It rather sounds as if you are going for an offline 'BIAB' approach?



If so, this isn't really an 'arranger', at least in the way we all use the word. And BIAB has been around a VERY long time and is incredibly mature and complex. You sure you want to go up against that?

As I said earlier... If you have the programming skills for this kind of work, why not find something (doesn't HAVE to be my suggestion!) that no-one is already doing?

Yes. It's not an arranger in the traditional sense (yet).

It'll just turn a lead sheet + .STY into a midi arrangement to begin with. That part is pretty much done. Next, I see if I can scale the arrangement's volume based on the melody(or whatever) you play live. I plan on starting the chord sequencer mid week. And I gotta find and set up some dang examples to explain this thing with in the next release. That's kind of holding me up more than I thought it would.

Keep in mind that PianoCheetah is freeware. I'm planning to sell it SOME day if enough people ever start using it. But not until then (if that ever happens).

Please be aware that the 'Chord Sequencer' is a LIVE, realtime app, not simply another BIAB type project.

The CS is used as you play, to record and take over your LH chores while you go do something else with the LH. It isn't something that you type the chords in in advance, and then it plays them when you ask for it. It is an utterly interactive arranger feature, that can be switched in and out on the fly, while you play...

Sorry, I shoulda been more clear

I'm adding the arrangement stuff to PianoCheetah now.

ReChord will be a seperate program (still included with PianoCheetah install, but not the "main pianocheetah program")

ReChord will be a live "record a buncha midi, send a buncha midi" program. Which may grow to include other "live performance-ish" stuff. We'll see how it goes.

Hi Stephen,
are you trying to put together something more similar to this
http://www.1manband.nl/busker/index.htm
rather than an actual arranger.

You want to make something for live arranger play we don't already have?

How about, once you have the 'live input to live output' thing down, how about a traditional arpeggiator..?

Thing is, all arrangers use look-up tables to sort of figure out the chord you want, from the notes you play... but arpeggiators don't bother with that step (or at least, old school traditional arpeggiators). They simply arpeggiate the notes you play, in a variety of forms (up, down, up/down, down/up, random, etc.).

This makes for quite a different effect than the traditional lookup table method in arrangers. Currently, I think, only the Audya arranger can do traditional arps as well as arranger play.

Maybe if you took a look at some of the workstation arpeggiators, and maybe tried to incorporate their ideas into an arranger, again, this is something as LOT of arranger players would be extremely interested in.

Essentially, again, you would be looking at the NTA channel for the played note input, then some sort of arpeggiated output to a designated MIDI output channel, along with a PC/00/32 code for patch selection and the usual effects send codes.

You want to get fancy, most REALLY modern workstations will run multiple independent arpeggiators at the same time, to different sounds, with different patterns (some of them do strumming type voicings, or melodic figures, or even percussion patterns), so there's room to grow once you get the basics down.

But here again is something no arranger player has, quite a lot could use, and no-one (to my knowledge) already makes specifically for arrangers...

For now, yes. It'll get performance-ish stuff added on later.

Heya Diki,

I was thinking along those lines already kind of

PianoCheetah has a (very) rudimentary arpeggiator in it now. But so far PianoCheetah's main deal is practicing songs. So it's constructing a background track of the arpeggio.

So fancy arps (multiple sounds, fx, pan, etc) are definitely on the "to do" list.

Hey at the time Commodore were a creative force in home computing. I programmed a graphical DX7 patch editor for the C64 and also a number of commercial games for it published by a company called Melbourne House. I even wrote a baseball game for the Amiga ( TV Sports Baseball by Cinemaware ). So many years ago lol

I absolutely agree - The C64 and Amiga were the absolute best machines of their respective times. Don't get me all nostalgic. I'll start crying and NObody wants to read that