Fanan team has released Grex Ballada, a full ballad arranger module. They say:
Grex Ballada is the little brother of Grex, a full professional arranger plugin which will be released next month. Grex Ballada is the first that brings the whole band inside and needs nothing but itself. Plug & Play.
Grex Ballada delivers 90 ballad styles and a full GM sound library, backing the player in both the right and left hand roles. Each style carries its own set: the sounds on all sixteen channels, the mixer, the section routing, the levels and the effects.
Main Features:
Styles
Ninety ballads styles, Each loads finished, with its own sounds, mixer, jumps and levels, all loaded with a single click. Search feature in its own window, with saved keywords and a results list. Favourites saved with star flags. Each style keeps its own tempo and time signature, and works in 3/4, 6/8 and 7/8 as naturally as in 4/4.
Playing:
- Split keyboard – chords on the left, your own sounds on the right, with the split point wherever your hands want it. 1 Finger for majorminor chords (with double click on chord’s key function) shapes, Fingered for real voicings including maj7, m7b5, 9ths and 13ths.
- Arranger / Piano feature that turn the split off for an intro or a solo passage, Hold which freeze the arrangement where it is, including mid-fill.
- Global semitone which moves a song into a singer’s key without relearning it.
- Single or Multi solo mode for layering as many of your six solo voices as you want.
- Harmony – duet, trio, block, octave or fifth, built from the chord the band is playing.
- Multi Split – three zones: bass, chords, and your solos on top.
- Bass Inversion – the style keeps its own bass line and follows your lowest note, so nothing ever drops out.
- Manual Bass – take the bass line yourself.
- Oriental Scale – quarter-tone tuning per pitch class, half-flat and half-sharp, set from a one-octave keyboard.
Arrangement:
- Sixteen section pads – four intros, four variations, four fills, a break and three endings, Press a variation and the fill that leads into it plays, landing on the beat.
- Transitions quantise at 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 of a bar. A feel setting, not a right answer.
- Fill length – a whole bar or just its second half for a shorter lift.
- Eight style elements – drums, percussion, bass, two chord parts, pad and two leads, muted and unmuted live.
- Jumps – a table deciding where every intro, fill and break lands.
- Crash – on every section change, automatically every N cycles, or by hand, with its own velocity, level and choice of cymbals.
- Energy – how hard the band plays, not how loud.
Tempo and transport:
- Tempo knob, Tap, and Reset to the style’s own written tempo.
- Free or synced to your DAW.
- X1 / x2 / x1/2 – half and double time keeping the groove intact.
- Sync Play – the band waits, and your first chord starts it.
- On Press – the band plays only while a chord is held.
- Restart, and DAW Start to follow your host’s transport.
- Tempo saves with the song as an offset from the style’s own, so the style stays the authority on its speed.
Sounds:
- Sixteen channels, eight for the band, eight for your right hand.
- A three-column selector, with both sampled kits and built-in composed kits.
- Ignore Program Change per slot, when you want your choice to survive a style load.
- A four-tab editor: Synthesis, Modulation, Effect Sends, Inserts.
- Envelopes, filter and LFOs per instrument.
- Attack Glide on solo voices – a pitch scoop into the note, every time, every Nth, or at random, with depth, time and shape.
- Allowed Notes – keep a part inside the range it was actually sampled for.
- Drum editing per key across six pages, with right-click audition.
- Funkey Mode – instant macro button for the six right hand instrument, with instruments families sharing one wah and one phaser, switched from the play row. Make the style sound funkey in one click.
Effects:
- Chorus, reverb and delay as shared sends – one rack for the band, one for your right hand, so the two sit in different spaces. Early reflections on the reverb, for room size before the tail arrives.
- Wah, phaser and the Sweetener as per-instrument inserts, where a shaper belongs.
- Five-band EQ and pan on every instrument.
- The Sweetener, named in jobs rather than engineer’s numbers; Soften, Peak, Tame, Round.
Mixing:
- Eight style channels, eight solo channels, a bus for each hand, and a master.
- One honest rule: the style states its level, your fader multiplies it afterwards. At the detent you hear exactly what the composer wrote.
- Base unity in dB per bus, when the fader is in the right place musically but the wrong place for loudness.
- Slot trim, plus or minus 40 dB, for a part that arrives far too loud or far too quiet.
- The band’s balance saves with the song; the balance between your two hands stays with you.
The finisher:
- A deliberately small master chain: Push into a ceiling limiter, switchable Glue, and an output trim.
- Zero latency no lookahead, no oversampling. Built for playing live, not for a mastering session.
- Nothing that overrides your mix: no auto level, no stereo width, no tone shaping on somebody else’s balance.
- A/B bypass, factory reset, and a gain-reduction meter.
- The Style Ducker – two frequency points, each with its own width, threshold, ratio, attack and release, keyed from your right hand and applied to the band before the two are mixed. A live curve shows what is being asked and what is actually happening.
Control:
- MIDI notes 0 to 35 reserved as remote controls. style elements, solo channels, all sixteen section pads, and the transport, from a second keyboard or a pad controller.
- MIDI learn by dragging, not typing. move a control, it appears as a chip, drop the chip on anything on screen.
- Push, toggle or knob behaviour per assignment, saved to named map files.
- Pitch bend range and low velocity response for your own playing.
Songs:
- A set holds everything about how a style sounds in your hands. sounds, mixer, jumps, levels, energy, tempo offset, the ducker.
- Load, Save and Fast Save, plus a free-text note saved inside the set.
- Your split point and the balance between your hands belong to your rig, not to a song, and follow you everywhere.
- Song recorder – captures a whole performance including the fills and section changes, gestures a DAW cannot see from outside.
- Full DAW project recall -reopen a session and everything is where you left it.
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A thirteen-chapter manual built into the plugin, on its own tab.
YouTube.com/watch?v=zcP-HnkEvRY
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