About Ben
In addition to being a computer software and hardware nerd since the early 90's, I am a lifelong musician, accomplished multi-instrumentalist, classically trained singer, composer, producer and audio engineer with over 20 years of experience (not to mention a bit of a music theory head as well). I have performed and worked with a variety of artists and bands of many different genres over the years to create amazing music.
In 2015 I created the first version of the Chord Player as a tool for myself so that I could write chord progressions on an Ableton Push as intuitively as I play the guitar. By laying out all the bass notes and triads of a particular key across the pads, I was able to play chords without having to think about how to play them properly on the grid controller. I spent a long time deciding the octaves of the bass notes and inversions of the chords, so that when I play all the pads of a particular column, the result sounds nice because it has proper voice-leading rather than playing the same block chord over and over again. Soon I realized that this idea was too revolutionary to keep to myself, so I decided to share it with the world.
Since then, the Chord Player has gone through major changes including the addition of its companion device, the Colorizer, which lights up the pads with a customized color arrangement to help you orient yourself with the Chord Player. I have recently delved into making Max for Live patches and I spent the time to recreate the Chord Player in the Max for Live environment. This not only made it much more efficient for the computer to run, but also allowed me to create new features to adjust chord tones and make it easier to use.
More recently, I released the Guitar Chord Strummer which allows you to use a MIDI control fader, modulation wheel, or pitch bend, to physically play guitar chords with any MIDI instrument. As a guitarist myself, I realized that I had been avoiding using guitar VST's in my productions because I couldn't easily get a realistic human performance with them without using a MIDI guitar. So I decided to develop a Max for Live device that would help strum guitar chords using a typical MIDI controller, as well as finger-pick with my right hand on a MIDI keyboard as I would on a guitar.
I have many more ideas for the future, so follow me online to be first to know when I come up with something new!
Read my Artist Spotlight interview with Roland Cloud
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