ChordMeloMelody Generator
Chapter 29About 2 minAll chapters

Voicing — why the same chord turns muddy

The same chord muddies depending on placement. Wide spacing low down, close spacing higher up.

The chords are right and the programming still sounds muddy. The cause is usually which note you put at which height. This chapter is craft, not theory.

So far a chord has been "which notes". In real programming, the same set of notes changes character depending on where you place them.

My chords sound muddy when I program them. Why?

Most likely you are packing notes into the low register. Low notes beat against each other even at moderate spacing. Keep the bottom wide and save close spacing for the middle and above.

Wide at the bottom, close at the top.

Do not stack thirds low down

Here is the same C chord: packed low, then with a single low note, then packed in the middle. Packed in the middle is fine.

  • CThree notes packed low (muddy)
  • COne low note, the rest up higher (clean)
  • CPacked in the middle (not muddy)
All three are a C chord. Only the height and the spacing change.Buttons and keys in the diagrams play sound. Check your volume first.

Only the first one beats. Low down, close spacing makes the beating audible. The threshold has a name — the low interval limit — and the lower you go, the wider the spacing has to be.

In plain wordsVoicing

How a chord's notes are arranged across registers. Same notes, different clarity and different amount of mud.

Spreading it out leaves room for the melody

Packed together is close voicing; spread apart is open voicing. Spreading the accompaniment opens a gap in the middle so the melody does not get buried.

  • Cmaj7Close (bunched in the middle)
  • Cmaj7Open (spread up and down)
The same Cmaj7, packed together and then spread over more than an octave.Buttons and keys in the diagrams play sound. Check your volume first.

The open one sounds lighter for the same chord. Pianos and synth pads sit better spread out; organs and brass push harder packed together.

A procedure for programming chords

  1. Place one bass note at the bottom. Do not double it.
  2. Put the remaining chord tones roughly between C3 and C5.
  3. If two notes form a third low down, move one of them up an octave.
  4. Any note sitting at the melody's height gets moved down or dropped.
  5. With four notes or more, drop the fifth first. The third and the seventh carry the character, so keep those.

Generate over sevenths, save the MIDI, then rearrange it in your DAW. It is the clearest material for hearing what voicing does.

Generate over Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Em7, Am7
The one thing to remember

Wide at the bottom, close at the top. Thirds stacked low are what muddies a chord.

Quick review

Everything here is answerable from this chapter. Pick an option and the answer appears straight away.

  1. Question 1

    When programming chords in the low register?

  2. Question 2

    Dropping one note from a four-note chord, which goes first?