CHORD STUDIO VERSION 2
(Mac Classic mode only)

Chord Studio is a musical program all about chords, from simple triads to complex jazz voicings. It is

• Educational, telling you the name of a given combination of notes, or letting you hear how a chord with a given name sounds
• Practical, for printing out professional looking charts for yourself or others to play
• Creative, letting you experiment with chord sounds in a unique way that would be cumbersome to do in a normal sequencer

Chord Studio can play through a sequence of chords, or save one as a MIDI file. It will also open a MIDI file, presenting it as a new chord chart.

NB Chord Studio was a popular program in its day but is now quite elderly and not compatible with Mac OSX. It should run in Classic mode if available. If there is sufficient interest I may rewrite it for Windows, then migrate it to OSX.

OVERVIEW

There are three types of window in Chord Studio. This diagram shows their relationship to each other:

The Make Chord Window (top) lets you hear a chord when you know the name. If the little keyboard button is pressed, playing a chord will send it to the Keyboard Window (bottom left). This is the heart of Chord Studio. Here you can play a chord via MIDI or clicking on the keyboard, and see its name displayed. Clicking the 'Send chord to chart' button (far right button) will send the chord in turn to a Chord Chart (right). Chord charts also have a keyboard button. When pressed, clicking a chord in a chart sends it back to the Keyboard Window.

MAKING A CHART

If you already know your chords, you can make a chord chart very quickly. Simply play a chord on your connected keyboard, hit the spacebar, and that chord is automatically added to a new chord chart, and the Keyboard Window is blanked ready for the next chord. Proceed like this to add a chord per bar. If you want, say, two chords per bar, just hit '2' to specify the number of beats gap since the last added chord.

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