Best chord generator plugin?

Hey guys, please no reply's with its cheating ( you could know alot of theory and still not have a good ear plus these plugins are a good way to learn chords and theory), Iv come across a few online, Chord Master, free chords, Cthulhu, who should I give my money to?

 

I own Cthulhu, Scaler and Instachord. In my opinion, Cthulhu is the best, but thats probably because of how it fits into my workflow and the presets it has. The presets that come with Cthulhu are crap, but if you purchase the ones from Snow Audio or ADSR, they are all in specific keys and are great for exploring chord progressions . Scaler would be next best. Its workflow is quite different from Cthulhu and its got a great assortment of presets, artist/genre specific progressions and chords/scales, but I just don't find it as immediately inspiring as Cthulhu. Probably because the presets are pre-defined chord progressions and not just a group of chords in a specific key like Cthulhu. The progressions/chords/scales are fairly easy to tweak in Scaler, but in my workflow, I find more improvisational creativity with Cthulhu by choosing a preset in a specific key and messing around with the MIDI triggered chords until I find something. It also has an Arp section that can be useful at time. I haven't played around with Instachord that much but it is different in that you can define chords from multiple scales and its has a strumming option which is pretty cool. Still doesn't match the inspiration I get from Cthulhu in finding my own unique chord progressions.

 

Good answer, I'll get Cthulhu and the presets from ASDR / snow audio, by genre works better for me as I have a drum n bass track I want to add neo soul chords to and a house track I want to play to, is there another function on Cthulhu where you can also add a base line / melody that where the notes are also preset designed to work with the chosen preset chord group, free chordz as this feature, sounds like a great feature to have.

 

DJ K, I went with scaler, I'm looking at presets from snow audio it says its for chtulu but will it work the in scaler?, also is there any certain preset packs that you would recommend?, on snow audio there seems to be just one massive bank selling for 7 dollars not sure which to get.

 

I believe the Snow Audio presets are only for Cthulhu and I am not aware of any preset expansion packs for Scaler. Although Scaler does come with a large amount of presets that are both genre and artist focused, the presets are full chord progressions whereas with Cthulhu the presets are just large groupings of chords in the same key.....But with Scaler you can tweak the preset progressions very easily with variations, inversions, etc. Scaler can also detect chords and scales from incoming midi, which Cthulhu doesnt do but isn't something I haven't explored much. Good choice with Scaler though...it should not disappoint !

 

That's disappointing no other preset packs, Iv gone through most of them already, might look into getting chutuluas well, by incoming midi do you mean the chords I already have in a track and which key it's in scaler will give me accompanying chord to go with that?

 

by incoming midi i mean Scaler's 'detect mode" where you can play a chord on a midi keyboard as an input into Scaler, and it will detect the chord and scale. So you can effectively record your own chord progressions and save as presets in Scaler. You can also input midi data into Scaler like from an old song you know and Scaler will detect the chords and scale. Check out the video.

 

Two more years in tow and I still agree with you. Cthulhu brings a sense of 'plug'nplay' to my creativity and gas to experimenting visceral urges. Perhaps Scaler 2 is approaching with its incredible amount of possibilities for tweaking chords and progressions, but it has strange limitations when it comes to needing simple and basic tasks, like immediate transpose octaves in a full series of chords in A and C slots, or the visualization and complete information in a virtual keyboard without the need for midi key switches as that get away of spontaneity Cthulhu offer. I like Instachord and Captain Chords too, for different but effective alternatives ways to do in their own.
Time passes and the evolution of the species must continue until we have a definitive solid breed of theory tools.

 

According to the million ads I've seen on YouTube, Captain Chords is pretty good

 

I use Cthulhu for the arpeggiator, but found the chords part to be not very intuitive for a beginner needing help with chords. I checked out scaler and captain chords and felt scaler was a bit more then I wanted and personally loved the interface for captain chords. So I got captain chords and am pretty happy with it. I think I'll get scaler down the road when I got a little more knowledge on chords. All 3 are damn good, it just comes down to a persons preferences.