Build your own.
Pick a key. Pick a scale. Click chords to assemble a progression. Hear it back. Watch the voice leading. See where tension builds and where it resolves. The theory is not rules — it is what you discover when you listen to what you built.
Click chords above to build your progression
Up to 16 chords. Click the X to remove.
C Major
Closed position stacks all notes within a single octave — compact, dense, textbook. Open position spreads notes across octaves by moving inner voices up or down an octave. The pitch classes stay the same. The spacing changes. Listen for how the open voicing sounds wider, more spacious, while the closed voicing sounds tighter and more concentrated. Neither is better. They serve different contexts.
Key and scale determine which seven chords are available. Major gives you three major, three minor, one diminished. Minor inverts the balance. Modes shift the colors.
Click chords to add them. Each chord plays a preview so you hear it in isolation. The number between chords shows common tones — more common tones means smoother voice leading. Click a chord in your sequence to remove it. Drag a chord left or right to voice-lead it to a neighbor — right for ascending motion, left for descending.
Hit play and watch the keyboard light up. The voice leading panel shows how smoothly each chord connects. The harmonic rhythm bar shows the ebb and flow of tension. Tonic is home. Dominant pulls away. Predominant sets up the pull.
Strong progressions tend to end on a dominant-to-tonic motion (V → I or vii° → I). This is the strongest resolution in tonal harmony. The leading tone wants to resolve up by a half step.
Smooth voice leading keeps individual notes moving by small intervals. The best progressions sound inevitable because each voice takes the shortest path to the next chord.
Common tones between adjacent chords create continuity. Two chords that share two of three notes feel connected. Two chords that share nothing feel like a jump.
Harmonic rhythm — how fast the function changes — creates pacing. Staying on tonic feels stable. Alternating tonic and dominant feels like breathing. Staying on predominant builds anticipation.
There are no wrong progressions, only ones you have not listened to carefully enough. If it sounds good, it is good. Theory names the patterns. It does not gatekeep them.