Tutorial · 2 of 5
How to use the chord builder
The chord builder is a harmony notebook with a built-in band. You build the chords, arrange them in bars and hear everything playing in a loop, like at a rehearsal.
The screen in four parts
- Transport bar, at the top: play, tempo, time signature, swing and mix.
- Progression: the chord sequence, bar by bar.
- Selected chord: where you edit the chord you clicked.
- Key and scale and Build from notes: helpers for choosing chords that fit.
Building your first progression
- Start from a preset. In "Preset progressions", pick a well-known sequence and press play. It's the quickest way to understand the tool.
- Click a chord to edit it. In "Selected chord", change the root (the note that names the chord) and the type: major, minor, seventh and others.
- Add and rearrange. "+ Chord" adds a new one at the end, "Duplicate" copies the selected one and the ◀ ▶ arrows change its position. You can also drag with the mouse; on a phone, press and hold before dragging.
- Adjust the duration. Each chord can last from an eighth note to several bars. Everything is counted in eighth notes.
- Change key whenever you like. The −½ step and +½ step buttons transpose the whole progression, handy for finding a comfortable singing range.
Inversion, bass and smooth voice leading
The inversion changes which chord note sits at the bottom. A C major in root position has C in the bass; in first inversion, E; in second, G. The Bass field lets you choose any note for the bass, creating chords such as C/E or G/B.
With Smooth voice leading on, the builder picks the inversions that make the notes move as little as possible from one chord to the next. The result sounds more connected, the way an experienced pianist would play it.
The band
In "Band", choose a "Preset combination" or build your own: steel-string or nylon-string acoustic guitar, clean or distorted electric guitar, piano, electric piano, bass and drums. Each instrument has its own groove, volume and pan (position between the left and right speakers).
In the transport bar, Swing gives the eighth notes a lilt, as in jazz and blues. Metronome keeps time and Count-in counts one bar before starting, so you can come in playing along.
Finding the next chord
In "Key and scale", choose the key and scale of the song. The harmonic field shows the chords that grow out of that scale, as triads or seventh chords. Click one to add it at the end or replace the selected chord. If you don't know this concept yet, read the tutorial Major and minor harmonic field.
In "Build from notes", go the other way round: click notes on the keyboard or the guitar neck and the builder tells you which chord they form.
Save it and take it with you
- Save as stores the progression under a name in "My progressions". It stays saved in this browser.
- Chord sheet opens a page with the chords, guitar diagrams, tablature and keyboard. From there, once signed in to your account, you can download the sheet as PDF or the score as MusicXML (an .xml file that opens in MuseScore, Finale and Sibelius).
- Download WAV delivers the progression played by the band as stereo WAV audio.