Intuitive way of arranging chords (midi)?

Cubase
#1

Hi all,

Recently I’ve been making some jazz / big band midi mockups in Cubase 7 and I stumbled upon the following:

I do most of the writing on the piano. When I go from the writing to the arranging process and, for example, arrange a series of block chords for a sax section, I manually select all the ‘lines’ on the piano and copy them to the individual sax tracks (I use single legato patches for realism).

This can be quiet a time-consuming job. Is there a better, more intuitive way of doing this? I tried the ‘separate/dissolve midi parts’ function, but it doesn’t detect the monophonic lines.

#2

Re: Midi: possible to select all top/bottom notes of a chord?

Unread postby arvfur » 20 Jun 2013 22:42
Open Score editor for the part, select all notes and choose “Explode” command from the score menu.
Untick the splitpoint selector, and tick lines to parts and bass to lowest voice and select how many new parts you want.
If you select only 2 parts, the topline is in it’s own apart.
I use this all the time for making chords into contrapunctal lines and string quartet eg.
The new midi parts appear at the bottom of the arrange window.

This is a response to a post from last week. It may well be the solution you are looking for.

I have exactly the same problem, also doing big band stuff. I have been copying the block chords on to separate lines in score and erasing unwanted notes. I am going to try this myself.

#3

I tried it - it works

#4

Aloha guys and glad you got it sorted.

This is the sort of situation that shows the limitations (and work-a-rounds) of
different MIDI controllers.

As a MIDIguitartist I use the MIDI ‘Mono mode’ protocol.
This allows me to send six different MIDI channels at once.

So when doing block chords stuff for horns
ala Joe Pass/George Shearing
or Nate Cole/Oscar Moore

String #1 is tpt MIDI channel #1
#2-alt-MIDI channel #2
#3-tnr-MIDI channel #3
#4-tnr-MIDI channel #4
#5-tbn-MIDI channel #5
#6-tbn-MIDI channel #6

So as I move up and down the fret board, the respective
instruments ‘stay’ in their own MIDI channel.

This makes it very easy to print out score parts
for the live players. (after transposing of course)

{’-’}

#5

Thank you Buckshead, it does work indeed! Going to see how this will improve my workflow, it may be an inspiring way of working