The harmony keys
Along the bottom of the window are the harmony keys: a big key for each chord of the song’s key, numbered I to vii in Roman numerals. Hold one and its chord plays. They are a way to hear the chords of a key, to find the chords of a song by ear, and to see, while a song plays, which chord sounds and where it is likely to go next. F8, or **View
Harmony keys**, hides them and shows them again.
The keys
Each key shows the chord’s numeral, its name, and what it does in the key, in a word and a colour:
| Colour | Word | Chords in C major | What they do |
|---|---|---|---|
| blue | tonic | I (C), iii (Em), vi (Am) | home, or near it |
| green | subdominant | ii (Dm), IV (F) | away from home |
| orange | dominant | V (G), vii° (Bdim) | tension, pulling back home |
What chords do: numerals and functions explains the numerals and the three functions.
Hold a key with the mouse, or press 1 to 7 on the computer keyboard, to play its chord on the channel selected in the channel rack (“Hold a key or press 1 to 7 to play on “Lineup Osc”“). While it sounds:
- its notes light up on the small keyboard at the right;
- the line of hints at the top of the window spells it out: “IV: F major (F A C), subdominant: away. Key 4.”;
- the status bar names it: “F: F major, chord IV of C major.”;
- the chords that often come next get a frame, the most usual one the brightest, and the line next to the keys names the move: “F → G: step up to the dominant”.
While the music plays, the key of the chord you hear lights up, and the chords that often follow it are framed, so you can watch a song’s harmony move.
The controls at the left
- Key: the song’s key note and scale. Picking another moves the song into it, as described in Keys and modes. While the playhead is past a key change, Now in A major appears under it, and the keys are that key’s chords.
- Time: the song’s time signature (see Tempo, time signatures and key changes), and how many steps a bar has.
- Triads, 7ths and 9ths: chords of three notes (every other note of the scale), four (with the seventh) or five (with the ninth). In C major, V is G with triads, G7 with sevenths and G9 with ninths.
- The hints list, Detailed, Short or Minimal: how much the hints explain, here and in the piano roll. Detailed gives whole sentences, Short the same in a few words, Minimal only the chord names.
- 🔍 Find the key: listens to the song and says which key it is in (see Keys and modes).
When the key is a pitch-class set, a twelve-tone row or a micromode instead of a major or minor scale, the keys play groups of its notes, and the buttons choose how many (see Beyond keys: sets, rows and micromodes).
Playing chords to the band
MIDI > Accompaniment follows chords turns a keyboard into an arranger keyboard: while the music plays, the chord you hold on a MIDI keyboard or the computer keyboard becomes the chord of the accompaniment. The chords and the bass line keep their rhythm and move to your chord from their next note. One key plays its major chord, two keys a minor third apart its minor chord. The last chord stays until you play another, and the written notes come back when playback stops; the song itself does not change.