Cubase 7

I, on the other hand, love Cubase ... especially for its cutting edge midi features.

and, ... Wow! I'm an up to date customer and I haven't seen the announcement.

The chord track is probably not good news for Cognitone ... at least at the HNLE/2 level.

Prado

Boy Cubase 7 looks sweet..  I love the chord track feature,  yes it does cut into Cognitone in a small way.  But it could also be very beneficial to SFP.  

It can take what Cubase starts and build onto it in a way Cubase won't be able to (long containers Andre - it's the way of the way the future).  

I've been with Logic so long, now; I'd hate to jump ships. But Yamaha also owns Cubase, so this would be good in another way since I already use a Motiv xs rack and Tyros 4.

I wonder if Apple is going to put much more effort into Logic, I suppose they'll be forced too, I'm gonna play 'the wait and see game' for a while. 

Chord tracks are not new. Take the words literally and you know what you get: Your tracks get squeezed into a grid of chords. I doubt this works for anything but very simple music.

The way Steinberg integrated the chord track with their DAW is well done, although it suggests to be more capable than it actually is. There does not seem to be any AI, pattern recognition, voice separation, or other musical intelligence involved. The issue is, chords alone are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more sophisticated magic required behind the scenes to faithfully render your music. 

Synfire is not limited to bending recorded music to fit a series of chords. The prototyping workflow is way more creative. Lightyears ahead. 

Steinbergs move is a good thing. After the first excitement will have settled, they will notice the difference.

Chord tracks are not new. Take the words literally and you know what you get: Your tracks get squeezed into a grid of chords. I doubt this works for anything but very simple music.

In the music creation/ composition world, as opposed to the music recording/ manipulatioin world, of 'my dog is bigger than your dog,' Cubase is a Cocker Spaniel and Synfire is a Great Dane ... no, make that a Rottweiler.

You are right that this only provides 'simple' progression and no harmonic info ... but in conjunction with Cubase's other midi tools such as the Arpaches, Midi Modifier ... which does provide more sophisticated key and scale manipulation, etc., and 3rd party tools like Catanya and Consequence, etc., plus the ability to harmonically manipulate sliced audio from Variaudio 2, it is a very powerful feature addition and suggests a new avenue of development from one of the premier DAWs.

Given Yamaha's history of 'keyboard arranger' technology, I'd be surprised if there isn't more movement in this type of direction. It is also reflected in the expanded 'flexiphrase,' i.e., harmonically sensitive musical riffs, offerings with some of Steinberg's updates for Halion SE.

Keep far ahead of them, Andre!

Prado

Prado

Yeah, I am also on Logic and yes it lacks of these capabilities. There are Plugs and Add ons though like EZKeys (if you want to build songs with loops, but just one track) or Liquid Notes. I prefer Liquid Notes, because of its multitrack capability and it supports more instruments (EZKeys uses Piano only). Chord track of Cubase is fine, but I don't like Cubase so much. Design and Usability is far away from what Logic provides.

I'm not sure though how much effort Logic would put into "experimental" stuff - maybe they are too settled already? Maybe their focus is more at their Hardware - Pads and Phones now?

But in my point of view, dynamic music is the future. Big respect to Synfire, Liquid Notes, EZKeys and Cubase as well as Melodyne and co. I like to support the small ones though - they bring the ideas others just copy (Cubase didn't bring really new stuff, did they? They just incorporate ideas of startups - and it's getting messy in there).