How to use Notewright

Notewright helps you find chord progressions, hear them, understand why they work and take them into your music app. You don’t need to know music theory to start; the theory is there when you want it.

Quick start

1. Bring your chords, or get some. The first time you open it, the chart holds a short example to show the colours. In Create → I have chords, type your own (C Am F G, I vi IV V or 1 6m 4 5), tap them from the row of chords in your key, or play them on a MIDI keyboard. With no chords in mind, open Generate, choose a mood and genres, and press Generate.
2. Read what you have. Under the chart, a sentence or two says what the progression does: its key, which chords come from outside it and why, and where it ends. Ideas for this progression offers three swaps from across the chart.
3. Change anything you don’t like. Tap a chord to hear it, then try one of the swap ideas, or tap the small ▾ next to its name to pick a different chord.
4. Take it with you. Press Export to download MIDI or notation, copy the chord chart, or print a lead sheet.

Simple view: for beginners

New to chords? Press Simple view (bottom of the left rail on a computer, top bar on a phone). It hides the songwriting tools and teaches as you go. Press it again for the full app; your chart stays as it is.

• Four jobs instead of theory colours. Every chord is Home (green: where the song rests), Away (blue: it travels), Pull (pink: it leans back toward home) or Surprise (yellow: from outside the key). Its job is written under its name, and the Chord panel says in a sentence what it does, such as “D is Pull in G major: it leans back toward G, and your ear wants G next.”
• What comes after? Under the chart, three choices for the next chord, one Home, one Away and one Pull, each saying what the move does (“Pull → Home: the strongest move in music”). ▶ plays the move; Add puts the chord after the selected one and moves on to it, so you can build a song one chord at a time. A chord that pulls somewhere other than home (like B7 in G, which leans to Em) offers that chord as its next step.
• Plain chords. Generate and the chord row use major and minor triads only, with the guitar shapes and piano voicings for each. Your Chords allowed setting comes back when you leave Simple view.
• Show me the theory (next to the colour key) adds the Roman numerals and the theory name to every chord and sentence, as a bridge to the full app.

Colours, next to the chart title (or Change the colours under the colour key), sets how the chords are coloured, in either view:

• Colour the chords by Where it’s from (in the key, borrowed, secondary, chromatic) or Its job (Home, Away, Pull, Surprise). In the full app, numerals and every tool stay as they are, and the Chord panel adds the chord’s job in a sentence.
• Your colours: a swatch for each colour, to choose your own. Chord names switch to white on dark colours so they stay readable. Reset colours goes back to the starting ones.
• Home follows the key (with Its job): give each of the 12 keys a colour, and Home chords take the colour of the key they’re in, so after a key change the new key’s Home chords change colour too. The starting key colours are just an even spread round the circle of fifths, C blue; they don’t claim any key “is” a colour, so make them yours.

All of it is remembered in this browser, and Undo leaves it alone.

In theory terms the jobs are the three functions: Home is the tonic (I, iii, vi), Away the subdominant (ii, IV), and Pull the dominant (V, vii°, and secondary dominants). Undo leaves the view alone.

Easier to read

• Text size (the Aa button beside Simple view) switches between Normal, Large and Largest. Everything grows together, text and the buttons around it, and the layout rearranges itself to fit rather than spilling off the side. The choice is remembered. Even at Normal, no text is smaller than 12px, apart from the short part names inside the arrangement lanes.
• Focus (beside Colours above the chart, or the \ key) hides the menus and the side panel so the chart fills the window; the Play bar stays. Press Show panels or \ again to bring them back. It’s remembered, and anything you open in a side panel brings the panels back by itself. Phones show one screen at a time already, so they don’t have it.
• Zooming with your browser (⌘/Ctrl and +) works too. When the window gets short, as it does when you zoom a laptop in, the Play bar shrinks to one row (Play, tempo, More, Export) so the chart keeps most of the screen; More shows loop, metronome, sound and style. The same one-row bar is used with Large or Largest text.
• Buttons you press are at least 36px tall, and grow with the text size.

Finding your way around

Can’t find something? Press Search at the top of the menu (or ⌘/Ctrl + K, or /) and type what you’re after in your own words: “tempo”, “capo”, “MIDI”, “print”, “bigger text”. Pick a result and the app either does it (Play, Undo, Focus, the downloads) or takes you to the control, opening whatever menu or panel holds it and ringing it in yellow. Help topics open in the guide.

On a computer the screen has five parts, with your chord chart in the middle:

Drag the left edge of the side panel to make it wider or narrower (or focus it and use the arrow keys); double-click the edge to reset it. The chart reflows to fit, choosing how many bars to put on a line, and chord names shrink, or stack the chord type under the root in a short slot, so they stay readable. On a smaller laptop or tablet, Create slides out from the left when you press Create. On a phone, a tab bar under the title switches between Create, Chart, Chord and Tools, one screen at a time.

Making a progression

From your own chords

Open Create → I have chords (it is where Create opens until you pick another tab; it remembers the last one).

• Type chords as names (Am7 D/F# Bbmaj7), Roman numerals (I vi ii7 V7, V7/V, ♭VII, viiø7) or Nashville numbers (1 6m 4 5, 2m7 5/7, b7). Upper-case numerals are major and lower-case minor; a Nashville number is major unless you add m or -. Numerals count from the major scale of the key, as the chart’s own numerals do, so in A minor C is ♭III or b3. Before you press Add, the line under the box says how it reads them (“Reads as G Em C A7, in G major”). Add replaces the example chart (or starts an empty one, guessing the key from chord names), and otherwise puts the chords at the end.
• Tap a chord in the key: the seven chords of the key at the selected chord, with their numerals; tick 7ths for seventh chords. Each tap plays the chord and adds it after the selected one, or into it if it is an empty slot. The number keys 1–7 do the same from the keyboard.
• Name a shape on guitar or piano opens the Chord finder; MIDI in in Chart tools takes chords from a MIDI keyboard (see More tools).

The same numerals and Nashville numbers work in Edit as text, in each part’s own key after a [Key: …] line.

Starting fresh: Generate

Open Create → Generate. (To start from a tune instead, see Harmonize a melody.)

• Mood sets the feeling: Uplifting, Melancholy, Dreamy, Dark, Tense, Nostalgic, Epic or Mysterious. Pick one, or none.
• Genre sets the style: Pop, Rock, Blues, Jazz, R&B / Neo-soul, Gospel, Funk, Country, Folk, EDM, Metal, Bossa nova, Lo-fi and Film score. Pick several to blend them.
• What this genre plays shows each picked genre’s typical chords in your key; tap one to hear it. Chords shown faded are outside Chords allowed. Turn on Let the genre choose its chords to use them anyway.
• Predictable ↔ Surprising controls how often a chord from outside the key sneaks in.
• Length and Chord changes set how many bars and how often the chord changes. Keep my mode stops Generate from switching to another mode.
• Press Generate. The box above the button explains in plain words what Generate is about to do, and the new progression plays straight away.

Giving an existing chart a genre’s sound

Pick one or more genres, then press Restyle my chart in this style in the “What this genre plays” box. Each chord keeps its root, bass note and length, but takes on the genre’s colours: 7th chords for blues, 9ths and 13ths for jazz, power chords for rock and metal, and so on. Locked chords stay as they are, and Undo puts everything back. (Apply chords allowed in Chart tools is different: it recolours the chart to the richest chord types your limits allow, without any genre.)

Keeping the chords you like

Select a chord and press Lock in the Chord panel (a small padlock appears on it in the chart). Regenerate unlocked then refills only the other chords and keeps every chord’s length. Empty slots (shown as ?) are always refilled.

Key, meter and limits

The key line under the chart title (for example “G major · 4/4 · 4 bars”) opens the key, mode and time signature; tempo is in the Play bar, where you can type it or nudge it with − and +. Create → Chords allowed sets the most colourful chord types you want anywhere in the app. Generate and Harmonize both follow these settings. The presets Simple, Color, Jazz and Everything are starting points; tap the families (Power, Sus, Add & 6, 7ths, 9 · 11 · 13, Altered, Dim & aug, Slash) to fine-tune. Plain major and minor chords are always allowed. Chords allowed sets how far the app may go, not how far it must: with 9ths allowed you still get plenty of maj7 and m7 chords, and the picker shows the key’s 7ths and 9ths in separate rows. Only Apply chords allowed deliberately rewrites every chord to the richest type allowed.

Changing key or mode part-way through

Select the first chord of the bar where the new key starts, and in the Chord panel choose the key and mode under Key from bar …. It works for a bridge in a new key, a last-chorus lift up a step, or a switch of mode on the same home note (C major to C Mixolydian, say). From that bar on, the chart’s colours, Roman numerals, swap ideas, the chord picker and note spelling all follow the new key, and the panel says in words what kind of move it is. A label such as Key: D major marks the change in the chart, and the key line under the title lists every key the chart passes through. Choose No change to remove it.

Key changes go with the chart when you transpose, save, share, print or export MusicXML (which gets a new key signature at that bar). Regenerate unlocked keeps them and writes the new chords in each part’s key; Generate starts a fresh chart in one key.

Key centres you don’t write down

Jazz tunes often change key every bar or two without a written key change, each new key reached through its own V7 or a ii–V. With Find key centres on (in Chart tools; it starts on), the app spots this: when a V7 resolves to a major or minor chord outside the key, and there is a ii before it or the chart does it to two or more different chords, that stretch is read in the key it’s heading for, through any chords that belong to that key. Where a centre starts, the numeral is prefixed with its key, as in Roman-numeral analysis: G: V7 I. The summary under the chart names the centres, and calls them Coltrane changes when they are a major third apart.

It leaves alone what isn’t a key change: a single V7 into a borrowed chord in a pop song, borrowing from the parallel minor, and a minor 7th that is only the ii of the next ii–V in a chain. A key change you write yourself always wins.

Trying it with Giant Steps. In I have chords (or Edit as text), type one bar between each |; two chords in a bar share it, two beats each:

B D7 | G Bb7 | Eb | Am7 D7
G Bb7 | Eb F#7 | B | Fm7 Bb7
Eb | Am7 D7 | G | C#m7 F#7
B | Fm7 Bb7 | Eb | C#m7 F#7

The tune is played at about 280 beats a minute, faster than the app’s top tempo of 240; set 140 and hear it at half speed, which is how it’s usually practised anyway.

Editing the chart

Writing a chart as text

Open Edit as text under the chart to type or paste a progression, then press Load (or ⌘/Ctrl + Enter). Every change you make in the chart is written back here too.

[Verse]
C | Am | F | G:2 G7:2
[Chorus]
F | G | Em | ?
[Bridge]
[Key: A major]
D | E | F#m | E

• One line per phrase; | between bars. Chords sharing a bar split it evenly.
• [Verse] or Chorus: at the start of a line labels a section.
• [Key: A major] (or [Key: Bb minor], [Key: D Dorian]) changes key from the next bar. At the very top it sets the opening key.
• :2 after a chord gives it an exact number of beats.
• ? is an empty slot you want ideas for; % repeats the previous chord; an empty bar | | holds the chord for another bar.
• Chord names are read flexibly: Cmaj7, CΔ7, C-7, Cø, F#m7b5, Bbsus4, Gmaj7(9), D/F# and many more.

On a phone, and with no connection

On a phone the chart comes first. Search, Text size, Simple view, Library and Help are behind More at the top right, and Song form, the tension line and the notes follow the chords.

After your first visit the app and these help pages are kept on your device, so they open with no connection. To add it to your home screen, use your browser’s Install or Add to Home Screen. When a new version arrives, a message tells you to reload; nothing changes while you’re working.

Rhythm: grid sizes and zoom

With the melody lane on, Grid and Zoom sit just above the chart.

• Grid sets where new notes land: quarters, 8ths, triplets or 16ths (in 6/8 and 7/8, the sizes start from 8ths). Changing it never moves a note, so finer notes stay where they are on a coarser grid.
• Zoom shows fewer bars on each row, so you can look closely at a bar. On a narrow screen the chart may fit fewer bars than you chose, and a fine grid can scroll sideways.
• On a finer grid each note is a block. Tap a slot, then pick a note. Longer and Shorter change its length, and typing - extends it. In Type notes, each note takes one slot, a dash extends the note before it, and a dot rests.
• Harmonize still reads the tune in whole and half beats for now, so notes on finer positions count at the nearest half beat. The notation (MusicXML) download keeps 8ths and longer for now, so finer notes are left out of it.

Chords off the beat. A chord can start or end on any grid slot, for a pushed or anticipated change:

• On a finer grid, drag a chord's right edge: it moves by whole slots (on Quarters it moves by whole beats, as before). − and + next to Lasts also step by one slot.
• Type a length into Lasts: 1.5, 0.75 or a fraction like 4/3 for triplets.
• In the chart text, write it after a colon: C:1.5 G:2.5 or Am:4/3.
• Split in two splits at the slot nearest the middle on a finer grid, and keeps whole beats on Quarters.

Playing styles are written in whole beats, so on a chord that ends off the beat, anything past its end is cut short. The notation download rounds chords in triplets to the nearest 16th.

Put in melody lane, in the Harmonize panel, starts at the bar you've selected and changes only the bars it covers. The panel tells you which bars before anything is written, and whether notes will be replaced or won't fit.

Piano roll

In the full view (not Simple view), turn the melody on, then set Melody above the chart to Piano roll. The roll shows the same tune as the lane, one row per note, higher notes higher. The chords run along the top, and a keyboard down the side names each row and its degree in the key. Rows outside the key are shaded, and the tones of the chord sounding above are lightly marked.

• Draw: tap an empty spot to add a note one grid slot long, and drag to stretch it as you draw. Drag a note to move it in time or pitch, and drag its right end to change its length.
• Select: tap a note to pick it, or drag across empty space to pick everything inside the box. A long press (or Shift-click) adds a note to what's picked. Drag any picked note to move them all.
• Erase: tap a note to remove it.
• Snap keeps notes on the grid chosen in Grid. Turn it off to place notes freely.
• With notes picked: Copy, Paste (where you last tapped), Duplicate (a picked bar fills the next bar), Up and Down by a half step, or by a scale step with Scale steps on, and Delete. Quantize lines the picked notes up with the grid, or every note when none is picked.
• Drag the end of a chord along the top to change its length. Split chord here splits the chord where you last tapped.
• Drag along the bar numbers to loop just those bars when you press Play. Double-tap there to clear the loop.
• On a phone, pinch to zoom in and out, and drag with two fingers to scroll. The tools sit at the bottom of the roll.

The melody is one voice, so a note you add or move shortens or replaces the notes it lands on. Every change is one step for Undo and Redo.

How each note fits. Every note carries a letter, so you don't need to tell colours apart:

Hover over or long-press a note to see its fit. When a chord from outside the key is the reason an outside note works, it says carried by this chord, like a minor iv under a ♭6 or a dominant 7th under a ♭7.

Break away from another song

If you started from another song and can’t get it out of your head, enter its chords (and its tune in the melody lane, if you can), then press Break away in the Song form strip. That chart is kept as the original, and a panel shows how many bars still follow it.

• Bars that still match are tagged in the chart with what matches: chords, notes, or both.
• Up to three bars get ideas. Try swaps in a different chord that keeps your tune’s note, Flip the tune’s shape turns that bar’s notes upside down, and Start a beat later shifts them along (a note on the last beat drops off). Undo reverses any of them.
• Hear the original and Hear yours let you compare them.

Transposing doesn’t count as moving away, and neither does adding colour, so C and Cmaj7 count as the same chord. A bar also counts if it and the bar beside it appear together anywhere in the original, so moving a section doesn’t hide a match. Notes count as matching when three quarters of them still run in the same order, so a new rhythm alone doesn’t count as moving away.

The count measures chords and notes, not how the song sounds, so let your ear decide. It can’t tell you a song is legally safe. The original stays in this browser, and Stop comparing removes it.

Melody paths

With a tune in the melody lane, the panel also offers ways to move the tune itself away from the original. This is in the full view only; Simple view keeps just the bar count and the bar ideas above.

In the full view:

• The why summary sits at the top, closed. Open it for three plain sentences about the stretch you are working on (its shape, its rhythm and where the tension is), the original’s style, and any note that leans toward another. Under them, a small tension line draws each note’s tension against its chord over time, from settled at the bottom to a clash at the top (a clash is drawn as a cross), so a repeated note whose job keeps changing is easy to see. Then one sentence says how often the chords change and which pair of chords the song keeps going back to, for example “The song leans on IV and I (6 times)”, and another names the notes that land on the strong beats.
• How close yours is to the original shows a row for Rhythm, Shape, Exact steps, Tension against the chords and Chord changes, each marked very close, close, some way off or far. When one layer is still very close while the others have moved, a line names it and the bars it covers. The bar count above still treats a new rhythm as matching, while the Rhythm row doesn’t, so a tune can pass the count and still copy the original’s rhythm.
• Keep on a row says you are keeping that layer close on purpose, so it won’t be named as still close. Press it again to undo.
• Work on picks the stretch: each phrase, or the Whole tune. Paths only change notes inside it, and a note held across the edge of the stretch never moves. Move the peak and End on another chord note act on the stretch as a whole, so pick a single phrase to aim them.
• Each path says what it keeps and what it changes, then describes the change in words. Show draws it in the piano roll, and the closeness rows show how close it would be. Hear before and Hear after play the stretch both ways. Take puts it in (Undo reverses it). Another one offers a different version of the same path (if no other version fits the style, it says so and the button goes), and Toss drops it from the list. The first three paths show; More paths shows the rest.
• Same note, new job picks the longest repeated or held note and lists chords that contain it but give it a different amount of tension. Hear plays the chord, and Try (with the chord’s name) puts it in the chart.
• The ghost: Show scrolls to the piano roll and draws only what the path changes: its new notes as dashed outlines, and the notes it would replace struck through with diagonal lines. Notes it leaves alone look as they always do. If you are in the lane, it switches to the piano roll first and says so. While a path is showing, a bar at the bottom of the roll names it, with Take, Toss and Back to paths, so on a phone you don’t have to scroll back up to decide.
• Linked repeats: with Link repeats on, Take says how many sections it changes, for example “Take (changes all 3 Choruses)”. If a note is held across the edge of a section, a copy keeps its own tune, and a message tells you which one.

If the original has chords but no tune (you entered its chords, pressed Break away, and are now writing your own tune), the panel says there is nothing to move away from yet and compares only the chord changes.

Paths respect the original’s style. A tune of only quarter notes gets few rhythm paths, because most rhythm changes would break that style. Only what a path adds is checked, so a note you wrote yourself that the original wouldn’t use doesn’t stop paths elsewhere. If the stretch has no path, try another one.

These are only suggestions, so trust your ear.

Song form: verses, choruses and repeats

The Song form strip above the chart shows the sections in order, for example Verse 1 · Chorus · Verse 2 · Chorus · Bridge · Chorus. Tap one to jump to it and see what you can do with it.

• + Name a section: select a chord at the start of a bar, then choose Intro, Verse, Pre-chorus, Chorus, Bridge or Outro, or type a name. A section runs until the next one starts. In Edit as text, the same thing is a line like [Chorus].
• Repeat after it or Repeat at the end copies a section, with its stretch of the tune. Write a chorus once, then repeat it.
• Drag a section to reorder the song: drag its chip in the Song form strip, or its name above its bars in the chart, and drop it among the chips or anywhere over the chart. A yellow line shows where it will land. Hold Option/Alt to copy it instead. Its stretch of the tune goes with it, and one Undo puts it back. An unnamed opening section that moves is named “Section” so it stays its own section.
• Fold repeats: a section that matches an earlier one of the same name note for note (its chords, and its tune when the melody lane is showing) folds to one line, “Same as bar 5”, so a long song fits on screen. Show opens it, and it opens by itself when the melody cursor moves into it. “Verse 1” and “Verse 2” count as the same name.
• Link repeats: change a chord in one Chorus and every Chorus that matched it changes too; one Undo puts them all back. With a tune in the melody lane, a change that makes the section longer or shorter stays in that one section, so the tune under the others doesn’t move. Turn Link repeats off to change just one.

The chart is still played, exported and printed in full, repeats included; folding only changes what you see.

Melody

Press ♪ Melody beside Chart tools to show a melody lane: a row of beat boxes under each line of chords, one per beat, lined up with the chords above. Press it again to hide the lane; the melody is kept.

• Enter notes: tap a box, then a note on the pad that opens under the chart. The cursor moves to the next beat, so you can put a tune in beat by beat. On a computer, just type: A–G for a note, # or ] to raise it a half step and [ to lower it, - to hold the note before, . for a rest, ↑ ↓ for the octave, ← → to move, Delete to clear.
• Three ways to pick a note on the pad: the note buttons (each black key shows both its names, D♭ and C♯); the Note and Octave menus, which list every spelling and change the selected beat without moving on; or Type notes, a box that takes several at once with sharps and flats written any way (F# G Bb A, E♭ D). It reads them like Harmonize does: | between bars fits each bar from the start of the selected beat’s bar, - holds, . rests and (A B) puts two notes in a beat. The line under the box says how it reads them before you press Put in (or Enter); each note goes in the octave nearest the one before, and the cursor moves on to the next beat.
• Colours show each note against the chord above it: filled green is a chord tone, dashed green a colour note (the chord’s 9th, 11th or 13th, or another note of the key), and a red underline a clash, a note outside both on a strong beat. Clashes aren’t mistakes; they are worth hearing on purpose.
• Hearing it: the melody plays with the chart whenever the lane is showing. Tapping a note plays it over its chord.
• Chords for a melody: Shift-click (or Shift-arrow) to select some beats, then Suggest chords for bars … on the pad. The ideas open in Create → Harmonize, set to go over just those bars; press Add to chart to use one. The melody itself is never changed.
• Tune ideas: with a note selected, Tune ideas for bar … on the pad suggests small changes to the notes in that bar (or Look across the whole tune). A note that clashes with its chord on a strong beat can move to the nearest chord tone above or below, or lean in: a chord tone on the beat with your note half a beat later, where it becomes a passing note. A leap of a 3rd or more can be filled with a note on the “and” of the beat before it. A note held two beats or more can step to its neighbour and back. Each idea says why; Now and With it play the bar both ways with its chords, and nothing changes until you press Use (Undo takes it back).
• Two notes in a beat: press / (or Split the beat on the pad) to split a beat in half, eighth notes in 4/4. The cell shows both notes; tap either half to change it, and Delete on the second half joins the beat again. Arrows step through the halves.
• In Harmonize, Put in melody lane writes a typed melody into the lane from bar 1.

Typing a tune with any number of notes per bar

In Harmonize, put | between bars and each bar’s notes are fitted into the bar, whatever their number. The result won’t be the rhythm in your head, but every note lands in its own bar and the chords line up:

• More notes than beats: the weakest beats are split in two first, from the end of the bar back (in 4/4: beat 4, then 2, then 3, then 1), so the strong beats keep one note each. Up to two notes fit in a beat.
• Fewer notes than beats: the notes go on the strongest beats and are held over the rest.
• Your own grouping: brackets put two notes in one beat where you want them, for example (G# A) C# B A. A bar written with brackets is taken one beat per item, as written.
• Without any bar lines, it is one note per beat as before.

For example, G# G# G# G# | G# A C# B A | A G# F# E C# E | A B A G# F# becomes four quarter notes; then G♯ A C♯ and B–A as two eighths; then A, G♯–F♯, E, C♯–E; then A B A and G♯–F♯.

The melody is saved with the chart and in the Library, travels in share links, and moves when you transpose. It follows time, not chords: if you move a chord, the tune stays where it is and the harmony under it changes. Clear chart clears both. MIDI and MusicXML exports include it on a track or staff of its own.

Arranging the melody for voices or strings

Press Arrange beside ♪ Melody to hear how the tune could be harmonized by a group. No tune yet? The top part then sings a line of its own, one chord tone per chord, each as near as it can be to the one before; it shows in grey in the melody lane until you write your own tune there. Three more parts appear as lanes around the melody lane, each note named with its octave, in pitch order from top to bottom, so you can see how the harmony stacks at every beat. They follow the chords in the chart and change as you write the tune.

Arranging for orchestra

With more than four parts, arrangers don’t write every line independently: they give each section a job, and doubling is how an orchestra gets its weight. Orchestra starts from the string quartet arrangement and builds around it:

A part that only doubles another shares its lane (Vn1+Fl, Vc+Cb). Tap a note for a card that gives every section’s job at that beat, then how the strings were voiced. The score is written at concert pitch (clarinet and horn as they sound), with the double basses in bass clef an octave down.

Choosing the singers

For the vocal styles, Singers sets who sings, and so each part’s comfortable range (hover a part’s name to see it):

Barbershop chooses men’s or women’s voices to fit your tune unless you pick one. A note outside its singer’s range gets a red dot in its lane, and the Arrange bar names the first few, with a fix when there is one: Move the tune down an octave (or up), or Transpose to …, the key that puts the most notes in range. Both can be undone.

Why is that note there?

Tap any note in the parts’ lanes. A card opens for that moment, with its column outlined:

• The voicing, top to bottom: each note, its job in the chord (“the 7th of G7”, “a passing note, not in C”) and how it got there (“holds: a note Am and Dm7 share”, “steps down from G4”, “leaps up a 5th from C3”).
• Why this chord: for example “The tune’s D is not in C, so it gets G7, the chord’s own dominant”, or, in close harmony, how the chord was built (“The tune’s D is the chord’s 9th… it takes the place of the root”).
• The next best voicing and what it loses on: moving the parts further, parallel fifths, leaving out the 3rd, a voice out of range.
• Hear it, Hear the move (the moment before, then this one), Hear the bar (the whole bar, every part) and Hear the next best, so you can compare by ear. The arrows step through the changes.

The same few habits come up again and again: keep the notes two chords share, move by the smallest step, keep the 3rd and 7th, avoid parallel fifths and octaves, and treat a tune note outside the chord as a reason for a passing chord. Those are what an arranger listens for too.

• Try another gives a different arrangement in the same style; First version goes back to the first one.
• Hearing the parts: Play (in the Arrange bar or the Play bar) plays every part with the chart’s chords. Tap a part’s name to mute it (its lane greys out), or S to hear it alone. Muting Piano chords leaves just the voices. While the arrangement is showing, tapping a chord in the chart plays that chord’s stretch of the arrangement, every part you haven’t muted, instead of the chord alone.
• Taking it with you: Export → Download arrangement (MusicXML) writes each part on its own staff in its usual clef (violins and upper voices in treble, viola in alto, tenors in treble an octave down, cello, baritone and bass in bass clef) with chord symbols over the top. MIDI exports put each part on its own track.

The sounds differ only in how notes start and end; they are there to judge the harmony, not to sound like real players. The parts are written at the octave you wrote the tune in, so a low tune gives low parts.

Swap ideas

Select a chord and open the Swap ideas tab. Ideas are grouped (chords that do the same job, recolourings, borrowed chords, chords that lead into the next one, and more). Each idea shows:

• its theory name, such as “Secondary dominant (V7/vi)” or “Modal interchange”;
• a sentence about this exact swap: which notes it keeps, whether it sounds brighter or darker, and where it goes next;
• a voice-leading line: which notes are held and how far each voice moves from the chord before;
• ▶ to hear it in context, A/B to loop the original and the idea bar by bar, and Put in this slot to use it.

Hearing it in context. ▶ plays the chord or chords before it, then the idea, then the chord after. The menu at the top of Swap ideas sets how far back it starts: the chord before, 2 chords or 4 chords. Playback never wraps round the ends of the chart: an idea for the last chord stops on the idea, and one for the first chord starts on it. (The ideas themselves still treat the chart as a loop, since a progression usually repeats.)

Ideas for an empty slot. An empty slot gets an After … group built from the chord before it: after G7, its resolution (Cm7 in C minor), the deceptive move to A♭maj7, a chain on to C7, and the same landing in the other quality. At the end of the chart this group comes first, and the chords that lead back to bar 1 come later, labelled Lead back to … at the top, since bar 1 only follows when the chart loops. Mid-chart, the key’s chords, ranked against the chords on both sides, come first.

Keep note lists every chord containing a note you choose, for example your melody note: every root and every chord type that Chords allowed switches on, and, when slash chords are on, slash chords with that note in the bass (C/G, Am/G, F/G and the rest). The likeliest come first: chords in the key, then borrowed and secondary chords, then chromatic ones, the best of each root before the second best of any. The first 8 show, and Show more opens 24 at a time. When two names mean the same notes over the same bass, the plainer one is listed.

The Chords allowed setting is named at the top of Swap ideas; tap it to change which chord families ideas can use.

Ideas for this progression

Under the chart, three swap ideas from across the whole chart, each of a different kind (borrowed, leading into the next chord, recolouring, chromatic, jazz) and each for a different chord where the chart allows. ▶ plays it in context, Use swaps it in (Undo takes it back), and Other ideas shows the next three. They are the same ideas as in Swap ideas, so a chord’s full list is a tap away. They hide, with the sentence about the progression, while Quiz me is on.

Playing and hearing

• Play in the bottom bar plays the chart; Loop repeats it. Space also starts and stops playback. Changes you make while it plays (adding or swapping a chord, the tempo, the style) are heard from the next beat, without stopping.
• Sound: Piano or Guitar. Guitar plays the actual guitar shapes in your tuning and capo.
• Style: piano can play block chords, a ballad (bass, then chords), a pop pulse or an arpeggio, or one of the two piano parts below; guitar can strum once, play a strum pattern (down, down-up, up-down-up) or fingerpick.
• Smooth voice leading (in Chart tools) keeps the piano’s notes close from chord to chord; Fixed root position plays every chord the plain way.
• The metronome button next to the tempo adds a click on every beat (accented on the downbeat), from the next pass through the chart.
• In a meter made of groups (5/4, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, 12/8), block chords and a single strum are struck again, more softly, at the start of each group (7/8 as 2+2+3), so you hear the meter, not just a longer bar. The metronome accents the same groups.

Broadway and jazz piano

Two piano styles play a whole part rather than one pattern per chord, because what they do depends on the chord coming next and on what the tune in the melody lane is doing. Choose them in the Style menu with the Piano sound. Two lanes appear under the chart, LH and RH, naming what each hand does; tap one to read why, then Hear it or Hear it plain (the same bars as block chords) to compare.

With no tune in the melody lane, the fills come at the ends of two-bar phrases. MIDI export writes the part as planned. These are sketches of the styles, built from a few of their habits, not of any particular pianist or song.

Guitar and piano shapes

The Chord tab shows the chord’s notes, guitar shapes and piano voicings. The shape marked Smoothest path is the one playback uses, chosen so your hand moves as little as possible. Tap any shape or voicing to hear it, then ▶ In context to hear it between its neighbours or Use for this chord to make playback use it. A pinned shape is played whichever sound is chosen: a guitar shape you pinned is what the piano plays too, unless that chord also has a piano pin. The Broadway and Jazz ballad styles write their own voicings, so they don’t use pins.

Under each guitar box are the notes that sound, and the green bass and gold right-hand notes of each piano voicing are written out underneath it. With a capo, the box shows the capo as a gold bar marked CAPO and its fret, fret numbers count from the capo, and the note names are the sounding notes; the Smoothest path badge names the capo it was worked out for. Press Zoom beside Guitar or Piano to see every diagram at about twice the size (press Smaller to go back); the choice is remembered.

Pick a Tuning (standard, half or whole step down, Drop D, Drop C, double drop D, DADGAD, open G, D, E or C) and a Capo. Find the easiest tuning for this chart compares every tuning and capo position for your chords and recommends one, keeping standard tuning unless another is clearly easier.

Export, share and save

Chord symbols and Roman numerals

Two menus in Chart tools change how chords are written, on screen and in what you take away:

The second menu chooses what the chart shows: chord names and numerals (the default), chord names only, or Roman numerals only, or Nashville numbers (1, 4, 5m7, ♭7, 1/3, counted from the key's home note), which puts the numerals in large type with the chord names underneath. The printed lead sheet and Copy chart follow both choices. MusicXML uses your symbol style (with “use symbols” set for Jazz, so notation apps can draw their own triangle and circle), and with Roman numerals only it also writes the numerals under the staff. The Edit as text box always uses Classic spelling, but it reads all three styles, so you can paste a chart copied in any of them.

The Library at the top right saves progressions by name in this browser. You can open, rename, duplicate and delete them (with undo), export the whole library as a file for backup, import it on another computer, and paste a share link or code to open it.

More tools

• Chord finder (under the chart): place fingers on a fretboard or press piano keys, and it names the chord and shows it on the other instrument.
• Harmonize a melody (in Create → Harmonize): type one note per beat (for example E D C D | E E E -, with - to hold and . for a rest) and get three to five progressions, ranked by how many strong-beat melody notes are chord tones. It uses the chart’s key and time, and Chords allowed. Choose where the chords go under Put the chords: at the end of the chart (the default, which keeps everything already there), before the selected chord, over the selected chord and the bars after it, or in place of the whole chart. Then press Add to chart; the message that appears has an Undo button.
• Play chords in from a MIDI keyboard (Chrome, Edge and other browsers with Web MIDI; not Safari): open Chart tools and set MIDI in to your keyboard. In other browsers Chart tools says so instead. A Live bar appears above the Play bar and names whatever you hold, in large letters, as you play: its numeral and what it does in the key at the selected chord (its job, in Simple view), coloured the way the chart is, the keys on a small keyboard, and other names when the same notes could be read two ways (C6 is also Am7/C). The name waits a moment for the chord to settle, so pressing keys one by one doesn’t flicker. Notes held by the sustain pedal count until you lift it. After you let go, the last chord stays, marked Last, and Add to chart puts it after the selected chord. The chord you let go of also appears in the Chord finder with every name it could have. Hear what I play (on to start with) sounds each key through the app as you play, in the Play bar’s Piano or Guitar sound, as loud as you strike it, for as long as you hold it or the sustain pedal holds it; turn it off if your keyboard makes its own sound. Nothing you play goes into the chart until you press Add to chart, which adds the chord a bar long after the selected chord (or into it, if it is an empty slot). The lowest note you play becomes the bass, so playing E under a C chord gives C/E.
• Keys and modes: the chords in your key, and how well your chart fits each mode on the same tonic. Click a chord to hear it; it goes into the chart only when you press Put in bar … (replacing the selected chord) or Add after it.
• Tension curve above the chart shows how much each chord pulls away from home. It is a map, not a score: higher is not better. Most songs rise and settle, and a calm progression of three plain chords is as good as a restless one full of borrowed and altered chords. Use it to see what you made and to try things, not as a target.
• Show voice leading draws each voice’s path through the chart, marking held notes and big leaps.
• Quiz me hides the colours and labels and asks what each chord does; your score is kept.

Rhythmic cycles and drones

The time signature menu also offers Carnatic and Hindustani cycles (Adi talam, Rupaka, Misra and Khanda chapu, Teental, Jhaptal, Rupak taal, Ektal) as grids for placing chord changes, and Create offers a Sa–Pa drone under a mode. These are sketching aids, not authoritative accounts of those traditions.

Keyboard shortcuts

If you hear nothing

• Phones and browsers only allow sound after you tap the page, so the first tap on Play is what starts it.
• Check the volume and where the sound is going (Bluetooth, headphones).
• Open Help → Sound check. It plays two test beeps by different routes and shows what your device reports, which narrows down where the sound stops.

Your data

Everything stays in your browser: your current chart, library, settings and quiz score are saved in this browser’s local storage on this device. There are no accounts and no tracking. Clearing your browser data clears them, so export the library now and then if it matters to you.