches this preference matrix to apply custom labels.
Why This Matters for Workflow
When the engine fails to recognize a chord:
* Features like **Live Transform** and **Chords to MIDI** break down or behave unpredictably.
* To simply have a readable chord map on the timeline, users are forced to create messy workarounds like adding a secondary **Lyric Track** or **Marker Track** just to manually type visual labels like C5 or C#maj9(no3).
* Third-party utility tools and MIDI plugins handle omission logic and custom clusters effortlessly offline—a flagship DAW like Nuendo/Cubase should be able to do the same natively.
Proposed Feature Requests
1. **Implement an “Allow Omissions” Toggle:** Update the core analysis engine to recognize and label chords with missing thirds or fifths gracefully.
2. **Introduce a “User-Defined Text” Override:** If a user plays a highly complex or unconventional note cluster that the engine cannot calculate, allow us to double-click the chord box and explicitly type a custom text string (e.g., C5 or A7(no5)) that the system will accept and display without forcing an “X” error.
3. **Add Subtraction Operators to Custom Symbols:** Expand the interval checklist in the preferences pane to include subtraction flags (e.g., “omit 5th”, “no 3rd”) so users can build and skin modern shorthand chord types into the database.
I would love to hear if other composers and producers are running into this same brick wall when tracking modern arrangements. Hopefully, we can get this on the developers’ radar for an upcoming maintenance update!
Best regards,