Audiobus: Use your music apps together.

What is Audiobus?Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.

Download on the App Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Looking for a chord proposing tool

Hi guys,
is there an app which proposes chord progressions based on either scale or feeling (like happy, sad etc) which allows me to quickly create my progressions without having to pick or set chords myself?

What apps do you guys use for chords without music theory knowledge?

«1

Comments

  • Tonaly

    Fortamento

    Suggester

    There’s also a bunch that aren’t as detailed or have as much connectivity

    Chord Pallette

    Songsmith

    Chord Prog

    Songer 3

    Many more…. Search chord progressions in App Store

  • @Poppadocrock said:
    Tonaly

    Fortamento

    Suggester

    There’s also a bunch that aren’t as detailed or have as much connectivity

    Chord Pallette

    Songsmith

    Chord Prog

    Songer 3

    Many more…. Search chord progressions in App Store

    I have tonaly, but it doesn't propose chords does it? I had to select them manually

  • edited July 2021

    Chord Maps 2 is cool I guess, it has midi out

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chordmaps2/id1098330720

    iPad only sorry

  • Chordjam maybe?

  • edited July 2021

    Let me briefly disabuse you of the idea there are happy or sad chords. Most of the music we hear is interpreted by our brains predisposition (mostly) to ratio and harmonics and filtered by culture.

    In our 12 tone system - which is balanced so we can have the most regularized flexibility - (watch some 12tone videos on you tube regarding scales) a major chord and progression can sound happy, but it can also sound stiff and boring.

    I IV V progressions do nothing, unadorned, to communicate the subtleties of emotion except for release of being back to “home”

    End mini rant
    <3

  • …..mmm

    A Piano?

  • Do you like Big Data and the statistical approach to questions like yours?

    https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions

    It's not an app (more of a web site) but a good trend spotter.

    After all most popular chord progressions are just a few chords. Now Steely Dan's music
    requires a lot more musical knowledge to follow and imitate. Copy your heroes as a start.

  • edited July 2021

    @Bele said:

    @Poppadocrock said:
    Tonaly

    Fortamento

    Suggester

    There’s also a bunch that aren’t as detailed or have as much connectivity

    Chord Pallette

    Songsmith

    Chord Prog

    Songer 3

    Many more…. Search chord progressions in App Store

    I have tonaly, but it doesn't propose chords does it? I had to select them manually

    You can randomly add an out of scale chord, and have it randomly give you options, but it’s only one chord in the progression. So yea you got a point. You can select several Roman numeral progressions but not the same. There’s several free ones that are limited. I wish I could remember their names.

    Here’s some others

    https://autochords.com/ Web and app

    Chords Gen

    Soundgrail

  • Tonality - Let’s you generate chord pads that can the be played However you like.

    Chordjam.

  • A form of Scaler 2 from the desktop world I heard may be in the works so look out for that.

  • If you can compile stuff from source I wrote a cool command line tool that uses machine learning learned off a bunch of bach chorales as well as some hard coded dissonance distinctions based on my own experience:

    https://github.com/OscarSouth/theHarmonicAlgorithm

  • @audiblevideo said:
    Let me briefly disabuse you of the idea there are happy or sad chords. Most of the music we hear is interpreted by our brains predisposition (mostly) to ratio and harmonics and filtered by culture.

    In our 12 tone system - which is balanced so we can have the most regularized flexibility - (watch some 12tone videos on you tube regarding scales) a major chord and progression can sound happy, but it can also sound stiff and boring.

    I IV V progressions do nothing, unadorned, to communicate the subtleties of emotion except for release of being back to “home”

    End mini rant
    <3

    This idea is actually more controversial than you might think. There's a recent (very good) book about this called 'The Tones we Like' by Dale Purves arguing that consonance/dissonance is more evolutionary than cultural. There is a chapter specifically on why minor scales sound happy and major ones sound sad, he also thinks this idea can account for/is not disproved by non-western scales too.

    https://books.google.it/books/about/Music_as_Biology.html?id=YuQZDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

    There is also a journal paper called "Major and minor music compared to excited and subdued speech" by Daniel L. Bowling, Purves and a few others with more of the technical details.

    What Purves is saying is not uncontroversial but he is definitely a smart guy –Professor of Neurobiology at Duke, and his stuff is interesting if nothing else.

    Finally, there is another recent book called 'Musical Emotions Explained' by Patrik N Juslin which gives a broad overview of lots of different issues in music and emotion.

    (End of thread derailment)

  • @nickneek said:

    @audiblevideo said:
    Let me briefly disabuse you of the idea there are happy or sad chords. Most of the music we hear is interpreted by our brains predisposition (mostly) to ratio and harmonics and filtered by culture.

    In our 12 tone system - which is balanced so we can have the most regularized flexibility - (watch some 12tone videos on you tube regarding scales) a major chord and progression can sound happy, but it can also sound stiff and boring.

    I IV V progressions do nothing, unadorned, to communicate the subtleties of emotion except for release of being back to “home”

    End mini rant
    <3

    This idea is actually more controversial than you might think. There's a recent (very good) book about this called 'The Tones we Like' by Dale Purves arguing that consonance/dissonance is more evolutionary than cultural. There is a chapter specifically on why minor scales sound happy and major ones sound sad, he also thinks this idea can account for/is not disproved by non-western scales too.

    https://books.google.it/books/about/Music_as_Biology.html?id=YuQZDgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

    There is also a journal paper called "Major and minor music compared to excited and subdued speech" by Daniel L. Bowling, Purves and a few others with more of the technical details.

    What Purves is saying is not uncontroversial but he is definitely a smart guy –Professor of Neurobiology at Duke, and his stuff is interesting if nothing else.

    Finally, there is another recent book called 'Musical Emotions Explained' by Patrik N Juslin which gives a broad overview of lots of different issues in music and emotion.

    (End of thread derailment)

    Thanks for this. This looks like a good free course we should all take:

    https://www.coursera.org/learn/music-as-biology

  • I thought Navichord would get more love around here.
    with it you can sequence, perform chords or single notes and generate chord progressions

    The quick start guide to know the features:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PNZp3zEFKR4NUGRhh90pZV2pJk7-tvKS/view

  • GarageBand smart instrument are really good for playing around.

  • I forgot a couple

    Chord Player Web Tool - Create, or Randomize Chord Progessions

    https://www.onemotion.com/chord-player/

    And this Chart, keep in mind it’s for the Major Scale.

  • @senhorlampada said:
    I thought Navichord would get more love around here.
    with it you can sequence, perform chords or single notes and generate chord progressions

    The quick start guide to know the features:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PNZp3zEFKR4NUGRhh90pZV2pJk7-tvKS/view

    I was gonna mention it, but I haven’t used in awhile, and couldn’t remember a random feature..however your post triggered my memory, I forgot it generated random chords, or whole songs.

  • I think I left out ChordBot too… still early we’ve named a bunch and there’s still many more out there.
    Anything that creates a random single midi note works as well by feeding it through one of a number of apps… so something like Autony/Riffer/etc… midi into Mozaic Script, Chordjam, SPA(set to chord) etc… and you got random chords coming out.

  • edited July 2021

    @Poppadocrock said:

    @Bele said:

    @Poppadocrock said:
    Tonaly

    Fortamento

    Suggester

    There’s also a bunch that aren’t as detailed or have as much connectivity

    Chord Pallette

    Songsmith

    Chord Prog

    Songer 3

    Many more…. Search chord progressions in App Store

    I have tonaly, but it doesn't propose chords does it? I had to select them manually

    You can randomly add an out of scale chord, and have it randomly give you options, but it’s only one chord in the progression. So yea you got a point. You can select several Roman numeral progressions but not the same. There’s several free ones that are limited. I wish I could remember their names.

    Here’s some others

    https://autochords.com/ Web and app

    Chords Gen

    Soundgrail

    I had to double check to be sure but yea, Tonaly definitely does random songs and progressions. If you click on the hamburger menu in the upper right corner, then tap +New Song, you get many options to start, a couple say prefilled song, you choose in Major/minor, it then spawns a song with random chords. You can also pick one of the many templates available in Roman Numerals, then select scale. Also if you tap on the specific area on the circle of fifths, a section that has a blue and green dot not in scale, this allows you to change an individual chord randomly.

    Edit the prefilled option might not be random, my mistake, However the individual chord random is there.

  • I kind of understand the need for this type of apps, but I also feel that caution is required. Music is not entirely science, even today. Theories explain things that already happened, not the other way around. And even then, their success rate is abysmal.

    So, while we can explain chord progressions as a derivation of the overtones series and explain the history of western music as a progression through the overtones series, etc., it's just theories. It's just a probability based on actual western classical music sampled from certain time spans. But these are not the hard rules that you have to follow in order to write music.

    The strong caution when approaching these apps without proper investigation is that the programmers must have based their codes on certain principles, and you never know exactly what these are. It might be the "wrong" type of statistic/theory for the genre of music you are using. It might be outdated or based on very strict, freshman-sophomore harmony courses, which basically never actually exists in the real world. Therefore, you need to be careful and make sure that it's intended for your kind of music. For example, you rarely see V-IV or V-ii progression within a phrase in Mozart's time, but you see this very often in rock/pop music that evolves from blues. (Yes, there are theories trying to explain why this is so 🙂)

    Having said this, let me make clear that I'm not against these apps at all. The future is, for better or worse, AI, and we need to prepare for the inevitable. I was trained traditionally, unfortunately, and I couldn't write "pop" music at all. So, obviously, I decided to organize a concert of my own pop music. I succeeded, barely, only because I made a system to help me create a "pop" progression, melody, and lyrics. So I see the benefit of this more "scientific" approach to music. But you need to be cautious. Can't suggest an app for you, my apology, but I'm reading all these recommendations and rubbing my hands with eagerness to try. 👍

  • @OnfraySin said:
    …..mmm

    A Piano?

    This would be my suggestion too, as you can write emotions even if you don’t know any theory. The apps that have been suggested usually don’t cover things like chord substitutions, modulation, modes, or any of those things that can influence how music feels.

    Just sit down and play is my recommendation - see what you come up with.

  • edited July 2021

    I like ScaleBud when used in AUM, it has midi out (no internal sounds though)

    https://apps.apple.com/de/app/scalebud-auv3-midi-keyboard/id1409125865?l=en

  • Touchscaper does many, many things as well as have a chord suggester. It shows your current chord in the middle of the screen and suggests chords that have 3, 2 or 1 note in common. Or you can hit the ‘key’ button to select chords that aren’t as closely related.
    Create a chord progression and either play them from the main screen or use the sequencer with random probability. I could go on... it also has random velocity for human feel.

  • Just came across this app it doesn’t necessarily suggest progressions, but It looks useful & cool. It detects notes from vocals, guitar, anything, and shows you what chords, harmonies, and scales etc. are relevant.

    Chordmaster $.99

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chordmaster/id1492763336

  • @rud said:
    Touchscaper does many, many things as well as have a chord suggester. It shows your current chord in the middle of the screen and suggests chords that have 3, 2 or 1 note in common. Or you can hit the ‘key’ button to select chords that aren’t as closely related.
    Create a chord progression and either play them from the main screen or use the sequencer with random probability. I could go on... it also has random velocity for human feel.

    After reading this I watched a few YouTube videos ( the developer's videos are not only helpful, but entertaining ) and wound up buying it. Can't believe I slept on this app. I know it's not an audio unit which might be a deal breaker for some, but for what it can do it's a steal. Thanks for the heads up!

  • @McD said:
    Do you like Big Data and the statistical approach to questions like yours?

    https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/common-chord-progressions

    It's not an app (more of a web site) but a good trend spotter.

    After all most popular chord progressions are just a few chords. Now Steely Dan's music
    requires a lot more musical knowledge to follow and imitate. Copy your heroes as a start.

    The brilliance of Steely Dan is in their ability to make the really complex stuff sound effortless.

Sign In or Register to comment.