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Common questions

User guide

A chord reference for piano and guitar. Everything runs on the device. Nothing is looked up online.

The screen is a stack of panels. They all read from the same two selections, a key and a chord, so changing either one anywhere updates every panel at once.

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The panels

How they fit together

• Two selections, shared by everything: the key comes from the Circle of fifths or the Key panel; the chord comes from the Key panel's cards, the Chord panel, the Piano's Identify button, or a progression. However you set one, every panel follows.
• The key is context, not a filter: nothing is hidden for being out of key. The key decides what is marked as belonging: blue and amber on the instruments, red noteheads on the staff, "borrowed" on a progression card.
• Show only the panels you want: one list does both jobs. Drag a panel to move it, switch one off to take it off screen. It is behind the gear in the toolbar on iPhone and iPad, and in View ▸ Panels… (⇧⌘P) on the Mac. A panel you show again comes back open. Tap any panel's title bar to collapse it, which keeps its selection but takes one line.
• What you choose travels with you: the panels you show and their order go to your other devices along with the key, the chord and your progressions.

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Contents

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Circle of fifths

The keys arranged in fifths, with the key you have selected named above them, in both spellings at the two enharmonic positions, F♯/G♭ and D♭/C♯.

• Outer ring: major keys, in green. Tap one to switch to it.
• Inner ring: the relative minors, in orange.
• Centre: the current key's signature, written on a staff.
• Shading: exactly one wedge is filled solid at a time: the key you have selected, on whichever of the two rings it belongs to. Everything else, wedges and names alike, is muted.

Tapping a ring sets the key, and sets the chord to that key's tonic triad.

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Key

The scale, its chords, and its neighbours.

• Note and mode: major; natural, harmonic and melodic minor; then the modes: dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, locrian.
• Triads / 7ths: switches the chord row between three- and four-note chords.
• Scale row: the correctly spelled notes with their step numbers. Tap a note to hear it.
• Chord row: one card per degree: roman numeral, symbol, scale step, the stack of thirds the chord is built from, and the degree's name: tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, leading tone. Tap a card to make it the current chord and hear it.
• Melodic minor: the raised 6th and 7th are played ascending. Classical practice plays neither descending; jazz keeps the raised 7th. The scale row shows the ascending form, with a note to that effect under it.
• Leading tone or subtonic: the seventh degree is the leading tone only when it sits a semitone below the tonic and pulls up to it. A whole tone below, in natural minor and the flat-seventh modes, it is the subtonic.
• Volume: beside the Triads / 7ths switch, shared with every other play button in the app.
• Footer: the relative and parallel key (tap either to jump there) with how many sharps or flats the key carries at the far right, and below them the pentatonic and blues scales built on the same tonic. Tap any note to hear it.

Chord

Names, spells and plays the current chord.

• Root and type: the type list is searchable and grouped by family. Type min7 or ø to jump to it.
• Stacked thirds: beside the chord symbol: the gaps the chord is built from, largest to smallest. M for a major third, m for a minor, d for a diminished, A for an augmented. A major seventh is MmM. Chords not built in thirds, such as sus, 6th and add9, don't show one.
• Notes and intervals: each note with its interval from the root beneath, spelled from the bass note when the chord is inverted. Tap a note to hear it alone.
• Also written: common alternative spellings of the same chord.
• Inversion: Root, 1st, 2nd, 3rd. The keyboard and the staff re-voice to match.
• Two ways to name a chord: the panel has two entry fields, each labelled with what it takes. Use the first when you know what the chord is called; use the second when you have the notes and want the name.
• Enter a chord name: type a symbol and press return. Jazz glyphs (CΔ7, C−7, Cø7), plain text (Cmaj7, Cm7b5) and slash chords (C/G) all work, and look-alike characters are folded, so ⌥J's ∆ parses as Δ.
• Enter the notes of a chord: type the notes and be told what they spell (C E G, c,eb,g, F# A C# E). Spaces or commas, upper or lower case. The first note is taken as the bass, so E G C comes back as C/E rather than a plain C. Ambiguous sets offer every reading; tap one to make it the current chord.
• Chords containing your selection: fills in as you tap piano keys. A filled pill is an exact match; tap one to select it.
• Footer: whether the chord is in key, its roman numeral, its scale step, and Add to progression.

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Chord progressions

Saved progressions. Each chord is stored as a scale step rather than a fixed root, so a change of key transposes the whole thing and re-spells it correctly.

• Library: the name button opens the list: yours first in alphabetical order, then a Starters heading and the shipped ones, also alphabetical. The ⋯ menu has Rename, New, Duplicate and Delete.
• New progression: asks what to call it as it is created. Leave the name empty and it is numbered for you; rename it later from the ⋯ menu.
• Starters: the six shipped progressions have no key of their own: they follow the Key panel, so there is no key picker on them. Editing or renaming one never changes it. You get your own copy instead, in the current key, and are asked to name it.
• Your progressions: keep the key they were made in. Change it with the key picker, which transposes the whole progression; the Key panel doesn't move them. Use this key everywhere in the ⋯ menu pushes a progression's key to the rest of the app.
• Cards: roman numeral, symbol, scale step, and "borrowed" when the chord is built on a root the key doesn't contain. A chord sitting on a degree of the key isn't borrowed however it is coloured, so a blues reads as I⁷ IV⁷ V⁷ rather than as twelve borrowed bars. Tap to select and hear it.
• Quality follows the key: a chord that was in key when you entered it takes its quality from whatever key the progression is in now, so I – V – vi – IV reads i – v – ♭VI – iv in a minor key. A borrowed chord keeps the sound it was entered with, and a pinned one keeps its root as well.
• Reorder: press a card and drag it where you want it.
• Card menu: long-press a card (right-click on the Mac) for move, insert before or after, duplicate, replace with the current chord, delete, and Pin.
• Add row: under the cards. Appends any degree of the scale with one tap; a chord from outside the key leads the row.
• Pin: locks a chord to an absolute root so it stays put when the key changes. Shown with a padlock.
• Play: runs the progression, highlighting each card. The instrument menu beside it chooses piano or guitar; on guitar the chords are voiced from real fretboard shapes in your tuning and strummed.

Six starters are created the first time you open the panel: I – V – vi – IV, ii – V – I, I – vi – IV – V, the circle of fifths up and down, and a 12-bar blues.

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Notation

The current chord written on a grand staff.

• Chord / Progression: draw either the one chord or the whole selected progression. A progression is written in its own key, with a key signature; a single chord is written without one.
• Above the staff: the chord's name, with its roman numeral above that when a progression is drawn.
• Under the staff: the chord tones as numbers (1 ♭3 5), in the same order the notes stack up.
• Voicing: notes appear as they are voiced, inversions included.
• Red noteheads: a note outside the current key is drawn in red; notes in the key take the ordinary note colour. The staff uses red where the Piano and Guitar use amber, because beside black noteheads red reads as an accidental, which is what an out-of-key note is.

Showing one chord, the staff writes no key signature: every note carries its own accidental, so the chord reads on its own. Showing a progression it writes the signature and lets it do that work. In G major only an F that isn't sharp gets a sign of its own: a natural, cancelling the signature.

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Colour on the instruments

Both the Piano and the Guitar answer the same question in colour, and only that one: is this note in the current key?

• Blue: the note belongs to the key.
• Amber: it doesn't.
• A ring: this is the chord's root. Its fill still shows whether it is in the key, so a root from outside still reads as an outsider.

The staff marks an outsider in red rather than amber: red reads as an accidental beside black noteheads, where on a keyboard of black and white keys amber carries further.

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Piano

A second way to enter a chord: tap it out on the keys, then press Identify. The chord you get becomes the current one, and the Chord, Notation and Guitar panels follow.

• Tap a key: adds the note and sounds it. Tap it again to take it away; clearing a note stays silent.
• Markers: the chord's notes carry their interval from the root, shown once at the octave the chord is voiced in. A note you have tapped that the chord doesn't contain carries its name instead. Blue means the note is in the key, amber that it isn't, and a ring marks the root.
• Small dots: mark the notes that belong to the current key.
• Footer: names the chord your keys spell, then spells it out.
• Part-way there: Identify is available only while what you have tapped spells a chord exactly, so the button itself tells you whether the app recognises the set. Meanwhile the Chord panel lists everything that contains what you have so far.
• Identify: names what you have tapped and makes it the current chord, the same job the Chord panel's note field does for notes you type. Tapping keys alone never renames the chord, so building one up four notes at a time no longer flickers through the wrong names on the way.
• Play / Clear: Play sounds exactly the marked notes. Clear empties the board completely, current chord included, ready for a new one; it fills back in as soon as there is a new chord to show.

The keyboard starts on the chord's bass note, so inversions read left to right.

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Guitar

Shapes are searched on the neck, so every chord type should work in every tuning.

• Tunings: standard, drop D, half step down (E♭), whole step down (D), drop C, open G, open D and DADGAD.
• Diagrams: finger numbers in the dots, ✕ muted, ○ open, note names under each string, the fret number for shapes up the neck, and a barre drawn as a bar. Scroll the row for other positions.
• Dot colour: the same as the Piano's: blue for a note in the key, amber for one outside it, with a ring on the root. The barre is drawn in grey, because it is the hand rather than a note.
• Tap a shape: selects and strums it.
• Footer: the tuning, the shape in compact form (x32010), the interval each string plays, and barre / open tags.

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Playback

• Play buttons: in the Chord, Piano, Guitar and Progressions panels.
• Volume and mute: sit beside them, and are one shared setting.
• Arpeggiate chords: rolls chords instead of striking them together. On guitar it widens the strum rather than turning it on; a guitar chord is always rolled.

The piano and guitar are recordings of real instruments: a Yamaha grand and a Spanish classical guitar, with a small room reverb behind both.

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Printing this guide

The whole guide can go on paper, or into a PDF to keep.

• Print: the printer icon in this guide's toolbar. On the Mac it is also File ▸ Print Help… (⌘P).
• Save as a PDF: on the Mac, choose PDF ▸ Save as PDF at the bottom left of the print panel. On iPhone and iPad, tap the share arrow in the print sheet and choose Save to Files.
• What you get: the guide laid out in one column at page width, with the panels and their descriptions in the order they appear here.

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Preferences

In the toolbar menu on iPhone and iPad; in Chord Therapy ▸ Settings (⌘,) on the Mac.

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Across your devices

Sign in to iCloud and Chord Therapy keeps itself in step across your iPhone, iPad and Mac. There is nothing to switch on.

• Progressions: saved progressions are shared, so one you write on the phone is on the Mac when you open it.
• Settings: the panels you show and their order, the key, chord and progression you have selected, volume and mute, the playback instrument, and the Notation panel's Chord / Progression switch all travel with you.
• The last change wins, setting by setting: each setting travels on its own. Change the key on the iPad and the volume on the Mac and you keep both; neither undoes the other.
• Your own changes stick: what you last did on a device is what that device shows, including after you quit and come back. Another device replaces it only by changing that same setting more recently.
• Signed out: everything still works; it just stays on that one device.

Changes ride iCloud, which delivers them when it will. Usually seconds, sometimes several minutes, and the Mac is much the slowest of the three.

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Two things worth knowing

Notes are spelled, not numbered. F♯ and G♭ are different notes here, and the app keeps the spelling that belongs to the key and chord you chose, so F♯ major comes out F♯ G♯ A♯ B C♯ D♯ E♯, with no stray F. Type A♭7 in a sharp key and it stays A♭7 everywhere on screen.

Progressions are relative. They store scale steps, not fixed roots. That is why transposing works and why the roman numerals are always right. Pin a chord when you want one that doesn't move with the key.