How to use Voicings · The manual

At a glance MT-01

Voicings turns one key into a chord. Eight pads pick a voicing; every key you then play sounds that voicing, rooted where you played. Scale snapping keeps the result diatonic, so the shapes stay in the song.

It listens on two MIDI channels at once and plays out on channel 1. The pads live on their own channel and never reach the output: they are the selector, not the sound.

Channel flow Signal, not screenshot

pads   ch 10 / notes 36-43   pick (or hold) the voicing     consumed, never output
keys   ch 1                  play it, rooted on the key   → out  ch 1
CC · bend · other channels   pass straight through          → out  untouched

Set up From insert to first sound

01 Insert Voicings on a MIDI or instrument track, before a synth, with your controller as the track’s input. In Logic it goes in the MIDI FX slot above the instrument; in REAPER, Cubase, Studio One or Bitwig, place the VST3 ahead of the synth in the same chain.
02 Leave the defaults to start: pads on channel 10 at notes 36 to 43, keys on channel 1. A fresh instance loads the Default profile, which matches an Arturia MiniLab 3 out of the box.
03 Hit a pad. The matching square in the 2 by 4 grid lights up and the readout names the chord. You can click a pad on screen instead if you have no controller.
04 Play a key. You hear the full voicing, rooted on the key you played, in the current key and scale.
05 If your pads sit elsewhere, open the CONTROLLER menu and choose Learn from controller. Tap your eight pads in order, then play one key, and Voicings maps the channels and notes for you and saves the result as a profile. While Learn is armed the incoming MIDI is captured, not played, so mapping never makes a sound.

The controls Every parameter

Pads and tabs

SETS / BUILD / PADS three tabs: Sets browses finished voicings; Build constructs a chord from two small choices; Pads lays the key’s own seven chords under your fingers. The 2 by 4 pad grid mirrors your hardware, lowest pad on the bottom row, and lights the active pads.
CHORD SET 12 sets: In the Sets tab, step through 12 sets with the arrows or open the categorised menu: Essentials (Classics, Basics, Extended, Sus & Add), Genre (Jazz, Neo-Soul, Gospel, Lo-Fi, House & Pop) and Texture (Dreamy, Open & Wide, Quartal & Modern). Each set holds eight voicings, one per pad, 96 in all.
COLOR Tense · Moody · Bright · Open: In the Build tab, the top pad row sets the chord’s core: Tense is diminished, Moody minor, Bright major, Open sus. Tap the lit pad again to clear it.
FLAVOR Retro · Smooth · Dreamy · Shimmer: The bottom row adds one extension or none: Retro is a 6, Smooth an m7, Dreamy a maj7, Shimmer a 9 (its 7th comes along, so a single tap sounds full). Moody plus Shimmer reads as Min9, and on Tense the Retro 6 acts as the double-flat 7, so the readout shows a true Dim7. Clicking any pad auditions the chord on middle C.
PADS diatonic tab: The third tab lays the seven diatonic chords of the current KEY and SCALE across the pads, tonic repeated on pad 8, with a suggestion glow on the grid. Where the chord-set browser sits in Sets there is a COLOUR chip instead, arrows plus a menu. Like WHITE it needs a real scale, so it is greyed out under Chromatic.

Key and scale

KEY C … B: The root the scale is built on.
SCALE Chromatic + 9 modes: Snaps every output note to the nearest scale tone, preferring the note below, so the fixed shapes become in-key harmony. Chromatic turns snapping off. The other nine are Major, Minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian, Harmonic Minor and Melodic Minor, each with a mood note in the panel.
WHITE on / off: Turns the white keys into the scale itself: C plays the root and each white key up plays the next degree, so the seven white keys walk the whole scale in order. Black keys snap down to the white key below rather than going dead. It needs a seven-note scale, so it is greyed out under Chromatic.

Shaping

VOICE -6 … +6: The voicing dial. Each step up lifts the lowest note an octave, walking the chord through its inversions; each step down drops the top note.
SPREAD 0 … 3: Opens the chord into the drop-2 family: 1 drops an inner note an octave, 2 drops a second, 3 lifts the lead on top. With VOICE it turns each chord into a family of shapes.
BASS on / off: Doubles the root an octave below every chord, a fixed left hand that stays put whatever VOICE and SPREAD do above it.

Perform

The strip above the bottom bar shapes how the notes leave, in both tabs.

PERFORM Block · Strum · Harp · Arp · Pattern: Block plays the chord at once. Strum Up and Strum Down spread it over the TIME knob. Harp is a strum that alternates direction each trigger with a gentle velocity ramp. The three arps (Up, Down, Up-Down) run in time with the host at the RATE division, gated at 80 percent of a step. Pattern bounces off the lowest note: low, 1, low, 2, low, 3.
TIME 5 … 250 ms: How far a strum spreads the notes, 35 ms out of the box. Active in the strum and harp modes.
RATE 1/4 … 1/32: The arp division, locked to host tempo: 1/4, 1/8, 1/8T, 1/16, 1/16T, 1/32. It ships at 1/16.
SLOP 0 … 100: Humanize: random timing up to 30 ms and a little velocity jitter, in any mode, so even Block loosens into something played by hand. The push is always late, never early, so it relaxes the groove rather than rushing it.

Hold and routing

HOLD on / off: Off, pads latch: tap once and every key plays that chord. On, a chord sounds only while a pad is held, so releasing every pad drops you back to plain single notes and you can thread a melody between stabs without bypassing anything. The most recently pressed pad wins.
CONTROLLER menu: Sets the pad and key channels, and holds Learn from controller, Load controller profile, and Replay tour, which restarts the six-card intro tour. A profile is a small JSON file (name, pad channel, key channel, eight pad notes) that persists with the session; in the file the channels read 0 to 15, one lower than the panel shows. Set the pad and key channels the same and the eight pad notes stay pads while every other note plays chords.

First five minutes A short walkthrough

01 Insert Voicings before a synth and leave the default channels.
02 Tap a pad. Watch the grid light and the readout name the chord.
03 Play a few keys across the keyboard. Every key sounds the same voicing, rooted where you play.
04 Set a Key and a Scale that match your track. The chords fall into the song.
05 Turn HOLD on and hold a pad while you play a line, then let the pad go for single notes. That switch, mid-phrase, is the instrument.

Recipes Named workflows

Live chord switching

01 Stay in the Sets tab and pick a set that fits the song.
02 Assign the feel with PERFORM: Block for stabs, or Strum with TIME around 40 ms for a guitar-like roll.
03 Play from the keys and change chords by tapping pads with your other hand. The output stays on channel 1 into your synth.

Build a chord from scratch

01 Switch to the Build tab.
02 Tap a color on the top row, then a flavor on the bottom row. The readout shows the symbol; the pad auditions on middle C.
03 Play it from the keys, then dial VOICE and SPREAD until the shape sits where you want it.

Melody between stabs

01 Turn HOLD on.
02 Hold a pad and play the chord; release the pad and the same keys play single notes.
03 Add a touch of SLOP so the hand-off never sounds quantised.

Good to know The fine print

The pads are the selector, not the sound. Pad notes are consumed and never reach the output; the chords always leave on MIDI channel 1.
Releases are exact. A key releases precisely the notes it triggered, even if you changed voicing, set, scale or hold mode while holding it, because output notes are reference counted: a note shared by two held keys keeps sounding until the last key that needs it lifts.
Switching chord sets does not change the chord already sounding. The new set arms the pads; the next pad you hit selects from it.
CCs, pitch bend and notes on unrelated channels pass through, keeping their original channels and note numbers rather than being remapped to the notes Voicings emits. There is no MPE or mono mode, and the output channel is fixed at 1.
Every control on the panel is a host parameter. Chord set, tab, key, scale, hold and the whole perform strip automate, and the Build choices persist with the session alongside the controller profile.
Every plugin in the suite maps the same way: click the MIDI chip in the header (it reads MIDI, MIDI · N, or MIDI · OFF) and the editor dims into learn mode with a balloon on every mappable control, plus ENABLE MIDI per instance, ALL PARAMETERS..., CLEAR ALL and DONE (Esc works too). One CC drives one parameter, on any channel, saved the moment you map it; switches and short lists step relative to the knob. The window also resizes from its corner.