Harmonization worktable
Diatonic Chord Explorer
Stack thirds on every scale degree, expose each voice, then shape the seven native chords into a progression with minimal motion.
Seven scale-degree stacks
Choose a stack to hear and dissect it. Its notes are spelled from the selected key, not renamed enharmonically.
Previous tray chord → bench
Smaller total movement usually produces a smoother connection. “Tighten the voices” finds the nearest inversion automatically.
Progression tray
Select a tray chord to return it to the workbench; each new stack is voiced near the previous one.
Hero traversal
The stacked-scale staircase
Hear the scale transform from a single-note line into seven complete tertian structures. Each rung lights when its scheduled chord arrives.
Mouse & touch
Tap a degree stack to focus and sound it. Tap a large tone layer to mute or restore that chord member. Use the inversion rail, functional filters, cadence stamps, and progression tray directly.
Keyboard map
Tab reaches every control. On a degree card, Left/Right moves between degrees, Space sounds and focuses, and Enter weaves it into the tray. Number keys 1–7 focus a scale degree. Escape hushes scheduled sound.
Convention & tips
Chords are built in diatonic thirds from major or natural minor; natural minor keeps its minor v and subtonic VII. The tray begins I–IV–V–I (or i–iv–v–i). Compare inversions by watching the semitone movement map.
You’ll be able to create progressions right in your browser, investigate voice leading, and even stack harmonies with Diatonic Chord Explorer. Every feature is controlled via mouse clicks (or your computer keyboard for speedier use).
There are four distinct sections: a progression tray, a detailed workbench, a grid of seven scale-degree cards, and a global control panel.
How to Use the Diatonic Chord Explorer
The first thing you do is pick a tonic from the dropdown menu in the top left-hand corner. It offers you all twelve chromatic roots. Then select either Major or Natural Minor mode which sits next to it. These options will instantly recreate the seven diatonic stacks based on your selection. Use the Triad/Sevenths option to alter how high the stack should of go. This means the chords will have either three or four notes. Finally, use the master volume slider on the right to adjust the volume up or down as desired.
At a glance, there are seven cards total for your chosen scale (shown in the main grid). Tap on any card to zoom in on it and listen to the chord. Cards can be filtered by their functional family through buttons beneath the section heading. Choose Tension, Departure or Tonic anchoring chords; this dims out unused stacks so you can zoom in on particular harmonic roles.
Once you’ve settled on a chord, the workbench (left) shows you its anatomy. These button (Root, 1st, 2nd, 3rd) let you cycle through inversions. That re-orders the notes in different ways. Then below, you have all the tones of individual chords. Click one to silence and then bring back into the mix. It lets you break down the harmony and listen for contribution of each voice.
On the right is the voice-leading microscope, displaying movement of the notes from the previous chord in the tray up to the chord you’re currently looking at. The smaller the total of semitones, the smoother transition is.
Weave chords into the tray below to build your progression. Once you focus a stack, hit Weave into tray to include it in sequence. Up to eight chord are stored in the tray. To edit one of those chords, just click on it to bring it back to workbench. Click Tighten the voices to automatically find closest inversion based off the previous chord. Or you can Lift the last chord and/or Return the tray to an anchor tonic alone.
There are preset recipes that give you a starting point for common progressions. Once you click on a recipe stamp, such as Open an IV, I plagal gate or Lay a ii, V, I runway, it fills the tray with those chords and plays them.
The bottom part is hero section where you see whole scale represented as a staircase. Pressing Climb all seven stacks makes the harmonies climb up, while pressing Descend the harmonic staircase makes them go down. You can press Hush the ladder to turn off any scheduled playing.
The keyboard interface make the process much faster. Simply tap on one of the numbers from 1-7 for immediate access to that scale degree. The left and right arrow keys takes you to next degrees when a chord card has focus. Tap Enter to insert the currently displayed chord in your progression, or Space to hear it play. Tab will cycle through all interactive controls. Esc will stop any playing audio.
Explore using the voice-leading microscope for best effects. Experiment with both sevenths and triads to hear what difference that extra tension makes on the harmonic sound. Get used to moving around in the widget using the family filters; you can jump from one group of functionally related chords to another. Begin your exploration with the tonic triad and expand outwards.