Guess Chords

GNMIDI

Guess Chords

Previous Top Next

This operation analyzes chords for a MIDI song. It is called "guess" chords because in many situations there are more than one possible chords and an automatic analysation must decide for probably best chord.

The chord text format defines how the resulting chord info should be stored inside the resulting MIDI file. Choose the MIDI commands that are to use and how the chord names should be formatted as text.

Chord output

Markers

Lyrics

Text

Harmony notes (produces chord notes instead of named chords)

Yamaha PSR meta

M-Live Wordbox sysex

Pgmusic Inc. Band-in-the-Box

Sharps or Flat keys

use sharp keys (#) e.g. F# is preferred instead of Gb

use flat keys (b) e.g. Bb is preferred instead of A#

Chord text formatting

[Cm]

(Cm)

{Cm}

"Cm"

%Cm (used by Technics KN keyboards)

Chord name formatting

Cm/CM7 short chord names

Cmin/Cmaj7 long chord names beginning with lower case letter

CMin/CMaj7 long chord names beginning with upper case letter

DO/RE7 italian chord names (DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, SI)

Frequency

Each bar (measure)

twice each bar (half measure)

each beat (quarter note)

Hint: It is important that the bar information in the MIDI file is correct else notes start at random positions within a bar and that causes inexact results!
Hint: analyzing chords for each bar usually gives better results than doing it for each beat.

Harmony channel

is only used for chord output Harmony notes, the generated chord notes will be added to this channel. Harmony notes are used for controlling a vocal harmonizer.

Channels

all channels except drum channel 10

single channel 1-16

By default all channels are considered for analyzing (melody, bass, accompaniment, ...) together. Only the notes matching the given channel will be used for analyzing chords. This might give better results if the MIDI song already contains a chord notes track (specify the channel of these chord notes).

Recognized chord types

Major chords

minor chords

sus4

9th

dim

aug

6th

7th

7Maj

Hint:

If too few notes are available within a bar then the analysation won't guess the chord and the missing chord will be marked with ? (e.g. [?]). If you want to ignore the [?] marks then add following setting to the gnmidi.ini file:

    [Settings]
    GuessChordsSkipFailChord=1

Hint: Missing notes can cause that a chord is not found, e.g. C-G-A won't be recognized as C6 chord since note E is missing.
Hint: If chords are not recognized (or wrong) because of missing notes then you could add the complete chord notes in a new track (silent) and repeat chord guessing.

The text events are synchronized to the bar positions. Some MIDI players can show them while playing (e.g. midimach, GNMIDI, GNMixer).

Wordbox
Wordbox is a MIDI text player from Italian producer M-Live, which transfers song text and chord names through MIDI cable and mainly supports musicians on stage during singing.
Instead of exporting guessed chords directly into a Wordbox compatible format, you can first merge the chord text enclosed in [...] with song text (choose lyric or text depending on the current used song text format) and later convert song text including chord names into a Wordbox compatible format. This has advantage, that the analyzed chord names can be checked and modified if necessary, which can't be done after exporting them into a Wordbox sysex format using GNMIDI.

Hint: Most chord are stored as readable text, they could be modified with operations like modify text Other formats are very special for a certain device and can not be modified with GNMIDI. Chords in format Yamaha PSR meta could be modified with GNMIDI using conversion to ASCII text and back (there the psr chords look like psrmeta chord "Am").

Band-In-The-Box™
is a famous MIDI Software by company Pgmusic Inc. which uses chords as a key feature during work with MIDI files. The generated chords usually can only be used with the software products of this company.

Following setting in gnmidi.ini can be used to force generating of empty chord lead measures:
    [Settings]
    BIABLeadMeasures=0

Hint:
GNMIDI shows chords of some known chord formats above the song text line and also displays chords using operations copy and print song lyrics.