Wednesday, March 16, 2016

ChordEase 1.0.13 adds new harmonizer features

ChordEase 1.0.13 introduces several new harmonizer features, including chord constraint and harmony groups. Chord constraint lets you restrict a harmony line to a user-specified set of chord tones. Harmony groups are useful for avoiding note collisions in multipart harmony. Example patches that demonstrate multipart harmonization are included in the distribution.

This version also improves the handling of MIDI devices. For example, the missing device dialog now has a retry button, giving you the opportunity to plug in the missing device and try again. Also ChordEase now does a better job of locating MIDI devices that were moved to a different USB port. Many other minor new features and bug fixes are included, such as coloring the piano dialog's keys in order to indicate scale tones.

ChordEase makes it easier to play music with complicated chords. No matter what the chords are, you can play as if they were all in the key of C. You don't need to play sharps or flats, because ChordEase automatically adds them for you. Though ChordEase is intended for jazz, it could be useful for any type of music that modulates frequently. ChordEase alters your notes in real time in order to make them harmonically correct, while preserving their rhythm and dynamics. By delegating rapid music theory calculations to ChordEase, you gain freedom to concentrate on other aspects of improvisation and performance, such as feel and aesthetics.

ChordEase is free software (GPL version 3).

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