Is this stuff difficult to learn?
How does it work? And what do I need
to run it?
Setting up tonespace with DAW hosts
Where can I get more information,
product updates, etc?
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Important : you have to install the Microsoft .NET 2.0
framework runtime before tonespace can run. You can download it
either here or else get it via Windows Update. For more info see setup
instructions in the manual. |
You can best think of tonespace as a different, more intuitive music keyboard, combined with a chorder.
It
automatically generates chords to MIDI-out, while you move the mouse around in
a grid-like space. It supports over 50 different grids, 14 scales, 18 keys, 30+
chord types and 15 chord voicings. Great for slow IDM chord pads. Or try the blues
scale with your bass rythm track of choice for some sweet jamming.
Can also be used as a fun educational tool
for anybody wishing to learn about scales, keys and chords.
Here is a
demo of tonespace playing some bluesy electronica. A bass line midi track is
fed into tonespace (green highlights) and the musician plays along in the
tonespace grid (orange highlights). Tonespace is adding the chords depending on
where the musician points in the space.
The video
link below shows the principle : first single notes are played, then we switch
to triad chords. The audio link shows
triad chords in a full mix. Interesting
to know : the second part of the audio demo sends tonespace chords through an
arpeggiator, which can also generate a nice effect.
video : wmv
audio (mix) : mp3
(instruments
used in the demo are Triple Cheese, MST VS-1000 and Cubix
from the KVR
Developer Challenge ’06).
No! Deep knowledge of music theory is not needed to start playing and have fun with tonespace. But we cannot exclude that you’ll learn something about scales and chords while doing it (like the author did J).
Read about it in the manual.
People
interested in theory will certainly also find something of interest here. If
you are curious, tonespace was inspired by some ideas in music research about
distributing pitch class intervals across 2-D spaces (
You can find a manual here (web) and here (pdf)
Technically tonespace is a midi VSTi plug-in (Windows-only currently). When you play, it generates midi output. This output you can then feed into another instrument capable of turning midi into sound, like a synth plug-in. Or you could record the chord progressions you played to a midi track.
Note that you need a host application that is capable of routing VSTi midi output to synths. It has been tested with Ableton Live 5, Cubase LE/3SX, Sonar 6, EnergyXT and Fruity Loops Studio 6. If you don’t own one of those, a great little host is SAVIHost. Please see the web link below for more information on using tonespace with a host.
Tonespace can also handle incoming midi. This midi input is displayed on the tonespace grid, which is useful for analyzing harmonic content of a piece. The midi input can also be used to trigger chords for you. Or it can guide you visually to interesting locations in the space while you play live.
Tonespace is written in a mixture of C++ and C#, so the .NET 2.0 runtime is needed as well.
Currently
tonespace has been tested with
Please see the appendix in the manual for details on how to set up each host
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www.mucoder.net/tonespace/download
For more information, please visit www.mucoder.net/tonespace
Contact leo.olivers@mucoder.net
(nickname mucoder at kvraudio.com)
tonespace
idea based on Harmony Space (c) 1987 - 2006 Simon Holland
harmonyspace.co.uk
mcs.open.ac.uk/sh2
s.holland
at nospamthanks open dot ac dot
Resources:
New cognitive
theories of harmony applied to direct manipulation tools for novices, Simon
Holland, 1987
Artificial Intelligence in music education : a critical review, Simon Holland, 1999
© 2006 Leo Olivers, all rights reserved