Craig Anderton
Well-known member
FSP is excellent at extracting notes from guitar chords. You can then use the Chord Track to transpose the chords used in a chord progression (this works with audio too, not just extracted MIDI notes). Furthermore, when processing note pitches with the Chord Track, you can choose three different voicings.
The first image shows the original chord progression played on guitar. (And FWIW, it's not cleaned up at all - the extraction process is really good).
Then I altered the chord progression in the Chord Track. Here's the result of the chord changes with Parallel voicing. This moves the chord shapes in parallel, so there's no attempt to do voice leading. Every note shifts by the same interval, which preserves the interval structure. A typical application would be for a synthesized horn section voicing where you want the harmony to feel like a single object that’s sliding around. It also works well with EDM bass lines with multiple sawtooth waves.
Here are the same chords with the Narrow voicing. The narrowing is most noticeable with the first 5 chords. The last three chords were played higher up on the neck and voiced differently, so they were harder to make more narrow. This voicing keeps chord tones as close together as possible, to create narrower intervals between notes. This has a tight, compact sound that avoids big leaps and wide spreads when reharmonizing notes. Typical applications would be for piano, pads, and strings.
Finally, this is the bass voicing. It simply locks the lowest note to the chord’s root note (or if specified, the Chord Track’s bass note). Upper notes follow the chord change, but move around more freely. Use this when you want to keep the bass line strong, and have the upper notes adapt to it. For example, bass voicing is analogous to a bass player holding down the root, while other instruments play flexible voicings above it.
These same techniques work with audio, but I used MIDI screen shots because they clearly show the differences among the various voicings.
The first image shows the original chord progression played on guitar. (And FWIW, it's not cleaned up at all - the extraction process is really good).
Then I altered the chord progression in the Chord Track. Here's the result of the chord changes with Parallel voicing. This moves the chord shapes in parallel, so there's no attempt to do voice leading. Every note shifts by the same interval, which preserves the interval structure. A typical application would be for a synthesized horn section voicing where you want the harmony to feel like a single object that’s sliding around. It also works well with EDM bass lines with multiple sawtooth waves.
Here are the same chords with the Narrow voicing. The narrowing is most noticeable with the first 5 chords. The last three chords were played higher up on the neck and voiced differently, so they were harder to make more narrow. This voicing keeps chord tones as close together as possible, to create narrower intervals between notes. This has a tight, compact sound that avoids big leaps and wide spreads when reharmonizing notes. Typical applications would be for piano, pads, and strings.
Finally, this is the bass voicing. It simply locks the lowest note to the chord’s root note (or if specified, the Chord Track’s bass note). Upper notes follow the chord change, but move around more freely. Use this when you want to keep the bass line strong, and have the upper notes adapt to it. For example, bass voicing is analogous to a bass player holding down the root, while other instruments play flexible voicings above it.
These same techniques work with audio, but I used MIDI screen shots because they clearly show the differences among the various voicings.
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