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There was a brief period of time when I was collaborating on progressive house tracks with someone I’ll call “Kevin.” I met him through an A&R representative for an independent label. Kevin was a musical savant – one of those people who had perfect pitch and could simply hear a song once and sit down at the piano and recall it note for note. Kevin used to come over to my studio, jam out on my Nord Lead to some drum loops I put together and then leave me with a boatload of awesome, but raw, musical MIDI data.
After several studio sessions, I dubbed him “Captain Hook” because he would be able to effortlessly come up with hyper-catchy leads almost at will. In fact, one studio session would end up providing me with so many great ideas, I was able to shape them into two or three bouncy house tracks for the label. After a few releases, Kevin got disenchanted with the process. Coming from a bar band mentality, it was hard for him to understand the production process of electronic music, which is as much about production craft, as it is about pure musical ideas, and we went our separate ways.
Even though I continued to compose music, I always missed having that lump of music ideas to sculpt into a track when my own inspiration was lacking. That is until Captain Hook was replaced by Captain Plugins.
It’s Like Having A Musical Savant In Your Home Studio
Captain Plugins was developed by the same folks behind the Mixed In Key harmonic DJing software, and it’s like having a Kevin in your home studio, aside from the attitude when he discovers you used his ‘big moment’ melody in the breakdown instead of the main theme. Captain Plugins, which comes in the VST and AU flavors for Mac and PC, is compromised of four elements, Chords, Deep (basslines), Melody and Play. It works seamlessly in your digital audio workstation (DAW) and is very simple to use.
The foundation of the Captain Plugins ecosystem, which was recently upgraded to version 2.0, is Captain Chords. Here you can create your own chord structure with dozens of progressions to choose from and then tweak those chords utilizing several additional tools. For example, using Ableton Live, I drag Captain Chords from under the Plug-ins drop down onto a MIDI track. The slick Captain Chords interface instantly launches and I’m in business. Now I select what key and scale I want to start writing in, let’s say A Minor. Next, I choose my chord progression. What I love here is that by simply clicking on each progression, you can hear a sample utilizing the sound engine built right into the plug-in. This smart and efficient process saves an immense amount of time and effort. Not only that, but the Captain Chords provides the ability to specify four different progressions, Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus and Drop, in tabs across the top of the interface, along with a “freeplay” mode. The Play mode allows you to use your own MIDI controller or the computer keyboard (great for laptops when on the move!) to experiment within the defined key. But I’m not done yet!
Mixed In Key offers several other great features to get your chord progressions really dialed in. To get the cadence of the progression, I then select the Timing feature to spread the progression from 1/2 measure to two measures and then tweak how each chord plays in relation to the next. This allows you to add some nice rhythmic flavor to your chord changes, instead of routine changes on every beat. Each timing variation has a specific name, so you can recall them for your next progression or for future reference.
Next is the Rhythm section, which Mixed In Key enhanced in version 2.0 with the unique Space feature. Space allows you to modify the length of each of the chord’s notes, permitting you to add even more pulsating spice to your progression. I really love using this feature to make my chords come to life, and to add “holes” for my percussive elements. Combining Space with the Swing and Strum attributes enables more lilting, syncopated feel, giving more bounce and vitality to your song. You’ll have a blast experimenting with this feature.
Now it’s time for a thumping baseline to complement your chords. I create another MIDI track in Ableton and drop in Captain Deep. It asks me if I want to utilize this plugin with Captain Chords to stay in the same key and I select Connect. Captain Deep provides three parameters for creating your own signature bass line, Octave, Shape and Rhythm. Octave simply selects an octave to determine how deep you want your bass line to go. Again, Mixed In Key provides 124 bass sounds from its own sound engine for you to select, or you can assign a bass patch from your favorite virtual synth. Next up is Shape where you determine if you want the bass line to follow the chords, move in an opposition direction or have a more minimal approach. I like how Opposite Direction sounds, so I go with that selection before moving on to Rhythm, which gives me many options to modify the bass line according to feel. You can click on Rhythm to launch a pop up of all selections, or use the arrow keys to audition one after another. Deep is a tremendous help to lay the foundation of your bass line before honing it in your DAW.
I create a new MIDI track for Melody and go through the same process to connect it to Captain Chords. There are many options for developing a tasty melody line. Just like Captain Chords, it allows you to create a different melody line for the Verse, Pre-Chorus, Chorus and Drop, all within the same interface. I work my way down the attributes to Tension to create a hook in the same key as my chords. For the Rhythm attribute, I choose “Every Offbeat” to get a full-on chug feel to complement the drum loop I created in my DAW. Next to Captain Chords, I love working with Captain Melody, it’s so much fun to explore and the quality of results is fantastic, considering this is artificial intelligence at work.
Conclusion
What amazes me every time I use Captain Plugins is how quickly I can lay down the foundation of a track. Within minutes, I have the basis of a great song. Better yet, I added Captain Plugins to my laptop and I use it all the time to write songs on the go, and thanks to its built-in sound engine, it doesn’t tax my processor.
Mixed In Key’s Captain Plugins 2.0 costs only $79 and is available now.
Mixed In Key
Mixed In Key Soundtrack Hack:
For YouTubers looking for a great shortcut to rapidly create original music beds for their video content, I think Captain Chords is a great hack. The interface is so simple and easy to use that even novices can achieve great results to complement their video content. Captain Chords even has its own, built-in Delay, Reverb and Filter effects. This allows you to add just enough depth to your melody and chords in order to get the four elements to sit better in the mix.
The Future:
As fun and fruitful as Captain Chords is to use, there are a couple of things I would love to see in the next version. First and foremost, I’d love to see a Captain Sample feature, which would leverage Mixed In Key’s detection algorithm to auto-tune uploaded samples into Captain Plugin’s designated key and the DAW’s BPM. This would allow the user to remix, mash and reimagine any song they desire in a fast and efficient manner. Second, I’d love to have a Captain Drums available to me which would auto-tune the drum samples into the same assigned key. The Piano Roll technology is already implemented, just add a Drum Grid Sequencer for easy programming, as well as some tasty X0X drum samples (and some Mixed In Key originals). Utilize the same drag-and-drop-into-DAW workflow with Captain Drums and Captain Samples and suddenly you have a complete song-creation plugin inside whatever DAW the user chooses. Wow!
Click To Tweet — Read what @Future_Music had to say about Mixed In Key’s Captain Chords 2.0
