Best Chord Plugins, Software or Apps for Composers

Hello Composers, Mike here! :smiley:

I love tools that make me work faster when composing music. It’s not cheating if it serves your creative ideas. No more than digital notation software would be considered cheating compared to writing with a goose pen on music sheets! :stuck_out_tongue:

Here are my personal favorite Chord Software and Apps:

Chord App - Suggester
Available both as smartphone app and desktop software. I have both, but it’s the desktop version I mainly use. Why? Not only do you get chord suggestions in the key you chose, from the simple diatonic chords to some extremely unusual chords. You can also easily switch to relative keys, borrowing chords etc. And best part of all: You can drag and drop the chords, straight into your DAW. At least it worked for me on Logic Pro! =)

Chord Plugin - Captain Chords
This plugin makes it super easy to create chord progressions, adjust the length per chord, alter the chords, and even add rhythms to the performance. A super cool feature is that after you created the chord progression, you can record the rhythm of how it is played. And once you are done you can drag and drop the entire chord progression including the rhythm of it straight into your sequencer. Again, at least this works in Logic Pro for me, I can’t tell for other DAWs.

What are you favorite Chord Plugins, Software or Apps that you use for creativity, inspiration or improving your workflow as a composer? =)

Sincerely,
Mikael “Mike” Baggström
Founder of professionalcomposers.com

Hello Composers! It’s Venn

Chord plugins are great weapons! I too couldn’t say it’s cheating, they are just tools as any DAW is. For the insane purists that say it’s cheating, I’d reply - then go write your music in paper and get orchestra to play it, hehe.

I too am using Suggester and was so happy that they also offer a mobile app for that. Also ChordPadX by the same developer. Speaking of mobile apps, I am sometimes using and app called Chordion connected to my DAW via Network MIDI. It’s really intuitive and outputs with negligible latency.

Inside my DAW (Logic) I am using Scaler by Plugin Boutique. Have also tried Cthulu and Captain Chords, but Scaler fits me better. It has some really nice suggestions based on genres and I am finding the interface most intuitive.

Another option is to create custom presets for Logic’s Chord Trigger. I’ve experimented with it and could say that after a short set-up it performs well!

Along with chord triggering plug-ins, I suggest you use MIDI FX freeze by AudioCR if your chord triggering plugins come as MIDI FX in Logic Pro X. It basically records the MIDI post MIDI FX and lets you drag and drop it directly in the project. Was super amazed when I found out some years ago, cause the old IAC bus MIDI printing was so slow. You could also use it for all MIDI FX, ARPs, Repeaters, Custom Scripts, etc.

Cheers,
Venn

2 Likes

Hello Venn! =)
I have wanted to try out Cthulu myself, especially for creating rhythmic parts, ostinatos, arpeggios out of my chord progressions. Can you drag and drop those performances into your DAW (I also use Logic).

Sincerely,
Mikael “Mike” Baggström
Founder of professionalcomposers.com