vivi

Command line based chord progression looping tool for harmonisation, improvisation or ear training (originally intended for lead guitar practice).

Demo here.

Format

Chords are specified according to roman numerals.

Only the non-diminished chords of major and minor scales are currently supported:

• Major: I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi (and bVII)
• Minor: i, III, iv, v, VI, VII

i.e. no coloured (e.g. Vadd2), other non-diatonic or seven (e.g. V7) chords.

The chord progressions to play are specified in an org file.

Chord progressions are denoted with the *** sub-heading (only works with 4/4 time signature at the moment, so make sure to specify 4 chords), and any additional info (e.g. associated songs) to be displayed currently needs to be in bullet points (-):

*** IV I V V

- The Verve - Lucky Man (verse)
- Future Islands - A Song For Our Grandfathers

See /data/pop.org or /data/sample.org for concrete example files.

Installation

Uses leiningen as the package manager (requires a Java JDk (e.g. >= OpenJDK 8) to be available).

Install dependencies with:

lein deps

Then run with:

lein run <path/to/progressions>

e.g.

lein run data/pop.org

Usage

Command available in vivi are:

h: Help
r: Reveal chord progression and key

c: Shuffle chord progression
cs: Select chord progression

k: Shuffle key
ks: Select key

p: Play/Pause
pd: Toggle drums

f: Faster
s: Slower

q: Quit

What to do next is up to you, but personally I:

• Practice identifying the chord progression and possible root
• Solo improvisation (could be useful to have the major and minor CAGED diagrams open for reference)

Tests

Run with lein test

Extending

Potential areas of exploration and suggested ways to implement:

• Coloured/jazz-y chords: Documentation for extending the chord frets, and then the /utils.clj/get-chord function to connect to it
• Different time signatures: See how the drum timings and measures are hardcoded in the prog_player.clj/play-loop function and parameterise them (e.g. according to how many chords are in the progression)
• Different parsing logic of org file: See chord_parse.clj and the example in the tests

Troubleshooting

On Linux (the only OS I've tested on) - make sure there's a JACK server running:

sudo apt install qjackctl

qjackctl opens the GUI for JACK - make sure that the server is started.

Shutting Down

• Sometimes an errant Java process will be left running after closing; check with ps -Cf java and kill accordingly with kill -9 <PID>