Posted
HN2- thanks
...however, still not purchased yet because....
The progression editor makes little attempt to avoid parallel fifths. A typical 'I-IV-V' progression seems to do I-IV without parallels, but IV-V is root position and closed position parallel fifth motion which one would never do.
Have I missed a preference somewhere, it seems like HN2 sometimes does correct voice leading then sometimes commits absolute howlers!
I know I can change the bass note manually but this does not always solve the problems (dom7th chords for example). It would be great if the manual went into this in some detail and explained why and how HN2 makes the choices it does. What exactly are the rules here? For people who know about harmony HN2 seems to be not revealing what is going on, not coming clean.
I'm hopefully not sounding arrogant, it's just confusing me.
Mon, 2010-05-10 - 16:10 Permalink
Thanks for your question.
The voice leading you are probably thinking of is four-part counterpoint composed for four instruments playing in different registers.
The voice leading HN currently does is for narrow (close) voicings played on a single instrument. Due to the narrow pitch range, there is not enough room to seperate individual voices over longer periods of time, especially when the physical playing ranges of the instrument are limited.
Depending on the bass you set, and the playing ranges of the instrument, your results may vary.
We have plans to add four part counterpoint in the future. In any case, it is impossible to compose this in real-time, as HN would need to know the entire progression in advance in order to do it right.
