Hi guys, I’m about to get the Model: Cycles in order to expand my sonic pallet. My setup is minimal, I have the Model: Samples and the MC 101 and as my main DAW I use Ableton Live.
The problem is that the Model Cycles chord mode confuses me a lot, and by watching dozens of youtube videos my confusion now is even worst.
I know that the Chords in the Model Cycles are paraphonic and I’m ok with that, actually I prefer this paraphonic aspect of the chords. But my question if I will be able to create chord progressions.
So, for instance, in the first step to have an Am chord, the 17 step in the next bar to have the G chord and so on…
I don’t mind either to program chords per step in some way, or to play and record somehow the progressions. My concern is if I will be able to do it with whatever way, I don’ t care how I will do it.
The videos so far available aren’t clear at all about the Chord mode on the Model Cycles, and I’m confused, and sorry for my ignorance anyway. I want to produce some ambient stuff mixed with electronica/downtempo and with some melodic parts. I think the Cycles is great for that purpose.
yes, you will be able to create chord progressions, it’s actually super easy.
The chord instrument in the M:C has a parameter for changing the chord type; you set your steps in the sequencer and, pressing the relative step, change the root note first with the blue encoder, and then move the encoder for the chord parameter; it will switch from minor to major to all sort of flavours (4 notes chords only, but there’s another parameter that sets the voicing of your chord, pretty useful).
And – I can’t stress this enough – it’s easier done than said.
Think of Chord mode as just a bunch of notes stacked on top of each other. When a trig is fired, all 3-4 notes play at once, and have the same duration. The Color knob sets the spacing between each note, and thus what chord is playing (Maj, Min, Maj7add9, etc).
Without doing trig locks, all trigs play whichever chord Color is set to. Thus, all trigs would be the same, regardless of what the root note is. Example (if Color is set to maj): Dmaj -> Gmaj -> Cmaj
HOWEVER, you can p-lock the Color param, so each trig can have a different value. If you do this, you can turn the above progression into Dmi->G7->Cmaj7
I forgot to ask about the duration of the chords in the case when someone programs the chords manually. So, in the step 1 you set the chord AM7, for instance, but you want to cover with this chord the entire bar to play continuously, all the 16 steps, can you do that?
