cymfonic · harmonyengine
daw-native chord progressions. you stay the composer.
one master track holds your harmony. every drone listens. change a chord — every instrument updates in the same audio buffer. change the key — the entire arrangement transposes. roman numerals on a single midi track, every voicing responding live. no auto-progression generators. no chord wizards. just the harmonic plumbing that lets you write faster without writing less.
vst3 · au · windows · mac · coming soon
one midi track in your daw. roman numerals on a single track. that's your harmonic score.
drone plugins on any midi track read the master's current chord and key. add one drone per instrument, or ten.
one chord edit re-voices every drone in the session, in the same audio buffer. sample-accurate.
flip the master's key selector. every drone follows, every region updates, no midi rewritten.
sits on any midi track. reads piano roll midi, writes piano roll midi. not a synth.
kontakt, omnisphere, sample packs, hardware synths over usb. anything that takes midi works.
your original midi stays untouched. harmonyengine interprets it in real time. bounce when you're ready.
verified working on both. cubase, studio one, bitwig should work without ceremony. logic pro coming with the mac build.
substitutions
right-click any chord and reach into a different layer. borrowed from a parallel mode. a secondary dominant pulling toward the next chord. a tritone sub for colour. a neapolitan for surprise. a modulation pivot to bridge keys. the whole arrangement re-voices in the same buffer — every drone, every voicing, in lockstep.
drone modes
each drone listens to the master and transforms its own midi based on the current chord and key. choose how — from passthrough to fully chord-snapped.
the drone outputs your midi unchanged. for parts that don't need to follow the harmony.
snap every note to the nearest chord tone. tightest harmonic lock.
snap to the current key's scale. follows modulations automatically.
snap to the scale that fits the current chord — dorian for minor, lydian for major, mixolydian for dom7.
per-chord modal scale based on the chord's degree. ionian on I, dorian on II, phrygian on III, and so on.
choose a specific scale family — pentatonic, blues, harmonic minor — applied across all chords.
voice leading
toggle voice leading on per region and every chord change picks the nearest voicing to the last one. c3–g4 range, anchor a3, centroid correction that keeps long progressions from drifting up or down. the same algorithm as cymfonic degrees — voice leading is canonical to the family.
the difference
most chord tools want to write your song for you. one-click progression generators. preset packs that sound like every other preset pack. wizards that decide your hooks. that's not what this is.
harmonyengine gives you structural control. you decide every chord, every voicing, every modulation. you write in roman numerals because that's how serious composers think — degree- based, key-independent, transposable in one move. you change your mind, the whole arrangement follows. you stay the composer. harmonyengine does the work below the surface that keeps your harmony coherent across thirty tracks.
ai will arrive in the cymfonic ecosystem in time — as harmony-aware tools that enhance the music you're writing, not replacements for the writing itself. the master track stays yours.
the family
cymfonic · degrees
sketch chord progressions on your phone. export .cymfonic straight into harmonyengine — full harmonic structure, every substitution, every modulation pivot intact.
learn more →cymfonic · humanizer
the voicing engine for harmonyengine. shape voicings, rhythm, and phrasing over the master's chord data. closed, open, drop 2, drop 3, plus a degree-based phrase library.
learn more →questions
it broadcasts your harmonic intent to your daw. one master midi track holds the chord progression — roman numerals on a single track. every harmonyengine plugin on every other track reads that master and transforms its midi accordingly. change a chord, every track updates in the same audio buffer. change the key, the whole arrangement transposes. you're not generating music with it — you're keeping thirty tracks of music harmonically coherent without rewriting any midi.
no. harmonyengine doesn't write the music. you write it — in roman numerals on a single track, like a harmonic score. harmonyengine handles the mechanical translation: which pitches each instrument plays given the current chord and key, which voicings to use, how to re-voice every track when you change a chord. ai-assisted tools will arrive in the cymfonic ecosystem in time, but they'll enhance what you write, not replace the writing.
vst3 in any host. tested in reaper and ableton live. cubase, studio one, and bitwig are vst3 hosts and should work without ceremony. logic pro support arrives with the au build and the mac release.
soon. windows and mac will release together — vst3 and au at the same time. sign up for updates to hear the date.
as many as your daw can run. each drone is a separate plugin instance reading from a shared memory channel — performance is per-instance and minimal. people have run twenty-plus drones in a session without issue.
a chord that replaces a more obvious choice. instead of V→I you might use a tritone sub (♭II7→I) for jazz colour. instead of a diatonic IV you might borrow IV from the parallel minor for a darker turn. harmonyengine has five substitution types — borrowed, secondary dominant, tritone, neapolitan, and modulation pivots — accessible from a right-click menu on any chord slot. all five re-voice every connected drone in real time when applied.
voice leading is what makes a chord progression sound smooth instead of lurching from one chord to the next. each voice in the chord moves to the nearest valid pitch in the next chord, not the closest root or the cheapest substitution. harmonyengine handles this automatically per region in a c3–g4 range with centroid correction to prevent drift across long progressions. same algorithm as cymfonic degrees — the family shares one voice-leading specification.
basic familiarity with roman numerals helps — knowing that I is the chord built on the first note of the key, V is the dominant, vi is the relative minor, and so on. but you don't need a conservatory background. the chord blocks display both the roman numeral and the actual chord name. tooltips explain functions. it teaches as you use it.
yes — .cymfonic files from cymfonic degrees import directly. all harmonic structure preserved: degrees, substitutions, modulation pivots, region structure. standard midi files import as midi notes, but you'd lose the harmonic metadata.
yes — details when we lock in the launch. sign up for updates and we'll let you know when trial activation opens.
early access
harmonyengine launches on windows and mac soon — vst3 and au, both formats, both platforms, same release. sign up to be first in when the beta opens.