Gliff is a FREE MIDI guitar translator for macOS and Windows

Gliff is a free guitar-based plugin for macOS and Windows that’s aimed at guitarists and keyboardists alike.

So, there are two ways to approach this plugin: one is as a guitarist looking to create clean, polyphonic MIDI chord patterns that you can drag and drop into your project.

The appeal might be that you’re a guitar hero, but you need a nice progression for a keys/synth track, and Gliff allows you to create it using the instrument you’re comfortable with.

When you’re reading about Gliff, you might come across phrases like “turns guitar into MIDI” or “guitar in, MIDI out”, but Gliff doesn’t actually listen to your guitar audio, so it’s not a guitar-to-MIDI converter.

It only accepts incoming MIDI data, so, in the scenario above, you’d need a MIDI guitar. The developer makes this clear on the website, but if you miss the FAQs and only catch some of the surrounding snippets, there could be a little confusion.

If you want to turn guitar audio recordings into MIDI, check out Elderaudio’s Guitar Audio to MIDI Converter.

The other way to approach Gliff, and perhaps the most universal, given that not every guitarist has a MIDI guitar, is to use a keyboard to input MIDI data that Gliff will translate into guitar fretboard shapes.

This approach is beneficial for anyone who knows what chords they want to play, but doesn’t know how to play them on guitar.

In any case, the plugin takes your MIDI input, identifies/names chords, displays fretboard shapes, and writes clean polyphonic MIDI output.

Identifying chord names could be useful to anyone who isn’t sure how to name chords in a chart. Joni Mitchell was famous for using gorgeous chord extensions in her piano playing, but not necessarily knowing what they were.

When Gliff identifies a chord, it provides a match percentage and offers some context-dependent alternatives. For example, if you play a Dm7 chord, it will suggest that it could also be a rootless Gsus9 (if the bass was playing a G note).

If you don’t have a MIDI guitar to hand, but you’re more comfortable with strings than keys, you can write notes directly onto the stringed interface with options to change the tuning setup or add a capo.

Gliff is available in AU and VST3 formats for macOS and Windows (also a Max for Live device for Ableton).