Chords play an important role not just in music in general, but particularly in the way your Woovebox generates notes and plays back your patterns. So much so that your Woovebox has a dedicated chord ('Cd') track.
A chord is a combination of musical notes played simultaneously. It creates a harmonious sound that adds depth and complexity to music.
A chord progression is the order in which chords are played in a piece of music. It's like a roadmap of the harmony in a song. Different chords can create different feelings and emotions, and by arranging them in a specific order, songwriters can guide the listener through a journey of different emotions.
As such, a great way to start off a Woovebox song (besides programming a rhythm), is to program two or more chords to create a chord progression. The Woovebox makes it very easy to come up with chord progressions of your own, or can even provide you with random (but appropriate sounding) progressions.
More importantly for your Woovebox, chords set the tone for the rest of your song's other elements/tracks (such as basslines, melodies, arpeggios, paraphonic parts and even things like "ear candy" and effects). These elements can all be made to react and adapt to the chords being played in various musical ways, for example via the "FLW.C" ("follow chord") parameter on the "GLob" page of any non-chord tracks. It is one of the many ways, your Woovebox does more with less.
The chord track (1/Cd) is the only "special" track that works a little different to all the other (2/bs-16/A8) tracks. Whereas you normally record single notes, hits or sample triggers) to all the other tracks, the chord track records chords (e.g. multiple notes at once that sound harmonically interesting). The chord track is the only track that is truly polyphonic (up to five notes), meaning it is the only track that can play multiple, complex voices at the same time (your Woovebox is also capable of reproducing some more limited paraphonic sounds per track - the chords these tracks play are, however, informed by the 'Cd' track and can only consist of 4 notes max).
Unique to the chord track, rather than single notes, two sets ("types") of seven chords are laid out across the 1-16 keyboard;
The following chord types can be laid out across the upper and/or lower parts of the keyboard;
As you can see, the maximum polyphony used up is five notes at a time by these chord types. For triad chords (e.g. chords that use less than four notes at the same time), it is possible to specify what your patch should do with the "left over" fourth note. Specifically, it is possible to instruct the patch to play any "left over" note at a lower octave via the 'bS.tr' (bass transpose) parameter under 4/Ar on the 'Glob' page.
Please note that unless "free chord" ('FrE.C' under 4/Ar on in the Song's 'GLob' page) is set to 'yes' (firmware 2421+) , a chord's root note will always conform to the key/scale you chose for your song upon playback (you may still program an root note that does not fit the scale). For example, with the default C major scale, possible chord root notes are always the white keys of an imaginary piano (e.g. C, D, E, F, G, A, B) but not the black keys. Changing the root note of a chord by editing a step on the chord track, will always sound/play the closest "legal" note of your chosen key/scale/mode. So if you would, for example, choose a root note of C sharp for a song that is in the key of C major, your Woovebox will play a chord with a C root note (closest "legal" note for that scale), and not a C sharp (which is an "illegal" note for that scale).
By holding a programmed step, the programmed chord - in addition to auditioning - will briefly be displayed in the top four characters of the screen.
The conditionals available for the chord track vary slightly; instead of glissando (mostly appropriate for single notes), strumming up and down at various speeds is available as a conditional.
Multi-instrument mode is also available for the chord track, allowing you to "borrow" the sounds of other tracks and play them polyphonically. Switching on multi-instrument mode can be accomplished by changing the 'MuIn' (Mult Inst) parameter under 7/hh on the chord track's 'GLob' page to 'MLti'.