This plugin spotlight features Captain Chords by Mixed In Key, an impressive music theory tool designed to help inspire you to write memorable chords and hooks.
Captain Chords Overview
Mixed in Key extends their line of award-winning products with Captain Plugins. This new series of advanced music production tools help music composers and music producers write better music.
Captain Chords is the first in a series of the new Captain Plugins from Mixed in Key. This brilliant plugin enables musicians to quickly create and modify chord progressions inside their favorite DAW. Captain Chords also offers an extensive set of features that makes the composition process fun and easy without any knowledge of music theory or chord building.
Composing Chord Progressions
Writing chord progressions that harmonically work in the key of your music could not be any easier. Captain Chords gives you the option to sequence chords or jam them out in real-time. Captain Chords’ intuitive interface offers a host of features that enable you to develop the tone, rhythm, and complexity of your chord progressions.
Sequence Chord Progressions
Kick off the process by selecting the key your working in and the scale. Captain Chords then presents a selection of the most common chords that work in your selected key and scale. Simply hit the spacebar to start playback and then click the various chords to audition them in context with the other parts of your song. Captain Chords also offers a vast selection of chord patterns you can choose from to make the process even faster. Once you’ve created the foundation of your chord progression, explore the different voicings and inversions, chord extensions, rhythm options, note length combinations, and much more. Caption Chords gives you all the essentials to effortlessly dial in 100’s of chord combinations, variations, and rhythms.
Real-Time Jamming
Transform your computer’s keyboard into a chord generating keyboard controller with “Captain Play” mode. One touch of a key plays three notes in a chord. Moreover, your keyboard allows you to modify chords on-the-fly. For example, you can change octaves as well as switch between chord extensions, most common chords in a scale, suspended chords, and more.
Captain Chords is also intelligent enough to use correct voice leading as well as minimize the leap between the chords. Those that come from an MPC background or like finger drumming will appreciate this approach. Every time you hit a key or button, you’ll hear a perfect chord.
Chord Rhythms
Captain Chords comes loaded with over a 100 rhythm variations. Applying rhythms to your chords makes them more interesting. The Rhythm panel offers a diverse selection of rhythms ranging from simple to complex. There are a variety of rhythms available for every offbeat, on chord change, on every beat, and on every measure. Just click on a rhythm during playback and hear the vibe of your chord’s change.
Furthermore, you can adjust the length of notes to add additional rhythmic changes. The supplied rhythms are great starting places for writing, especially for those looking for instant inspiration.
Custom Designed Sounds
Captain Chords serves up every imaginable chord as well as over 100 custom-designed sounds to get the party started. The built-in sound engine provides a wide range of instrument presets and effects. There are Plucks, Keys, Leads, Pads, Strings, Voices, Guitars, and so much more. The well-designed sounds also help you work faster and more efficiently. Moreover, you can process the sounds further with different flavors of reverb, delay times, and filtering.
Route Your Own Instruments
Captain Chords also provides flexible routing so you can use your own arsenal of instruments to design chord progressions. Whether your working with hardware or software plugins, Captain Chords has you covered. Connect to your weapon of choice and Captain Chords will output MIDI in real-time.
Drag and Drop MIDI Notes
After dialing in the perfect chord progression, simply export the notes by dragging the supplied MIDI clip from Captain Chords and dropping it into your favorite DAW. It’s that easy! In addition, the newly created MIDI clip can be edited further within your DAW.
The Captain Plugins Ecosystem
The Captain Plugins series also includes two additional power players to help you lock in your melodies and basslines. Captain Melody and Captain Deep are free to download when purchasing Captain Chords.
Moreover, every plugin in the Captain series can communicate with each other when running inside the same DAW. When you make a change inside Captain Chords, it automatically sends the MIDI data to Captain Deep, Captain Melody, and other plugins. This seamless communication makes it impressively easy to write, chords, melodies, rhythmic hooks, and basslines simultaneously. Also, this flawless integration allows you to quickly discover rhythmic patterns that work with each other, making it faster to create music.
Furthermore, early customers who purchase Captain Chords will also be gifted licenses to four additional plugins from the Captain series once they release. This generous offer includes the forthcoming Captain Hook, Captain Play, Captain Beat, and a secret plugin to be announced soon.
Working with Captain Chords
Captain Plugins represent a significant step forward in producing music. For professionals, this suit of plugins offers advanced tools to generate song structures and intuitively write better MIDI parts faster. For beginners, Captain Plugins is also a learning tool. Music theory becomes more accessible and easier to understand and visualize.
Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just getting started in music production, Captain Plugins will help you break through creative blocks and find inspiration to write your next hit.
Pricing and Availability
The entire suite of plugins is now available for macOS for the price of $79 at Mixed in Key.