Squinktronix Harmony discussion thread

I haven’t tried your module yet. But I’m thinking an optional trigger input would be a good addition. If not patched, then it could work as it does now - always reharmonizing on root change.

But if the trigger is patched, it could have two modes:

  • Trigger only - Reharmonize on trigger only: this could possibly help if the changes are not clean
  • Change or Trigger - Reharmonize on root change or trigger.

Either way, it could be very interesting to have the option to reharmonize without changing the root note.

Also it would be nice to have CV control of both key and scale. If not there then I suppose we can use one of the Stoermelder modules.

Interesting ideas! Trigger only seems less interesting - it sounds like patching any S&H in front of it? But re-triggering the harmony on the same root it interesting. I have so say I don’t even know what would happen if it tried that. I think all the rules in it are for chord changes… but could be tried.

I hope you will get a chance to try it out. It’s (imao) a pretty unique module. Maybe a strange module? Don’t know…

Oh, also, re CV control of stuff. It’s a good idea. In my previous life as “squinky labs” I never put a CV on something unless it would be very well behaved. Absolutely no pops, no excessive CPU usage, etc…

But that was then! I’ve promised myself not to worry about such things anymore.

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I imagine you would need to extend your first rule to disallow the same consecutive chord.

It will be interesting to compare against something like the Frozen Wasteland Probably NOTe Chord Expander. I think that one is more random, but also can give some beautiful results. I have used the inherent reharmonization possibilities for repeated root notes, and been very happy with the results.

I also imagine there is some significant overlap with the Meander module.

But still well worthwhile.

Give the CV control, and I’m sure someone will experiment with crazy CV inputs yielding “horrible” results - maybe just what the doctor ordered. But I was envisioning sparingly used changes for structured “songs”, like maybe a bridge section.


I was reading your rules and had a few thoughts.

If I am interpreting what you have written correctly, then the exact same sequence of root notes will always yield the same result.

You might consider adding a configurable probability to pick the 2nd or 3rd “best” choice, instead of always picking the best.

I have a minor concern with “No voice can cross another voice.” I think crossing voices can give some interesting and beautiful results, especially if each voice is different, with its own timbre.

Lastly, I really enjoy some dissonance every now and then. Might you consider repurposing the 4th doubled voice and allow it to sometimes pick a different note to give the chord some spice. I have no idea what rules would be needed

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I’m testing Harmony currently, in conjunction with Meander. Since Meander always outputs the chord root or bass in channel 0, I can feed that to Harmony chord Root and Harmony will accompany and “track” Meander. Of course I have to manually set Harmony to Meander’s mode and scale root.

Testing on D Dorian, everything tracks perfectly.

I’m with Dave that it would be good to be able to reharmonize on a trigger (or gate) or on chord root change. If Harmony could change inversion on trigger, variety could be added.

It would be neat if Harmony could accept a v/oct mode root “CV”. Of course Meander does not do this as it just has a root CV parameter control input.

Spot checking the 84 mode and scale root combinations, everything sounds and looks good.

That was fun! I love it.

The Arpeggiator is also great. I have it also playing with Meander and Harmony, arpeggiating either the Meander or the Harmony chords.

Since Arpeggiator has more patterns than does Meander, this is a nice addition. Meander can be playing a scaler ostinato and Arpeggiator playing chord arpeggiations.

It is going to take some more playing with the “Length” and “Beats” as well as the Clk to discover what all is possible.

But, Harmony and Arpeggiator are also great on their own without Meander, of course.

Here is a piece entitled “Synergy” featuring your Harmony and Arpeggiator and my Meander modules all playing well together.

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That piece sounds really good! I’m glad Harmony and Meander can play nicely together. Also, I guess they overlap less than I thought, which is nice. I do like Dave’s “trigger to get variation on the same chord” idea. I have a feeling it won’t work well with my current code, but that’s more of an issue with the code than with the idea.

And, yeah, all those arpeggiator modes are cool. I don’t think any of them are original with me, but I think by “borrowing inspiration” from a few places I ended up with some good stuff. I really like some of the “crazy” ones - I think most of those came from Ableton.

And, yeah, length and beats are not super intuitive. They are super powerful (I think). If you got any suggestions for how to make them more intuitive that would be useful.

Also, I don’t think “reset” will reset some of the playback variables. I need to play around with it more, but I think some tinkering there would make Arpeggiator better.

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That is a danger, but might happen less often than you think. Here’s a trivial example, progression 1-5-1-5-1-5. Will it repeat? Don’t know. But the thing is, when it sees the first “1” it picks a chord, then for the first 5 it tries to find the “best” one, But when it hits the second “1”, it now has to make good voice leading against the 5 that preceded it.

But I agree there is a danger there. If you get it to do it please give me the progression, or if it’s short enough the score on the screen.

Oh, and also some of the rules about inversions might make it pick different chords the “next” time.

Trying it now. On a separate branch. I have a feeling it’s more than disallowing identical chord to follow. I suspect it wouldn’t do that anyway, but??? Anyway, doing it on a branch where that’s all I’m going to mess with.

Hey, @DaveVenom , great idea to add an input to let you re-trigger the same chord in different voicings. Here I left it on a C chord in C Maj, retriggered it a bunch of times.

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Excellent! I think that is more interesting than either one of us thought it would be.

Is that build available? I have a particular patch in mind that I want to try it out on.

btw, for the zero ppl who care, but haven’t memorize the manual, the numbers on the bottom are my non-standard chord notation. Originally I put it in for debugging, but I would miss it if I turned it off. The top number is the root (1 in C is C), the number on the bottom in the inversion 0 = root position, 1=first inversion, 2 = second inversion.

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No I just got it working a couple of minutes ago. I’ll try to post another one soon!

well, full confession - I added a “history tracker” that remembers the last 8 chords that it generated. It really tries not to regenerate them. Before that it would settle into a rut after like 4 reps, and after that it would alternate between two over and over.

Interesting - nice feature. You might consider a context menu option to turn that off, or better yet, to set the number of chords it remembers up to a maximum of 8 (or whatever limit you impose). Allowing repetitions or repeating patterns can sometimes be desireable.

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Already considering! I did implement your suggestion that it trigger only on input, or on (input or pitch change). Well, I partially implemented it. I was too eager to see what would happen with the simple case, above.

I think you both will find this to be a lot of fun. My module allows this and I have a harmonic progression #8 called “Stay on I”. It is amazing how interesting it is to let the inversions evolve and then play around with arpeggiations of the inversions.

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neat! Is that called “Miles Davis Mode”?

That one is over my head :thinking:

One chord jams I associate with Bitches Brew period Miles.