We’ve not given much news lately… which is not always a bad sign, considering that in our case it meant we had been busy working on interesting projects!
One of those projects is AutoTheory.
AutoTheory is a standalone app for windows and mac allowing you to make music in a creative way without thinking about music theory. Simply pick a tonality, and a scale or jazz mode, and you’re ready to improvise like a pro! Just put your hands on your midi controller: every note you play with your left hand will trigger a chord in the mode you picked, and every note you play on your right hand side will automatically be a note of this chord. Those notes are routed to AutoTheory’s midi outputs, that you can read in your favorite DAW or synth. This lets you play for hours on your perfect chord progression and melody without worrying about music maths.
Now to be fairly complete, it is not the only configuration possible. You can also tell it to play different kind of scales on your right hand side (called the “Melody Lock”), use your computer keyboard instead of a midi controller, fine-tune the chords that are played for each step of the scale, play arpeggios in place of chords, use inversions or not, use voicings, separate the root of the chord to route it to a different output, etc.
The guys at Mozaic, the inventors of AutoTheory, have put videos online to demonstrate what it can do and how to set it up. It has been available as a Reason Rack Extension since 2013, even making it to Berklee’s list of best Rack Extensions. We did the development of this new universal version, with a simplified user interface.
Computer Music Magazine reviewed AutoTheory with a global note of 8/10, which is great. Buy it here!
Oh… and as if it wasn’t enough good news, AutoTheory will also be integrated to our own product, Instinct! We will keep you posted with more information about this last part later though.
