Chord Switch Is A FREE MIDI Chord Generator (NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

Noizplay has released its first plugin called Chord Switch, a free MIDI chord generator for macOS users.

According to the info on the developer’s website, a Windows version is planned, but a release date has not yet been confirmed.

Chord Switch is a MIDI plugin that generates chord sequences from simple note combinations. This means that you must have an instrument plugin in your DAW to hear the generated MIDI notes.

The routing for this to work may change according to your DAW of choice. However, usually, it is not that complicated.

The advantage of such a plugin is that it sparks some ideas for your harmonic progressions, while another benefit is generating complex chords from a simple input, in case you’re not a music theory expert.

For example, a single MIDI note ‘C’ produces a C major chord. A C minor chord is generated if an additional note ‘B’ is added a half-tone below.

Hence, if you need a specific type of chord, just input the root note and use the additional ‘half-tone’ notes below to specify the chord type.

You can select up to 8 different note combinations, with the highest note always acting as the root note for the generated chord. Additionally, you can select exactly what kind of chord you want to generate for each of the eight combinations by clicking on a drop-down menu.

There are almost 30 types of chords to choose from, so you have much room to experiment and combine different types in your progressions to spice them up.

If you want to reset to the default assignment, a handy ‘reset chord assignments’ button is present, too.

In addition, there are a couple more other buttons on the interface worth pointing out.

When the ‘harmonic voicing’ switch is activated, chord inversions will be generated to produce better chord sequences.

Typically, you don’t want huge jumps from one chord to the next, so inversions are a useful tool in songwriting to make sure that the chord progressions feel more natural and smooth.

‘Add bass note’ is another option available to double the root note played two octaves lower. This is especially useful if you want the instrument to sound more fat and full in terms of frequency range.

In summary, Chord Switch looks like a very useful plugin, and it may be worth a try. It’s available as a VST3 and AU plugin for macOS 10.5 or newer.

Download: Chord Switch (unfortunately, the plugin is no longer available)

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