Stabmatic — User Manual

1. What it does

Stabmatic remembers a chord shape and plays it back transposed to whatever note you press. Play C, you get the shape rooted on C. Move up to D, the whole shape moves up a whole step — every note in it, by the same amount. It is Roland's Chord Memory function, the one built into the Alpha Juno and the MC-909, as a plugin.

The one-sentence version: Stabmatic does not know what key you're in, does not correct your voicing, and does not care what came before — it takes the shape it currently holds and slides it, rigidly, to the note you played. That rigidity is the whole point. A "smart" chord plugin tries to keep you in key and picks a sensible voicing for you; Stabmatic does neither, and that is what makes it useful for the parallel harmonic movement of house, techno, rave and jungle, where the same chord quality is supposed to slide chromatically under a bassline rather than reharmonise with it.

2. Installing

Stabmatic is a MIDI instrument, not an audio effect — it has no sound of its own, so there is nothing for it to do outside a DAW. There is no standalone build, and there will not be one.

Install locations:

On Linux, install the LV2 build wherever your host looks for LV2 plugins.

If your installer put the files somewhere else, rescanning your plugin folders in your DAW's preferences is usually enough to find them.

3. Getting sound out of it

This is where people get stuck, so read it before you do anything else.

Stabmatic doesn't make sound — it makes MIDI. You play one note into it, and it sends out a full chord's worth of MIDI notes. Something downstream has to turn those notes into audio, which means a synth has to be listening to Stabmatic's output. This is also why Stabmatic loads as an instrument rather than a MIDI effect: Ableton Live refuses to load third-party MIDI effects at all, so an instrument shape is the only shape that works everywhere.

The routing step differs by host. Here is the recipe for each, in order of how likely you are to be using it.

FL Studio (primary target)

In Stabmatic's wrapper settings, set the output port to a number, say port 1. On the synth you want to hear, set its input port to the same number. Alternatively, host both Stabmatic and the synth inside a Patcher rack, where you can wire Stabmatic's MIDI output straight to the synth's MIDI input.

Ableton Live

Put Stabmatic on a track as an instrument. On a second track holding your synth, open the MIDI From dropdown and pick Stabmatic (Post FX). Set that second track's monitor to In, and arm both tracks. If Stabmatic doesn't show up in your plugin list at all, go to Preferences → Plug-Ins, enable Use VST3 Plug-In System Folders, and rescan.

Cubase / Nuendo

Put Stabmatic on an instrument track. On the MIDI track you want to hear, set its input to Stabmatic's MIDI output.

Bitwig Studio

Place Stabmatic before the synth in the same device chain. Notes flow through to the synth on their own — no extra routing needed.

Reaper

Insert Stabmatic before the synth in the track's FX chain. MIDI flows through the chain the same way it does in Bitwig.

Logic Pro

If your build ships as an AU MIDI FX, insert it in the track's MIDI FX slot. Stabmatic doesn't ship as AU yet (see Installing, above), so this recipe is for when it does.

Studio One

In the Instrument Editor, set the synth's Instrument Output to Stabmatic, and set Stabmatic as the synth's Direct Input.

Cakewalk

Put Stabmatic on a MIDI track. On the instrument track, set its Input to Stabmatic and its Output to an aux bus, then turn on Input Echo on the instrument track.

Reason — not supported

Reason cannot route MIDI out of a hosted plugin. There is no routing recipe because there is no route. This isn't a Stabmatic limitation to work around; it's a wall in the host.

The first time you open Stabmatic, it shows you this same list once, so you don't have to come back here. You can reopen it any time from the About panel.

4. The panel

Reading left to right, top to bottom.

The header bar. The Stabmatic wordmark sits at the left. Next to it are Undo and Redo, which step back and forward through your recent chord edits — dimmed when there's nothing to undo or redo. Centred in the bar is the name button: it shows the name of whatever chord form is currently loaded, and clicking it opens the chord browser. Beside the name is the Save button, which lights up whenever you've changed the loaded form without saving it. On the right: a settings button, an about button, a MIDI light that glows amber on any incoming note, and a CPU meter showing how much processing time Stabmatic is using.

Capture and Bypass, on the left of the row below the header. Capture arms chord capture — see Making your own, below. Bypass passes MIDI straight through unmodified and stops Stabmatic making any chords at all.

The display, in the centre of that row. It's a small dot-matrix screen, two lines. The top line shows the number and name of the loaded chord form — 01 - C Maj, or U017 My Stab for something you saved yourself — with an asterisk after the name if you've changed it since it loaded. An [ARP] badge appears here for the arpeggio-voiced forms (see The chord library, below). The bottom line shows the semitone offsets that make up the current chord, updating live as you edit, and your host's tempo in the corner when your DAW reports one. During capture, this line shows what you've played so far instead. Clicking the display opens the chord browser, same as the name button.

Retrig and Legato, on the right of that row — see Playing it, below.

The pad grid and octave buttons, below all of that. The grid is a piano-style keyboard, about two octaves wide, centred on C4. Lit pads are the notes currently in your chord. OCT - and OCT + on either side of the grid page the visible range up and down, from C1 at the low end to D6 at the high end — wide enough to reach and edit every factory form, including the ones that spread notes far above or below C4.

5. Playing it

Hold one key. You get a chord — whatever shape is currently loaded, transposed to that key. Move to a different key while still holding, or release and press another, and the chord moves with you.

Retrig controls what happens at that moment of change. With Retrig on (the default), every note in the chord releases and re-attacks — a stab. With Retrig off, any note common to the old chord and the new one is held through the change rather than re-triggered, and only the notes that differ actually move — closer to how a pad or a string patch behaves when you voice-lead it by hand.

Legato controls what happens when you let go. With Legato on (the default), releasing the key you're holding while an earlier key is still down returns you to that earlier key's chord — the way a mono synth returns to a held note. With Legato off, releasing stops the chord outright, and an earlier held key is ignored until you press it again.

Only one chord sounds at a time. Notes are reduced to one voice before they reach the chord engine, last-note priority, so overlapping notes in a MIDI clip replace each other rather than stacking into a pile of chords.

Everything that isn't a note-on or a note-off passes straight through, unmodified: velocity, sustain pedal, pitch bend, aftertouch, mod wheel, program changes, system exclusive, all of it. Velocity in particular applies to the whole chord exactly as you played it — there's no separate velocity per chord note. This matters because it means your synth's own envelope, expression and pedal behaviour work exactly as they would without Stabmatic in the chain. Stabmatic only ever touches which notes sound, never how they sound.

6. The chord library

Stabmatic ships with the Roland MC-909's 64 factory chord forms, transcribed from the machine's owner's manual. Forms 1 through 28 are ordinary chords — triads, sevenths, sixths, extensions. Forms 29 through 64 are voiced differently: wider spreads, notes below the root, chords with the root left out entirely. Roland designed these for use with the MC-909's arpeggiator, so they carry an [ARP] badge in the display and the browser to tell you they're built for that rather than for playing as a block chord.

A few of Roland's factory forms don't quite match their own names, and Stabmatic keeps them exactly as printed rather than correcting them — form 6, "C dim", is voiced as a diminished seventh chord, and form 48, "G Maj", is literally a C major triad. That's the hardware's own inconsistency, not a bug here.

The chord browser (opened from the name button or the display) lists all 64 factory forms and everything in your own library. A star toggle beside each row marks it as a favourite. A row of filter tabs above the list narrows it down: All, Chords (1–28), Arpeggio (29–64), six quality filters — Major, Minor, 7th, Aug, Dim, Sus — then User and Favourites. The quality filters match on the chord's name, so a form named "C min7" shows up under both Minor and 7th.

The 64 factory forms, by number and name:

Names 31 and 38 are both "G Maj add9", 41 and 43 are both "A min", and 45 and 47 are both "A" — each pair is a different voicing of the same name, exactly as Roland shipped them.

7. Making your own

There are two ways to build a chord form that isn't in the factory list.

Capture. Press Capture to arm it. Play a chord — all at once, or one note at a time, as long as at least one key stays held while you do it. Release every key, and the shape you played becomes your current chord immediately. The lowest note you played becomes the root; everything else is measured from it. A single note captured alone gives you a one-note "chord" — unison pass-through, not a bug. Up to 12 distinct notes are collected; a 13th is ignored and the display flashes to tell you.

Editing on the pad grid. Click a lit pad to remove that note from the chord, click an unlit one to add it. This works on any loaded form, including a factory one — clicking a pad never changes the factory form itself, only what's currently playing.

The rule that matters most: whatever you're playing right now — captured, edited, or untouched — survives closing and reopening your project, whether or not you ever saved it to your library. Loading a different form from the browser replaces what you're playing and throws away anything unsaved, but that discard is one step of Undo away, no confirmation dialog involved.

8. Saving and organising

Nothing you capture or edit is written to your library until you say so. Press Save to open the browser in save mode. From there you can:

• Save as new — adds your current chord to your library under a name you choose.
• Overwrite an existing entry in your library — pick it from the list, confirm, and it's replaced. Factory forms can never be overwritten.
• Rename or delete any entry you own, from the regular browser view. Deleting asks for confirmation first.
• Star any form, factory or your own, to mark it a favourite and find it again quickly under the Favourites filter.

Your library has no fixed size — save as many as you like.

9. Settings

Open settings from the gear icon in the header. There are three things to set:

• Window scale — 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150% or 200% of the default window size.
• Theme — Dark or Light.
• Display style — one of four skins for the dot-matrix screen: Stock LCD (green-on-green, the default), Teal/Cyan on Dark, Blue OLED on Black, and Amber.

Theme and display style are remembered separately for each instance of Stabmatic in your project.

10. Automation

The parameter you'll actually want to automate is Chord Form — it picks which entry in your library is currently playing. Its value runs from the 64 factory forms up through your own library in save order; your DAW shows the form's name in the automation lane rather than a bare number. Changing it while a chord is sounding loads the new form immediately, discarding any unsaved edit exactly as picking it by hand would — automation always wins.

One honest caveat: what happens to notes already held at the moment the form changes is, today, an interim choice rather than a confirmed hardware behaviour — Stabmatic currently holds the old voicing on sounding notes and only applies the new form to the next note you play. This is pending a check against real MC-909 hardware and may change.

Bypass, Retrigger and Legato are automatable too, if you want to switch between stabs and held-tone voicings, or bypass and back, from a DAW automation lane rather than the panel.

11. When something is wrong

No sound. This is almost always routing, not a bug — see Getting sound out of it, above. Stabmatic makes MIDI, not audio; confirm a synth is actually listening to its output.

Stabmatic doesn't appear in Ableton Live. Go to Preferences → Plug-Ins, enable Use VST3 Plug-In System Folders, and rescan.

A note is stuck on. This shouldn't happen — every path that stops Stabmatic, including Bypass and your host's panic button, is supposed to release everything it's holding. If you find one anyway, toggle Bypass on and off, or trigger your DAW's all-notes-off / panic function.

The panel looks cut off or clipped, especially at a non-100% Windows display scale. This was fixed in v0.1.16 — update to the current build.

12. What is not in it yet

• Reason isn't supported, and can't be — it doesn't let a hosted plugin route MIDI out at all.
• No AU build on macOS yet. VST3 and CLAP are there; AU is waiting on being tested on real Mac hardware.
• No standalone version, and there won't be one — a MIDI instrument has nothing to do without a host.
• Two behaviours are provisional pending a check against real MC-909 hardware: what happens to held notes when the chord form changes (see Automation, above), and what happens to chord notes that would fall outside MIDI's range — today they're dropped silently rather than folded or clamped.
• Nothing phones home. Usage reporting and the bug reporter are not built into current builds at all — no toggle, nothing to opt out of.