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1. Easy chord generation with AutoTonic

1 Our first tutorial features a bit of interesting software that can instantly transform even the rawest keyboardist into a music theory whiz kid. Called AutoTonic, it was developed over a four year period by Clemens Slama who suggests you’ll use it to “produce more and practice less.” AutoTonic is not a plugin, but a standalone application. Here, we’ve fired it up in OS X. 2 The interface is a bit garish, but it does the job. We’ll start by clicking on the MIDI I/O button to make sure our desired MIDI controller interface is connected. We’re using an old M-Audio O2 that shows up as USB O2 in the list of available inputs and outputs. You’ll note, too, that AutoTonic also shows up among the I/O options. 3 There are two sets of virtual keys. The bottom set represents the MIDI notes coming into AutoTonic, while the top keyboard represents the output notes. Currently, our upper keyboard has a Blues scale dialed in. Add or remove notes from the current scale using the small Scale grid on the right – notice that the highlighted notes in the upper keyboard will be adjusted accordingly. 4 Let’s put the Scale back where it was (the Blues 6 Tone) and open up a DAW in order to hear AutoTonic in action. Here, we’ve opened Cubase and instantiated NI’s FM8, dialing up a traditional Rhodes patch. Making sure the O2 is the only MIDI input connected, we’ll play a bunch of white keys for an even hoarier CMaj/Amin scale. 5 Let’s reassign our FM8’s MIDI input to AutoTonic’s MIDI Out. Next, we’ll make sure we can see AutoTonic’s GUI. Only the white keys are used when playing notes in AutoTonic. The black keys are used as switches. Note that some are assigned to scales. Our Blues 6 Tone is

F# assigned to 2. Play that key to trigger that particular scale. 6 Play some white keys on your MIDI keyboard. You’ll no longer hear the CMaj/AMin scale, but instead the notes will all be quite bluesy, particularly if you start your passages on C. Look to the Tonic keyboard in the middle-left. Change the Tonic from C to E. Try playing a passage in C – it’ll come out in E! Try switching to other scales with the other black notes.