9.11. Add an E-Z Chords Feature (ReMIDI)

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When you buy a cheapo plastic keyboard for your kids (or for yourself)perhaps one of those $60 Yamaha or Casio jobbersone cheesy but highly enjoyable feature is the EZ Chord or 1-Touch Chord feature (or whatever it's called on your model). The basic idea is to help fumbling non-pianists get decent-sounding accompaniments. All you have to do is press one key at a time with your left handand the keyboard does the grunt work of playing elaborate full chords, either strummed or arpeggiated (broken up into individual notes).

Now your own cheapo MIDI controller (or expensive MIDI synth) can have this feature, even if it's the 49-key M-Audio keyboard that Apple sells as a GarageBand companion. All you need is ReMIDI ($15, shareware).

As you can see from Figure 9-12, ReMIDI offers three ways to trigger each chord:

  • One Finger . You press a single key on your keyboard, and ReMIDI plays an entire major chord (or minor, or diminished seventh, or whatever chord quality you choose from the pop-up menu) based on that note. It's not especially useful for GarageBand purposes, but handy if you're trying to learn to hear the difference between various chord types.

    Figure 9-12. See all those graceful , flowing broken chords? You don't have to learn to play themlet software do the work for you! ReMIDI (left) triggers these notes automatically. All you have to do is show it which chords to play.


  • Easy Chords . If you press a single note, like D, you get a major chord (D major). But if you simultaneously press any black note below it, you get a minor chord (D minor). Press any lower white note simultaneously, and you get a minor seventh chord (Dm7). And press a note along with any two lower notes, and you get a major seventh (Dmaj7). (By the way, you can reassign all of these combinations in the ReMIDI Preferences dialog box.)

  • Fingered . This option doesn't save you any keyboarding at allit simply plays whatever chord you play yourself. (You use it primarily in conjunction with the Performance Assistant options described next .)

The real fun begins when you turn on one of the Performance Assistant options:

  • Strummer "strums" the chord you've specified using one of the three options described above, as though you're playing it on a guitar, your pick rolling across the strings. Use the Speed slider to indicate how fast ReMIDI strums the notes of the chord. If it's all the way up, you won't hear any strumming at all.

    You can even vary the strumming speed in real time during your performance (and no, not by reaching for the mouse and adjusting the Speed slider every third chord). The trick is to use the MIDI Controller pop-up menu to tell ReMIDI what gadget on your keyboard will be the speed controller. If you choose Mod Wheel, for example, then turning the modulation wheel will slow down the strum. (Because the mod wheel also affects many GarageBand sounds, you may want to choose a different MIDI controller from this pop-up menu, if possible.)


    Tip: If you're trying to make ReMIDI's strumming sound like a guitar, be sure that (a) you've specified a guitar sound in GarageBand, and (b) you've selected ReMIDI Preferences and, on the General tab, specified a minimum of 6-note polyphony (that is, six notes in each chord, to match the strings of a guitar).

    You can also turn on Loop to make the running notes keep repeating for as long as you hold down the keysand/or Latch, which even removes the obligation to hold down any keys. The program keeps playing the notes of your previous chordeven when your hand is off the keyboarduntil you strike another chord.

9.11.1. ReMIDI + GarageBand

To use ReMIDI, start in GarageBand. Create a green Software Instrument track and prepare to record (set up the tempo and turn on the metronome, for example). If you plan to use the Arpeggiator option in ReMIDI, set its tempo control to match GarageBand's.

As a last step in GarageBand, click the Record button (or press the letter R key).

Switch into ReMIDI and begin playing your keyboard in time to the GarageBand metronome. When you're finished, return to GarageBand, where you'll see that all your arpeggiated or strummed notes have shown up in your new track. For all GarageBand knows , you played all that fancy stuff yourself!

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GarageBand2. The Missing Manual
GarageBand2. The Missing Manual
ISBN: 596100353
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 153

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