Lokasenna's Theory Helper

[Lokasenna]

Just a quick preview of where we're going on the next exciting episode of Lokasenna's Increasingly-Messy And Inefficiently-Coded Attempt To Rip Off All Of His Favorite Theory Websites In One Ugly Gray Package

The harmony tab will be a slightly beefier version of the main script from here: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=186117

[timbralzoom]

Wow!
looks fantastic!!

[vanhaze]

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

Just a quick preview of where we're going on the next exciting episode of Lokasenna's Increasingly-Messy And Inefficiently-Coded Attempt To Rip Off All Of His Favorite Theory Websites In One Ugly Gray Package

The harmony tab will be a slightly beefier version of the main script from here: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=186117

Woohaa, insane !

[Lokasenna]

And a WIP of the harmony tab:



It'll let you choose Diatonic/Chromatic and an interval to set all the sliders, and then you can fiddle with them all you want.

[vanhaze]

Wow, so great !!

[hopi]

go man go! a thing of great beauty!!!!

[Sju]

haha oh man this is so good... very useful to have this stuff integrated into Reaper. Thanks!

[timbralzoom]

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

And a WIP of the harmony tab:



It'll let you choose Diatonic/Chromatic and an interval to set all the sliders, and then you can fiddle with them all you want.

OK - what is the conditions, where do i sign?
just show me the way

[Nantho]

Hi Lokasenna,

This script looks amazing but it doesn't work on any of my computers...

Don't know what I'm doing wrong, track is armed, monitoring is activated, input set to virtual keyboard (all channels) and when I run the script from a shortcut in the MIDI toolbar, with the sample.reascale file or even another .reascale file, I've got this message : "no legal chords"...

Am I missing something ?

By the way, both of my computers are on OS X (10.11.6).

[Lokasenna]

"No legal chords" means that either it can't find any proper chords for the current scale, or it doesn't have a scale to work with for some reason.

- Does it show the name of the .reascale you opened on the left?

- Does it show a scale name at the top?

- It's possible that my "open a file" code doesn't work with Mac folder structures and is causing some weird behavior. If you turn on "Key Snap" in the MIDI editor and then "Sync w/ Editor" in Chord Helper, do you get chords then?

[Nantho]

Yes that's it !

[Lokasenna]

Sorry, I was trying to edit the post as quickly as I could. I added a couple of follow-up questions.

Alternatively, a screenshot of your Chord Helper window might be useful.

[Nantho]

Thank you very much, I'm gonna have a wonderful week-end playing with this new toy

[Nantho]

Hé hé , cross-post fight ^^

Don't worry too much about my problem, with the "key snap" on, it seems to work just fine I'll give you some feedback on monday !

Have a nice week-end

[vanhaze]

Sidenote: Now with this amazing composing/harmonisation tool in Reaper, i assume even current Cubase users could become abit jeaulous :0)

[Lokasenna]

Originally Posted by Nantho

Hé hé , cross-post fight ^^

Don't worry too much about my problem, with the "key snap" on, it seems to work just fine I'll give you some feedback on monday !

Have a nice week-end

Cheers.

You shouldn't have to have Key Snap turned on for it to work, so it would seem there *is* a bug somewhere.

[NextLevel]

I really like how this is developing. The screenshots for the upcoming version look great with the separate tabbed pages and all.

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

Being able to type in something like "1 1 4 1 5 1 5 4" and spit out those scale degrees as a progression is on my list, absolutely, but probably not any time soon. Adding progressions will probably necessitate another redesign of the interface, since I don't want the window to get too large.

It might just end up being a separate script.

Regarding your ^^^ quote, this would be so awesome, and maybe with your script having tabbed pages this could fit right in. Being able to play back scales using various degrees 3rds, 4ths, etc. reminds of the '10 hour Steve Vai Fretboard Workout' from back in the day It would be fun to apply that technique to all those exotic scales!

Cheers!

[Germps112]

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

I'm not that great when it comes to music theory. I know enough to get by, but figuring out chords and scales usually means having to get a pen, draw myself a fretboard, and work things out by hand.

Wait, isn't that why we have these expensive digital glorified abacuses?



The script is available via ReaPack, or you can install it the old-fashioned way by right-clicking this link right here and choosing Save As.

Release history:
Jan. 01, 2016 - Chords can be inserted as arpeggios, added a velocity slider as well
Dec. 28, 2016 - Added buttons to cycle through a scale's modes
Dec. 26, 2016 - Added to ReaPack.
Dec. 25, 2016 - Rearranging again, added buttons to play the current scale up or down, highlight the last-played chord for each degree.
Dec. 23, 2016 - Rearranged things, added chord arpeggios (preview-only) and button tooltips.
Dec. 23, 2016 - Initial release.

Instructions:

- Run it from a MIDI editor.

- Click the "Load" button to choose a .reascale file. If you don't have any, try sample.reascale in the Reaper\Data folder.

- Click the key or scale at the top of the window to change them and see what chords are available.

- You can also change the set of chords being used, and the octave of notes being played. I'm happy to add more chords, it was just a pain deciding which ones to include.

- If you want to preview the chords, your track has to be a) Record Armed, b) Monitoring, and c) set to receive input from the Virtual MIDI Keyboard, channel 0. This is a limitation of Reaper's scripting API at the moment; I can't find any other way to have a script play MIDI notes.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, bugs, etc, and feel free to click the Donate button down below. No hard feelings if you don't; this stuff is fun anyway.

I cliced the link how to install manually it did not gave any download

[Sju]

Just brainstorming here...

How about a tab that would let you set:

1. number of chords for the progression
2. scale for the i/I chord
3. "tolerance" in number of matching scale tones for each of the other chords in relation to the i/I chord/scale
4. scales for the other chords that are within the set tolerance
5. scale degree for those chords
6. any possible chord for that scale degree (for example, can be either major or minor in non-diatonic scales)

[Lokasenna]

Originally Posted by Germps112

I cliced the link how to install manually it did not gave any download

Make sure you right-click it, and then you should have an option that says "Save link as...", or something similar. Then save it in your \Reaper\Scripts folder as "Lokasenna_Chord Helper.lua", use the "Load" button in the Action List, and then run it like any other action.

[Lokasenna]

Originally Posted by Sju

Just brainstorming here...

How about a tab that would let you set:

1. number of chords for the progression
2. scale for the i/I chord
3. "tolerance" in number of matching scale tones for each of the other chords in relation to the i/I chord/scale
4. scales for the other chords that are within the set tolerance
5. scale degree for those chords
6. any possible chord for that scale degree (for example, can be either major or minor in non-diatonic scales)

Interesting idea, we'll have to see. My "to-do" list keeps getting bigger faster than I can work through it.

[cretaceous]

Can anyone help me get this running

I get this error:

...s\ReaTeam Scripts\MIDI Editor\Lokasenna_Chord Helper.lua:2839: 'reaper.BR_Win32_GetPrivateProfileString' is unknown

Well.. I did get that error - but now I've lost Chord Helper from the actions.
Is there a dummy's guide to using REAPack and Chord Helper?
I've followed the REAPack web page instructions and Rob's YouTube video and REAPack seems to be installed correctly.
(am on Windows)
Thanks!

EDIT

I upgraded Reaper to latest and now I get this error:

Lokasenna_Chord Helper.lua:2839: attempt to call a nil value (field 'BR_Win32_GetPrivateProfileString')
I have SWS installed

[Lokasenna]

Is your SWS up to date? I can't think of any reason you should be getting that error with SWS installed.

[cretaceous]

Yep - that was it - SWS was not up to date!
What a great thing this is.
Thanks!

[Lokasenna]

Big update.

- ReaPack will tell you "hey, Chord Helper doesn't exist anymore" because it's been replaced by Theory Helper (hence the thread title). You'll have to reinstall it, obviously.

- As seen in the preview images above, I've added scale finder and "harmonize this scale" tabs.

- There's some brief documentation in the Help tab, along with tooltips on almost everything that should answer most questions.

- As always, I fully expect you guys to find all sorts of crashes and bugs by doing things I didn't anticipate. In fact, I DARE you to find them.

Enjoy.

[Pet]

You're insane...👍

[vanhaze]

Wooohaaa, so great, THX ALOT !!

i installed it and now previewing Chords doesn't work anymore for me.

I have midi input of the previewing VSTi set to virtual midi keyboard, all channels.
I have record and monitor enabled on that VSTi track.

Also, shift-clicking chords doesn't create those chords anymore in Midi Editor.

Am i forgetting something / doing something wrong ?

I am on mac, Reaper 5.33pre3 - 64bit.

[Lokasenna]

- Nothing should have changed for being able to preview notes. Is it showing "Unable to preview notes" at the top?

- For inserting chords I changed it to right-click. It may or may not get changed again in the future.

[Mykyndryd]

Hi. Total noob here and desparately want to get this up and running.

It looks fantastic.

When I run the script, I get this error:
Lokasenna_Theory Helper.lua:1799: attempt to compare two nil values

I am running from the midi editor, have the latest SW_extensions, Reapak etc but keep getting this error.

I am running Reaper 5.32/x64 on 64 bit Windows 10.

Any ideas please. I'm not able to even get as far as the GUI.

Cheers.
Mike.

[vanhaze]

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

- Nothing should have changed for being able to preview notes. Is it showing "Unable to preview notes" at the top?

- For inserting chords I changed it to right-click. It may or may not get changed again in the future.

Thanks for the helping hand !

I made a video for you, for showing the oddities i now experience in Theory Helper:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...20oddities.mp4

[IXix]

Woah. Speechless.

[egoplasma]

Originally Posted by vanhaze

Thanks for the helping hand !

I made a video for you, for showing the oddities i now experience in Theory Helper:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...20oddities.mp4

Same here...no preview and also can´t insert a chord...previous versions are working fine....by the way thanks for this great tool!!!

[Ozman]

I can preview, but can't insert chords.

[cyrilfb]

Originally Posted by Mykyndryd

It looks fantastic.

When I run the script, I get this error:
Lokasenna_Theory Helper.lua:1799: attempt to compare two nil values

I am running from the midi editor, have the latest SW_extensions, Reapak etc but keep getting this error.

I am getting the same error and Reaper locks up. Up to date Reaper and SW extensions. Windows 10 32 bit.

Thanks for this; anxious to get it going.

[slipstick]

Originally Posted by Ozman

I can preview, but can't insert chords.

Ah not just me then. In my case the cursor moves the right distance but no actual notes are inserted. Got to be something silly.
(Reaper 5.32 x64, Win7)

Steve

[vanhaze]

Originally Posted by slipstick

Ah not just me then. In my case the cursor moves the right distance but no actual notes are inserted. Got to be something silly.
(Reaper 5.32 x64, Win7)

Steve

Exactly the same issue here ...on mac.

[Lokasenna]

Hmm... sorry for the trouble, gents. I'm not used to programming for anyone but myself.

I still can't figure out why either issue would be happening though...

For the guys getting an "attempt to compare two nil values" error, can you open up your reaper-extstate.ini file (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) and see if it contains a heading and values for "Lokasenna's Theory Helper"? If it does, try deleting them and restarting Reaper.

[cyrilfb]

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

For the guys getting an "attempt to compare two nil values" error, can you open up your reaper-extstate.ini file (or whatever the Mac equivalent is) and see if it contains a heading and values for "Lokasenna's Theory Helper"? If it does, try deleting them and restarting Reaper.

Sorry Lokasenna, deleting the lines did not help.

[Lokasenna]

Do you have saved values from Chord Helper? It's a long shot, but try deleting them.

[Lokasenna]

Update, the issues with note preview and inserting notes should be fixed. Also, I lied, inserting chords is still Shift-Click as per what the Help tab says.

I've also made a change that... might?... fix the nil value crashes, but if it does I have no idea what the problem was. Please delete any Theory Helper settings in your reaper-extstate.ini file as per the image above before running the updated version.

For any scripters in the audience, my function for loading saved settings starts off with a quick check to see if there are, indeed, any saved settings:

if not reaper.HasExtState(name, "current key") then return 0 end

For some reason it's getting past that line even though there aren't any saved settings, and then crashing when it tries to actually process them.