You may think that the chord suggestions are BETTER than Finale's, but until they come back exactly as they began, the function doesn't work in either program as far as I am concerned.
I have BIAB 11 for windows, and the chord interpretation feature (which was introduced in version 10 I think) hasn't improved.
Chord interpretation is never going to be perfect for the simple reason that the program can never tell which of several possible interpretations is the correct one.
For instance, if there is a C major triad which lasts for a single beat with a melody over it. If the melody happens to have a A and a Bb over that chord, there are three possible interpretations:
1) C major chord with two non-harmonic passing tones
2) A minor chord with a Bb passing tone
3) C7 chord with an A appoggiatura.
Until you know what the composer wanted, you can't know which of the three is the valid interpretation. Now imagine how the possibilities grow exponentially when the basic chord starts out as a minor 9th. Then mix in all those chords where one or more notes are omitted and you end up with a morass of possibilities.
If the program chose the most elementary chord structure, a major triad or minor triad with many non-harmonic tones people with complain. And as soon as any degree of sophistication is desired on the part of the end-user, making the correct choices depends so much on underlying harmonic theory, which changes quite a lot from historical period to historical period or from genre to genre.
Personally, I would rather see Finale's development resources go into doing an accurate and easy midi file import so I can print the midi file out and come up with my own interpretation of the harmonies.
Any such analysis is always open to interpretation, and once that happens it is going to please only a very tiny percentage of end-users.
Christopher BJ Smith wrote:
At 5:57 PM +0000 11/03/02, Marcus Girvan wrote:Thanks for your 2 messages.
I had been trying to get Finale to interpret chords from the piano part of a
midi big band file. This is, or rather I hoped, easier than working them out
laboriously oneself.
I have, incidentally just got my upgrade of Band in a Box v.11 from v.8 for
Mac. This now has a chord analyser and it comes up with far better
suggestions for chords than Finale and this by looking at the full Midi
score as far as I can determine.
If PG Music can do it, why can't Coda?
Marcus
Excellent question. I forsee a marvelous collaboration between Coda and PG music in the near future...
And while we're on the subject, would anyone on this side of Bedlam ever use the results from the Auto Harmonise feature in Finale? Even the example they show in the literature proving what marvelous results it gives makes me want to pull my hair out.
My colleague at Universit� de Montr�al, Richard Ferland, has written a small, quick, and useful app for Mac called Harmonis that does a reasonable job on auto-harmonisation. It even writes simple counterlines. Another colleague of mine who frequents this list, Andrew Homzy, brought an brass quintet arrangement of Guantanamera to a shopping centre gig that he claimed was written in 30 seconds by Harmonis. It didn't sound bad, unlike Finale's results most of the time.
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