Chord progression generator

A chord progression generator that plays and exports

A chord progression is the order of chords under a song. A good one carries the mood before there is a melody, a beat or a lyric. This free chord progression generator gives you one in a click: choose a key and a style, press Generate, and the chords play as a loop. If you like what you hear, you can have it in your DAW as MIDI a few seconds later. Call it a chord generator, a chord progression maker or a MIDI chord generator: it is the same tool, and it is free.

It is built for the moment every producer knows: a blank project, a feeling and no first chord. Generate until something sticks, lock the chords that work, change the rest, and take it from there.

How the chords are chosen

This is not a random picker. For every request the generator mixes four sources and keeps the combinations that pass a set of musical checks.

First, the loops of the style you chose: the progressions that define pop, lo-fi, house, bossa nova and the rest, written as Roman numerals so they fit any key. Second, real progressions: it looks through about 15,000 chord sequences from open music datasets for ones with the same shape. Third, a statistical model of which chord tends to follow which, counted from those same progressions, with a smoothing method called Kneser-Ney so that rare moves are not ruled out. Fourth, a few named variations, like a relative minor swap or a borrowed chord, that change a classic loop without breaking it.

A check then throws out progressions that leave the key, repeat themselves or make moves almost nobody makes. One of the best of what is left is picked at random, so pressing Generate again gives you something else that is still good.

Is it an AI chord progression generator?

Many people search for an AI chord progression generator, so here is the plain answer. There is no neural network in this tool. The statistical model, the lookup of real progressions and the rules run on your device in a fraction of a second. They learn from real music in the sense that they count what real songs do. We do not call it AI because we would rather you know exactly what you are using.

What you get from that choice is speed and control. A progression appears the moment you press the button, you can see which kind of source it came from, and every result is one a songwriter could have written.

Key, scale, style, mood and colour

Key is the tonic. Scale is major, minor or one of four modes (Dorian, Mixolydian, Lydian, Phrygian); leave it on Auto and the mood and the style choose it. Style is the genre, which decides the loops, the chord vocabulary, the tempo and the bass pattern. Surprise me picks a style for you.

Mood steers the scale and the colour. Happy leans to major and Mixolydian, sad and dark to minor and Phrygian, dreamy to Lydian and Dorian with richer chords. Colour is how much is stacked on each chord: simple triads, sevenths, ninths and elevenths, or the altered chords of jazz. Style default lets the genre decide, so lo-fi comes back with sevenths and ninths and pop with plain triads.

A few styles, like trap, techno and reggaeton, are written in minor: pick a major scale for them and they answer in their own minor, and the key label under the button says which one you got. Some styles also do not use the richest chords, so a rich setting there is toned down to what the style knows. Length is 4 or 8 bars, with one or two chords per bar. Change the key after you have a progression and the chords move with it, voicings included.

Lock a chord, change a chord, keep the rest

Every card has a lock. Lock the chords you want to keep and the button turns into Re-roll the unlocked chords: the others are rewritten so that they still make sense next to the ones you locked.

The pencil on a card opens the chords that could replace it. They are ranked by how well they fit after the chord before and before the chord after, using the same statistical model. You can also type a chord yourself, like Dm7 or F#maj9, and it goes into the line with the voicing rebuilt around its neighbours.

From the browser to your DAW

Download MIDI gives you one file with two tracks: the chords, as held chords or in the rhythm of the style, and a bass line that follows the roots of the chords. Drop it on any instrument in Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic, Cubase, Reaper or Bitwig, and change the sound, the voicing and the rhythm there. The tempo is saved in the file.

Copy chords puts the symbols and the Roman numerals on your clipboard as text, ready for a chord sheet or a message to a bandmate. Download WAV saves the loop, played twice with the built-in piano or pad, as a quick reference.

Reading the Roman numerals

Under each chord you see a Roman numeral. It names the chord by its place in the key, so the same progression works in any key. I is the home chord, IV and V are its neighbours, and a small letter, like vi, means a minor chord. In C major, I, V, vi, IV is C, G, Am, F. In A major it is A, E, F#m, D. Same sound, different pitch.

The label above the name, Home, Away, Tension or Colour, is the job the chord does: it rests, moves away, asks for a resolution, or adds colour.

Who uses a chord generator

Producers use it to start a track somewhere new, or to find the chord that fixes a loop that goes nowhere. Beatmakers use it for the chords under a lo-fi or trap beat. Songwriters and singers use it to hear a mood in their own key before they write a topline. DJs and remixers use it to find chords for a bootleg or a mashup. Teachers use the Roman numerals and the piano view to show how a progression works in every key.

Chord progression ideas: the common ones and the sad ones

If you would rather start from a classic, these are the common chord progressions people reach for. I, V, vi, IV is the loop under a large part of pop. I, vi, IV, V is the doo-wop progression of the 1950s. vi, IV, I, V is the same four chords started from the relative minor. ii, V, I is the jazz cadence. In C major, I, V, vi, IV is C, G, Am, F.

Sad chord progressions mostly live in a minor key. i, VI, III, VII, in A minor Am, F, C, G, is the usual start, and i, iv, VII, III is another common one. To get them here, set the mood to Sad or the scale to Minor and press Generate until one sticks. The loops above are also a good way to check what the generator hands you: the Roman numerals under each card tell you which one you got.

Tips for chord progressions that sound finished

Keep three chords of the loop and change one. A loop with one surprise sounds more human than a loop of four new chords. Try the same chords with the bass line off, then on: the bass decides how heavy the loop feels. Switch Rhythm from Held chords to Style rhythm to hear the genre, then use the held chords with your own groove in the DAW.

Where the chord data comes from

The progressions are learned from open datasets, used under their licenses: McGill Billboard 2.0 (CC0), POP909 (MIT), Rock Corpus (CC BY 4.0, de Clercq and Temperley), ChoCo (CC BY 4.0), the MPB Corpus (CC BY 4.0), WaivOps NRG-CP (CC BY 4.0), chordlm-mandopop (CC0), OpenEWLD (MIT), the S3 Symphony set (MIT), Free MIDI Chords by ldrolez (MIT) and the AHM Affective Harmony Machine (MIT). Thank you to everyone who built and shared them.

The generator reads chord sequences only. There is no audio, no melody and no lyric in this tool, and what you export is yours.

What it does not do

It writes chords, not melodies, and the voicings are for a piano, not a guitar, so there are no chord diagrams. The built-in synth is a quick sketch sound; the MIDI is meant for your own instruments. It is a beta, so tell us what you would like to see.

To find the chords of an existing song, use the chord finder to name the notes you hear, or turn a recording into notes with audio to MIDI. To check the key of a track, try the key finder.