ChordPad

ChordPad is a two-ring circle of fifths in the piano roll’s right sidebar. The outer ring holds the major triads, the inner ring their relative minors. Click a wedge and the track’s instrument plays the chord through its effects; drag the wedge into the grid and the chord becomes notes. Quick buttons add sevenths, suspensions and extensions, and a bass selector turns any chord into a slash chord.

When to use it

Sketch a progression before you can play it. Hear what a borrowed chord does under a melody. Build block chords quickly for a pad, then hand them to the strummer or arpeggiator. The pad serves pitched instruments; a drum kit’s pad layout does not show it.

Controls

Song key

The key is a project setting shared by every clip and saved with the song. Setting it rotates the wheel so the tonic sits at twelve o’clock, with the six diatonic triads highlighted around the top; a minor key puts the minor tonic there with its relative major above. The seventh diatonic chord is diminished and made with the dim modifier. Changing the key never transposes existing notes. With no key the wheel starts at C and A minor without highlights.

Choosing a chord

Click any wedge, or focus it and press Enter or Space, to hear it. The center shows the chord name and its pitch classes. The quick buttons are 7, maj7, 6, add9, sus2 and sus4; More reveals 9, 11, 13, dim, aug and 5. One extension and one triad shape combine, and major or minor comes from the ring, so 7 on C is C7 and 7 on Am is Am7. Click an active button to turn it off, or Reset chord to clear modifiers and bass while keeping the root and octave.

Bass

Bass is an interval from the chord root: Root, ♭2, 2, ♭3, 3, 4, ♭5, 5, ♭6, 6, ♭7 or 7. Anything but Root adds that pitch below the chord, so C with 3 gives C/E. The interval follows later root choices and the slash name follows the result. Octave runs 0 to 6, default 3.

Inserting

Drag a wedge into the grid. The horizontal position chooses the grid cell, Alt bypasses snap, and the pitch comes from the pad rather than where you drop. Ghost notes preview the result; release outside the grid or press Escape to cancel. Every inserted note uses the pencil’s remembered length, clipped at the end of the clip, and the drop selects all of them so you can move the chord or set its velocity as one.

Tips

• Set the song key first. The highlighted wedges tell you which chords sit inside the key without naming the theory, and the ones outside are easy to find when you want them.
• Short preview, long ear: a chord auditions for under a second, so click through candidates quickly and insert the one that lands.
• The same pad opens under each block of the chord track, where its choice retunes other parts instead of inserting notes.