Tool: Chords in Soundtrap
A week or two ago, my good friend Bob Habersat, owner of Shed The Music, posted a video that demonstrated a very powerful new tool in Soundtrap called simply “Chords” and I was blown away by the simple game changing feature. In short, Soundtrap has added a Chord tool when you add a new MIDI track that allows the user to preview and enter chords directly into the track in a variety of genres and 20 different patterns. It’s almost like having Band in a Box built into Soundtrap. It is IDEAL for students who want to build their own songs but may not know how to play various chords on a piano. Take a look at the wonderful video that Bob posted right after Soundtrap launched the feature:
To access this amazing new feature in Soundtrap, all you need to do is ADD a new track and click on any of the MIDI instrument categories (see below).
Once you click on Add track you should see the main Instrument panel (below). If you don’t, just click on the circular instrument icon at the beginning of the track (also below).
Once you have the Instrument panel open, you will see a new option called Chords.
If you click on Chords, a new panel appears with “Sets” on the side (chords based on genres) as well as a series of chords. If you click on the Chord name (C, Dm, Em, etc.) you will hear a chord played in the timbre of the instrument track. Underneath the chords, you will see Playing Styles with 20 different styles. If you click on On Air for example, you will hear a chord pattern (bass note on one and the chord on two). You can experiment with all of the different genres and styles before you commit to a specific chord structure.
Once you find the chord structure you like, all you need to do to ADD each chord to your track is to click on the plus button to the right of each chord name. Every time you do, that chord will be added to one measure in your arrangement.
I absolutely LOVE this new feature in Soundtrap and urge you to show it to your students as soon as possible if you haven’t already done so. There are SO many possibilities of what you can do with this tool. For example, once you add each chord to the track the students can then open up the editor and alter the chords, including inversions, tonality, and even adding chord tones. Students can follow a given lead sheet and voice the lead sheet in whatever style they want, comparing and contrasting when they are done. You can give students all the same melody and then have them harmonize it. SO MANY WAYS!
If you’ve already been using this or if you plan on doing so soon, I would love to hear how you and your students are using it. Hats off to the dev team at Soundtrap, and many thanks to Bob Habersat for discovering and highlighting it!