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So I just produced this song with some different MIDI instruments playing parts in it. I feel like I will need the key to be transposed up a few steps (because I need to sing the song in a higher key). I’m not sure if I trust Musical Functions > Transpose to transpose the chords of each instrument. I’m concerned that transposing chords up or down would cause a lack of what kind of chord voicings are needed for the music to flow realistically.

With that said, would it be better to manually go through the chords of each instrument and transpose them myself (being conscious of chord inversions), or would using Studio One’s Transpose feature be accurate for this process? I’ll admit, it would be nice to quickly program the key change, but if making changes manually would be more effective, I’ll gladly do that too. I’d appreciate some thoughts on this...

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by mycbeats on Tue Jun 22, 2021 5:32 am
From the inspector, there is a transpose for each instrument track.
The voicing has to do with the relation between the notes and won't change, majourity of the changes to the "vibe" will be because you're so accustomed to hearing it in the original key.

What you may notice is that your drums can sound weird, I personally find that, although I don't tune my drum samples, when picking my drums I naturally find ones that suit, and transposing everything else may ruin this.

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by Lokeyfly on Tue Jun 22, 2021 1:28 pm
astokesmusic wrote........would it be better to manually go through the chords of each instrument and transpose them myself (being conscious of chord inversions), or would using Studio One’s Transpose feature be accurate for this process? I’ll admit, it would be nice to quickly program the key change, but if making changes manually would be more effective, I’ll gladly do that too. I’d appreciate some thoughts on this...



Hey astokesmusic, Yeah, that's always a question to grapple with. The answer usually exists with experimenting towards what tracks you're working with. Transposing chords will always have more complexity to them, along with likely deeper harmonic content. The technology is still evolving and some programs get a little closer than others. It's about 50/50 between manual, and auto converting.

The short if it is, MIDI will be easier, than audio for the obvious reasons over waveform complexity when transposing. The chord track feature in Studio One is fairly straight forward, almost to a fault. At times chord ID may get lost with some chords deeper than triads, or notes continuing through from other chords. That's probably understandable, but when called upon to transpose, it can be tricky to properly invert. I'm pretty Ok with Studio One's chord track as I'm finding more and more uses for it.

I find manually arranging chords works best but takes the longest. You can always drag the event up to the chord track to see if it registers properly, but I tend to use my ear over what is registering in the chord track. Copying successful conversions also speeds up the process.

For audio events, you can try editing in Melodyne Editor, or Studio version, because of the Polyphonic editing capability. Still, it's tricky because depending on the instrument or sound complexity, and range, the blobs registered in Melodyne sort of pick and choose harmonics on its own. Still, it's pretty impressive and also works a good portion of the time!

Transposing an event from the Track Inspector is very good on a single note, or for chords not transitioning, but that's it.

The benefits of getting chord changes right are really quite impressive in Studio One. Particularly when you're adding tracks, vocals, or chord phrasing then seeing the notes properly displayed in the event. It helps playing along with them! What's equally as cool is bouncing the events, the chord ID remains and is displayed in the audio event! Which is pretty astonishing.
Good luck. Let us know how it works out for you.

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