• Play
    Everything
    with Auto Accompaniment

Basic Settings

With nimbu you transpose the accompaniment in real time with the chords you are playing with your left hand.

But since real accompaniments do not only play the chord tones of the harmony, but tones of the key in form of riffs, transition tones, more complex chords, melodic lines, walking basses etc., nimbu translates your chords into chord scales with 7 tones. This is the musicial lever to raise the tone supply of your accompaniment and give it the authentic sound. This full tone supply consists of the chord tones that belong to the harmony and the tension tones that result from the functional degree of the played chords:

    Tones of the Key     =      Available Tones     =      Tone Supply     =      Chord Scale    =     Chord Tones    +    Tension Tones

Whatever you play, you always play with this supply of at least seven 7 tones. With one of these three basic settings:

    Chord related playing    (auto accompaniment)
    Here the tension tones are converted into chord tones. The tones of the accompaniment are reduced to the chord tones. So you play like with any automatic accompaniment.

    Scale related playing       (improvisation)
    Chord notes as well as tension notes are played here in order to use all available tones. This is the mode for improvisation. Standard scales are assigned to the played chord types. If a standard scale does not fit, you assign the correct scale to the chord.

    Title-related playing         (title)
    This, too, is a scale-related playing used for the original accompaniments, which nimbu automatically calculates from MIDI files. Tones that are out of scale are also allowed in order to get as close as possible to the original.


The clou is that you can switch spontaneously while playing. You can switch in real time e.g. from title-related to chord-related playing in order to play every harmony freely. Further details are described in More tones, more music.

nimbu is an auto accompaniment system that shows you how music really works.


The way music works

In music, chords and their chord scales form a functional unit. While in a chord, the tones are struck simultaneously, the scale specifies the 7 tones that can be played to this chord.

We explain the relationship between chord and chord scale in an easily understandable way in our Video 5   "More tones for the auto accompaniment". This relationship is so simple and yet so fundamental. This is our basis for giving your accompaniment all available tones without knowing the key.

In nimbu you play the way music works. Your accompaniment is neither reduced to chord tones, nor does its larger tone supply result from some sort of playback in which so-called transpositions use only the root or only the root and third of the chords you play and play the rest to you. There are no so-called Session Styles, which play their own chords even in the Main sections.

All this has nothing to do with jazz, by the way. The chord scales are the basis for improvising and song writing. But that is a much higher level. Here it's all about giving your accompaniment the musically available tones. In jazz, on the other hand, the scales are used extensively, making full use of the characteristic sound of the scales, whereby at times you are relatively far away from the actual harmony. But even this is possible in nimbu.

When improvising, the scales are often derived from chords (given by a song, so-called changes) and their chord degrees in order to impovise with the additional notes of these scales or to play new melodies.

    Chord Progression     >>    assigend Chord Scales   >>   available Tones for Improvisation
    Harmony  Melody

In song writing, you often go from ideas for a melody progression to a key (or vice versa). From the key automatically possible functions or degrees of the chords result, which form the chord progression or cadence (with their scales).

    Ideas for tone progression   <>   Key  >>   Chord Progression
    Melody  Harmony

You can also experience this yourself. In real time! nimbu shows you your respective tone supply and supports you with a number of functions.


MIDI File

MIDI Association
The Standard MIDI File Specification (SMF) defines how music is stored digitally with its notes and a wealth of other information, without having to include the instrument sounds. This specification of the MIDI Association is an open, manufacturer-independent, globally recognized industry standard.

nimbu embraces the fact that nowadays MIDI files are offered on the internet for almost every song mostly free. Midi and the title of the song are sufficient search terms. As a source for professional MIDI files we can also recommend geerdes Media e.K. in Berlin, whose MIDI files are very close to the original and cost only a few Euros.