Manual

The two modes

Single Chord gives you one chord to shape and audition. Use it to find a voicing, or to grab a single stab.

Progression plays a chord progression instead of a single chord. Fifty of the progressions Western music actually runs on are built in — blues, doo-wop, ii–V–I, the pop four-chord loops, minor-key turnarounds — in every key, and you can chain and combine them. Or switch on Custom and write your own.

A progression is more than a list of chords, so this mode opens up the controls that act across them. Voice Leading decides how each chord moves to the next — smoothly, in parallel, as four-part writing, or as quartal stacks that plane with the harmony. Bass can walk between roots rather than sit on them. Tensions sets how much colour every chord is built with, from plain triads up to thirteenths, so the same progression can be a folk song or a jazz standard without retyping a note.

Two substitutions are a click each. Tritone Sub replaces a dominant with the one a tritone away — the classic reharmonisation that turns D–G7–C into D–D♭7–C. Secondary Dominants inserts the dominant of each chord before it, so a progression pulls towards each of its own chords in turn.

The wheel

The circle of fifths, with four rings: major on the outside, then minor, diminished and augmented. Neighbours on the outer ring are a fifth apart, which is why chords next to each other tend to sound next to each other.

The wheel works two ways, depending on what you are doing.

Choosing a chord

In Single Chord mode — and while editing a custom progression — the wheel is a selector. Click any node to pick that chord; the selected one is highlighted, and the controls below follow it.

Watching a progression

In Progression mode the wheel becomes a map of the progression. It draws the sequence across the circle in playback order and marks the chord currently sounding, so you can watch a progression move — and see its shape. A ii–V –I is three steps anticlockwise; a progression that jumps across the circle looks as far as it sounds.

Clicking a node here sets the key rather than a chord, since the chords are the progression’s to choose. Live MIDI input is shown as a halo on whichever note is sounding, on top of whatever else the wheel is displaying.

In Progression mode you can switch to Coltrane in Settings — John Coltrane’s tone circle, with its major-third triangles and tritone axes. It is the same twelve notes arranged to show a different set of relationships.

Choosing a chord

Key sets the root and the octave. Quality sets major, minor, diminished or augmented. Extensions then lists every chord that shares that quality — so the two work together: pick minor, and Extensions offers the minor chords, from a plain triad to m13.

Voicing

Position is the inversion — root position, first, second, third.

Voice Leading (Progression mode) decides how one chord moves to the next:

• Parallel — every chord in the same position. Blunt and predictable, which is sometimes what you want.
• Smooth — each chord re-voiced to move as little as possible. This chooses the inversion for you, so Position is disabled.
• Open and Drop 2 — spread voicings; Drop 2 takes the second voice from the top down an octave.
• SATB — four-part writing that avoids parallel fifths and octaves and favours contrary motion. It places the voices itself, so Position is disabled here too.
• Quartal — stacked fourths, the “So What” sound. Built from the chord’s scale rather than by adding five semitones, so it stays in the harmony over altered chords. Rootless, so turn the bass on if you want the chord to be unambiguous.
• Pentatonic — the same construction over the chord’s five-note scale, giving open fourths and seconds.

Under Quartal and Pentatonic, Tensions chooses the stack’s size and which extension it must contain: three notes, four, or five with a 13th in it. Position steps through the stack’s rotations, which is what an inversion is for a rootless voicing.

Bass

• Off — no bass note.
• Held — the root under the chord. In 4/4 it is one sustained note; in an odd, compound or triplet metre it is struck again on each group’s downbeat, so 7/8 as 2+2+3 gets three bass notes and the chord fills between them. That interlocking is what makes an odd metre feel grouped rather than merely long.
• Root + Fifth and Walking — Progression mode only. Both need a next chord to move towards, which a single chord does not have.

8vb drops the bass an octave. Bass Note (Single Chord mode) forces a specific note into the bass — a slash chord, like Cmaj7/E.

Metre and comping

Metre runs from 4/4 through 3/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8 and 13/8, each with the grouping that makes it work — 7/8 as 2+2+3, and so on.

Comping is the rhythm the chords are played in: whole notes, quarters, Charleston, bossa, samba and the rest.

Note Rate is the subdivision an arpeggio or run moves at. Auto spaces by the chord’s size, which gives three-against-four over a triad. Choosing a metre sets a sensible rate for it — quarters for 7/4, eighths for 7/8 — and you can change it after.

Motion and pattern

Motion picks a family; Pattern picks one from it.

• Chords — block chords and comping figures, including Gospel Roll, Strum and Scatter.
• Arpeggio — up, down, up-down, random, Alberti, ping-pong.
• Melodic — scale and pentatonic ladders in four directions; the fourths family (Fourths Up, Fourths Down, Fourths + Third, Fourths + Step); and Combo, which builds a line rather than walking a ladder.

Every one of these draws on the chord’s own scale — see the reference below. The fourths patterns skip three scale degrees rather than five semitones, which is what keeps them in the key.

Combo builds a different line every time you press Preview, and it fills whatever Note Rate you give it — which is where most of the fun is. The same progression at 1/8 and at 1/16 gives you two different players.

Built-in progressions

Fifty, in major and minor keys: I - IV - V, I - V - vi - IV, ii - V - I, I - vi - IV - V, vi - IV - I - V, I - IV - vi - V, ii - V - I - vi, I - vi - ii - V, iii - vi - ii - V, I - bVII - IV, I - II (Lydian vamp), I7 - bVII (Mixolydian vamp) and more.

Tensions decides what they are built from — triads, sevenths, ninths, elevenths or thirteenths. Tritone Sub and Secondary Dominants rewrite the functional harmony, which is why they are offered for built-in progressions and not for ones you wrote yourself.

Writing your own

Switch on Custom. Type a chord and press Enter, or type a whole line at once and press Enter to build the progression in one go.

Up to four chords a bar and sixty-four bars.

Chord typing syntax

A chord is a root note — A to G, with an optional # or b — followed by a quality. The root is required: maj7 on its own will not parse, Cmaj7 will.

Separating chords

Chords sharing a bar split it into whole beats, as evenly as they can: two chords take 2+2, three take 2+1+1, four take 1+1+1+1. A bar is never split into thirds. More than four chords will not fit at whole-beat granularity, so only the first four in a bar are kept.

Suffixes

They combine in any order: G7x3*2 and G7*2x3 both give three separate chords, each two bars long.

Spelling the quality

Common alternate spellings are accepted, so you can type what you would write by hand. CM7, CMajor7 and Cmaj7 all give the same chord.

Every chord in the reference table can be typed by its symbol.

Editing chips

Click a chip to select it; the wheel and the controls follow it. Right-click one for its own menu:

• Chord Quality, Extensions and Chord Root — change the chord without retyping it.
• Key — the key the whole progression is in, reachable from here as well as from the top row.
• Inversion and Bass Note — per chord, so one chord can sit in first inversion or over a different bass.
• Duration — 1 beat, half a bar, three-quarters, or a full bar. Whole beats only.
• Split in Half and Merge with Next — divide a bar between more chords, or give a chord its neighbour’s space.
• Duplicate and Delete.
• Insert Progression — drop one of the fifty built-in progressions in at that point.

Chips can be dragged to reorder. The × on the selected chip deletes it, and Undo and Redo cover everything here.

Right-clicking the + offers Add Chord, an Add Chord As submenu for choosing the quality up front, and the progression list.

Transforming the whole progression

• Cadence appends an ending: authentic (V7–I), plagal (IV–I), deceptive (V7–vi) or half (ii7–V7).
• Neg. Harmony mirrors every chord around the key’s axis, which turns a major progression minor and back again while keeping its shape.
• Clear All empties the strip; Remove deletes the selected chip.
• Save to Library keeps the progression by name. Saved progressions appear in the Insert Progression list alongside the built-in ones.

Show: Dm7 toggles the chips between absolute chord names and roman numerals — the same progression as Dm7 G7 Cmaj7 or as ii7 V7 Imaj7.

Preview and drag

Preview plays it; Loop keeps it going, and you can change controls while it loops — the new pattern swaps in at the next loop boundary.

Drag to DAW drags a MIDI file of exactly what you just heard.

MIDI Trigger lets you play the current chord from a keyboard — one key per chord.

Auto-Transpose advances the key every time the preview loops — round the circle of fifths, chromatically, in thirds, and so on. It needs Loop switched on, and it works in both modes: a progression will walk through all twelve keys while you listen for the one it belongs in.

Presets

The bookmark icon. A preset stores the whole configuration — chord, voicing, pattern, metre, theme, everything — so it recalls the sound you had, not part of it.

Settings

• Note length — how much of its slot each note sounds. 100% is the normal articulation; lower shortens every note.
• Preview tempo and Follow host tempo — with Follow on, the project’s tempo wins and dragged files carry no tempo or time signature of their own.
• Preview volume, Wheel display, and Theme — five palettes: Midnight, Graphite, Moss, Ember and Iris.
• Open with the last chord used, and Reset all settings.

Chords and scales

All 60 chord types and the scale each one plays over. This is the map the arpeggios, ladders and fourths patterns read from.