Chord Tone Highlighter

This is a Chord Tone Highlighter. This is a tool that breaks down all kinds of harmonies into their constituent parts. Tap or click on the mouse and it play. Alternatively, if you’re after speedier control, just use your computer keyboard. It’s a kind of sound engine and visual microscope in one. It will help you isolate certain tones in chords, compare close and open voicings and grasp what an inversion does to the colour of a chord.

To begin, select your chord identity using the selector deck up top. You can choose a root note from the ring of twelve, followed by a triad quality (e.g. Major, minor, diminished, augmented). Next, make a selection from the extension grid that represents the upper structure of the chord: Do you want to hear just a triad? A sixth chord? Dominant seventh? Or something more complex; maybe a thirteenth stack? Each choice update immediately in visual readout as well as the chord tones.

How to Use the Chord Tone Highlighter

The role lenses below the selector allow you to turn off or turn back on individual notes of selected chord. These represent each of the harmonic functions in the chord: the root, the third, the eleventh etc. Tapping a lens toggles that tone on and off. This can be helpful when learning about common omissions such as the fifth in a big chord. You can also use the number keys on your keyboard (one through seven) to quickly toggle these lenses on and off without picking up your mouse. The visual display will update to reflect which roles has been activated.

You’ll see here is the register prims which indicates where the notes of your selection fall within the octave span. Below this are the voice lanes, which show each note’s pitch and its role in the chord. Listen to each individual voice by clicking on its lane. This allows you to pinpoint the contribution of say, the melody line at the top of the song, or the bass note, to the total mix of sounds. As you alter voicing, or the chord itself, the lanes refreshes automatically. Clicking on any of the keys on the piano map below will also allow you to hear any particular pitch you select.

To then shape the chord without changing the notes, use the voicing lathe controls. The turn treble downward button drags the top note downwards while the turn bass upward button pushes the bottom note upwards an octave. This means that you can investigate various inversions and how they sound. The buttons have been mapped to the V key and Shift+V keys on your keyboard so you can make adjustments quickly. Use these to gather the voices together again into a more compact root position or fan them out to spread across register.

Voicing pocket saves and compares multiple arrangements. To save the current voicing, click pocket current as A. Next, move some of the voices around on the lathe controls or even change the chord. Click contrast A to B to play back what you saved followed by the new voicing. It’s a great way to listen to slight variations in inversions and spacing side by side. At any point you can also recall pocket A to jump back to where you started.

All the tones are displayed below on a virtual piano keyboard. The active chord tones is tinted and the currently voiced notes are represented by solid bars underneath each key. You can click on a key to hear it played. When it’s selected, you can use arrow keys to move focus around the piano. To sound the focused key press Space or Enter. This gives you a chance to explore hands-on, linking the abstract chord symbols to where they sit physically on the instrument.

Here are some practical tips to make the best use of this tool. Mute the fifth of a major chord and listen to how stable it remains. Now try muting the third and you’ll notice the quality becomes ambiguous. How about using the fan open button to see how spreading the voices clarifies the harmony? Save a close position voicing then fan it open and compare the two. This emphasises the difference between dense and open textures. You can alter the master volume slider to suit your listening environment too.

There’s a handy guide for conventions and keyboard shortcuts in the help panel. There’s a button in the header that says how to play which expands the help panel. From here, you’ll find how to use keys for piano navigation and the role lenses. You can learn about displaying compound intervals in the two octaves, and more.

To remove any distraction from your browser and really hone in on the instrument, use fullscreen mode. The display is maximized so you can see the controls and piano easier.

To continue this, start adding other extensions and variations on the chords. Really listen for what the third brings to the flavour, and how the extension colours the harmony. And use the contrast function to A-B the voicings you try out. Soon enough, it’ll become intuitive about which sounds work together and which create a richer harmony from the individual notes. It’s made to be explored; go ahead and mess around with changing the root note or muting some of the roles/voices to get the sound you’re after. You should of tried different than the default settings first. Actually, it might be more comfortabley to just play around.