Until now, BitWig has primarily focused on sound synthesis and has achieved excellent results in this area with The Grid environment.
I dream that BitWig will venture into the realm of harmony and offer The Harmony (the equivalent of The Grid but for creating chord grids, usable in MIDI clips). The Harmony would allow the generation of chord grids from various options or tools: Key, Scale, harmony type (tonal/modal), Chord sequence generator (based on chord functions…), Chord sequence library (dictionaries of chord sequences by scale/mode), modulation assistant between song sections… These chord grids could be generated by launching The Harmony via the clip editor.
Personally, I created an MS Access application that codes the harmony rules found in jazz harmony books, and suggests chord progressions according to the chosen mode, modulation strategies for the chorus… but it doesn’t go as far as creating chord charts.
When I saw the ads for Scaler 3, I thought, “Jackpot, they’ve done what I’ve been waiting for!”. But Scaler 3 mainly addresses tonal harmony and is very disappointing (I would have preferred them to properly handle harmony management rather than spreading themselves thin by layering instruments…). And harmony shouldn’t be left to external plugins. DAWs should handle it.
For me, the chord chart view is a natural evolution for modern DAWs, which strive to closely reflect the musician’s natural vision.
And if the same tool offers both sound synthesis and this chord grid view, it’s the king of oil! (especially if it also offers a clip view and an arranger view).
Writing this post, I researched DAWs that offered a chord grid view, and I saw that Cubase offered some interesting features, notably the chord pad and chord tracks. These are exactly the kinds of features I want to talk about.