Chord voicings

Yet another way to add variety to chords is to change the chord voicings. In tonespace we use the term voicing to indicate that we transpose individual chord notes by multiples of 12, so by 1 or more octaves. This leaves the character of the chord intact –it will still sound like the same chord- but will allow you to either transpose the chord (or parts of it) up or down and/or give it a more open sound.

Voicing is controlled using the voicing combobox. The default voicing is set to Root position (closed). This means that the cell you click will become the lowest or root note of the chord and the other notes will be cells that coincide exactly with the other intervals in the chord.

A number of other voicing types are available:

Inversions

Open voicings

Root note transpositions

Spreading

Inversions take the root note of the chord and put it at the top of the chord (i.e adding an octave to the root note). This is the first inversion. You can repeat this same trick with the inverted chord, leading to the second inversion (i.e. adding an octave to the second note of the original chord). And so on. Note that the fourth inversion requires at least a seventh chord (with 4 notes) to make a difference. Applying fourth inversion to a triad (or third inversion to a dyad), will not make a difference.

Open voicings take some other note than the root note of the chord and add an octave to that one. This will widen the total interval between lowest and highest chord note, making it sound more 'open'. When no open voicing is used the chord takes its normal 'closed' form.

Inversions and open voicings can be combined, by first inverting and then further opening up the inverted chord. Tonespace offers a combination of 4 inversions and 4 closed/open voicings.

Root note transpositions allow you to move the root note of the chord up or down by one or more octaves, while keeping the non-root notes in place. This is a quick technique for adding a bass line to the chord progressions. In tonespace you can transpose the root by -1 octave, -2 octaves and +2 octaves.

Spreading: tries to space the notes of the chord even more apart than with Open/Closed voicings. In tonespace you can choose from three settings, called Spread, Spread+ and Spread++.

Tip: while playing in automatic chord fit mode, you could assign the mouse wheel to the voicing parameter. That way, you can vary the voicing of the chord while you play. If you’d like to get a good visual idea of what voicing is about, set your space to Octaves [1:12] and then spin the mouse wheel : you will see how certain chord notes jump up and down vertically to another octave.

Note that when voicing is set to something other than Root position, the highlighted cells in the space will show the chord after applying voicing. This has no effect however on the chord fitting algorithms, which are applied before voicing.