We’re testing out MG3 for a couple projects in our research lab. We are working with disabled musicians that have limitations in their ability to hold chords, but are able to pluck and strum with one hand. We’d like to have a way to use an external MIDI keyboard to control retuning of the strings. One of the musicians uses Ableton Live, and another musician is using Logic Pro. I’m wondering if there is a way to do this within MG3 or if there is some other MIDI effect that could be recommended to help with this on the fly retuning of the strings.
For a little bit of background… One of the musicians currently uses a custom build guitar with a hex pickup that is paired with a custom plug-in created with Max4Live. That custom plugin has a “chord book” file where they store all their tunings, and a “song book” file that has the chord progressions for their repertoire, and they use an external MIDI keyboard to step through the chord progressions with a single keypress while playing. Editing these files is a cumbersome process and makes it challenging to experiment and compose. We’re looking for a better way to get this type of chord control working that can work in different DAWs. We may have create a custom plugin, but wanted to see if there is already something that might work for this particular need.
at about 2:45 in this video lofileif demos chord progressions using an external package called midi harmonizer:
in the case of your hex max for live setup, you might be able to replace the keyboard with part of a single string, for instance notes on the high e above the 12th fret will not sound, but will change to the desired chord.
for improvisation check out chordjam, it is has some randomization which may suit your users.
ripchord is free and very effective. the humanization settings work well.
Pitch Innovations has two plugins called Fluid Pitch and Fluid Chords. I unfortunately don’t completely understand what you’re looking for but I’ve used Fluid Chords before to trigger full voiced chords with a single keystroke.
Secondly, I’m a huge fan of alt-tuner. Getting it to work with Logic and Ableton is a process because it’s designed for Reaper - but it does work. But Reapers built in plugin-maker has proven invaluable for my niche compositions. The user-made library is huge too. Just an FYI in case you didn’t know. It also works awesomely with MG3 with a bit of setup.
