The final seaman sailing the ship, is Captain Play, which offers the ability to preview and record chords and melodies in a chosen key using a QWERTY or MIDI keyboard. Captain Deep and Melody were a little more hit and miss however, and we occasionally found the possibilities from the shape and rhythm settings a little restrictive, as you have to cycle through to find a pattern that you like the sound of, rather than being able to edit it. In practice, we found Captain Chords to be a powerful tool for coming up with inspiring ideas and new chord progressions, with plenty of options to tweak the grooves and patterns. As such, you might want to consider using Captain Melody in the lower octaves if you want a pattern with a bit more of a playful shape to it. They are fairly similar, although Deep produces simpler and flatter patterns for use as basslines, and Melody has a few extra options to let you control the melodic shape and chord Tension. When you want to add in some extra layers, you can turn to Captain Deep and Captain Melody, which take their lead from Captain Chords and will transpose if you make any master changes. The sounds themselves won’t set the world alight, but there’s a decent amount of variety, from synth pads, plucks and leads, to pianos, guitars, organs and strings, to help inspire an initial idea. If you do decide to stick with the built-in patches, there’s quick and simple sound editing with 100+ presets, 5 types of reverb, a delay with several timing settings, and a bi-polar filter with LP and HP. Once you have a progression that you’re happy with, you can use the built-in sounds, or route the MIDI out to your instrument of choice, be it a software sampler or hardware synth. For example you can change all lengths as a percentage of the original, or using Smart Legato that can keep long or short notes and only affect the others. There’s also a clever Space dial with a bunch of different settings to help refine the note length relationships. Other new features in version 2 include a Strum dial to add some movement, and a much needed Swing amount. It’s a shame you can’t edit the MIDI timing or note positions directly in the plug-in (although we’re assured this feature will be coming in a future update), but for now you can simply drag the finished pattern to your DAW for editing. This is a great new feature that allows you to create passing chords and quickly switch up the feel of your progression in an instant. The default option for the inversions is ‘Minimize Leap’, which is a nice way to quickly get smoother sounding chord changes.Įlsewhere you have a vast list of different rhythmic patterns that can breathe life into your progression, plus a list of timings (new to version 2) that alter the placement of the chord changes across the bars. Alternatively, you can add chords individually and select different inversions, octaves and extended harmonies, and increase or decrease the overall complexity by adding or taking away notes. To build a pattern, you can select a starting key, then choose from a long list of chord progressions, which can then be tweaked and edited as you see fit, with up to four patterns in a single plug-in instance. In fact, the Melody and Deep plug-ins won’t fully function unless they are linked to another instance of Chords. Aye ayeĪlthough the plug-ins share similar looking GUIs, the main honcho here is Captain Chords, which works as the master, feeding harmonic changes to the Melody and Deep plug-ins. Captain Chords, Captain Melody, Captain Deep and Captain Play actually started life as features inside a musical sketch pad software called Odesi, but have been developed and broken down to modular VSTs that can be used on MIDI tracks in your DAW of choice. Best known for its harmonic DJ mixing software of the same name, Mixed In Key’s latest plug-in suite offers up a way to quickly generate chord progressions, melodies and basslines to kick start the creative process. We’ve seen quite a few compositional aids crop up in recent years, and Mixed in Key is the latest company to add its product to the fray. Windows 7 or higher, 32-bit or 64-bit host.Mac OS X 10.10.5 or higher, 64-bit host. Route to 3rd-party instruments or hardware.100+ built-in sounds based on Beatport & Spotify Top 100.Play chords and melodies using the QWERTY keyboard.Chord, melody and bass creation plug-ins.Price £79 Contact | Captain Plugins 2.0 main features:
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