Instachord anyone?

[Starship Krupa]

Okay, now that we've solved the puzzle of how to get this thing to work, I found the video I've been referring to, where the guy raves about it (and he actually uses the term "God Mode").

And I sat through the whole presentation again, remembering how he seems like a really intelligent person, knowledgeable musician/songwriter/producer/video creator, up on theory and production technique, and it seemed impossible that someone like he could get so sprung over something if if weren't truly useful.

I believe I now understand what he means and why he's so excited: he's got this channel where he's trying to teach people how to compose while needing as little music theory as possible, and he's figured out a method for doing it using Instachord. If you can get past the giddy raving that makes up the first half of the video, it may become apparent.

The "secret" that he's unlocked is overdubbing different parts using the same chords chosen with the left finger, but with different Actions (those "strum patterns" declared in the right hand columns when you select a preset) in each overdub. He noticed after messing with it that there are bassline Actions and that you can also kick the Actions into higher melodies.

One of the problems with getting it right away from his video is that he's really swift with operating his computer in general and the plug-in specifically, and he doesn't pause to let things sink in.

So: first pass, maybe using the piano roll or step mode with the lower octave keys on your controller, you enter the chord progression you want to use.

Then you go into sound on sound (or maybe comp) record mode and overdub parts by pressing single keys up in the higher octave areas of your controller. Instachord just has canned "parts" that  fit the chord, scale or mode you selected in the first pass.

Voila, you have something that sounds like a song. And that's not, IMO, a bad way to learn how to compose, because it starts with the person getting a feel for what I,IV,V or whatever, changes sound like. If they start paying attention to what the Actions are doing, and hip hop and R&B like this guy is working in don't stick to just maj and min, they use 7th chords as well, they'll need to know about that as well.

Traditionally-trained musicians and especially teachers will hate the idea of course, but "top down" is  how millions of people like for instance The Beatles (and me) learned how to write songs when we first started out. Pick up a guitar, strum the 4 chords you know, notice that two of them sound kind of cool played back to back and go from there.

I still don't know if Instachord will be of great use to me personally, but I can at least see why this guy is so over the moon about it. You can FF to about halfway through if you want to get past his frothing and down to where he starts working with it.😄