Hi I have a Yamaha s08 synthesizer but it is not an arranger keyboard.
Harmony Assistant (HA) is a wonderful program and has a lot of accompaniment and rhythm features ( and many many more) which one can manually use to score. It would be great if I could use produce basic notes of a song from my synth and get the HA to provide auto-arrangement so that I can then work on improvements to the HA suggested accompaniments.
Any idea how this can be done or if this is even possible?
Not necessarily. In the sense that I could record my MIDI input with notes of the song for each set of measures and be able to use some function in HA to give a set of automagically generated recommended chords and accompaniment for those measures. I can then fine tune my composition.
When you import MIDI/write a score in HA, HA compute automatically the chords (Option > Display chord grid).
Some computing are bad, to improve quality :
if you have a melody on a staff, and some simple chord on another staff : melody are complex and you ought to "remove" the melody staff from the chord computing (black arrow on the left of the staff > uncheck "In chord grid".
if you have only one staff: nothing.
In the chord grid you can modify chords to correct errors.
Then in the accompaniments grid you insert sequence, the sequence is played according to the chord.
I played my tune from keyboard and I could see HA dynamically inserting the chords (largely correct for melody played). But it does not play those chords. I am guessing that I have to specify accompaniment instruments in order to realize those chords (wish this was automatic too). Or Maybe I need to spend more time with tutorials.
And one has to select a rhythm as well (wish this was automatic too as that would make it a complete auto-arranger). Here there are some issues. Once a rhythm is selected and playing, the processing of realtime notes from keyboard into the staves is sluggish and in fact the beats get spaced out between played notes and eventually one sees the notes bunched up in HA. I have a feeling this could be because I am playing back the sound from HA into my midi controller at the same time as I am playing the notes. Could be a in sufficient outbound/inbound buffer.
Another suggestion or question: Is there a way where I could use the keyboard to play fingered chords that go into the chord grid and not into a staff?
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