Pick a key, see its 7 diatonic chords, and generate a playable 4-chord progression from common, pleasant-sounding patterns.
🔒 Runs entirely in your browser — no audio or files are uploaded.
Every major or minor scale has 7 notes, and stacking every other note on top of each one builds that key's 7 diatonic chords — the chords that naturally belong to it, using standard music theory with no randomness involved. Progressions, on the other hand, are picked from a set of common degree templates rather than being fully random, so the result is deterministic for the chords themselves but varied for the sequence you get.
A chord built entirely from notes already in the chosen scale — no notes borrowed from outside the key.
Uppercase means major, lowercase means minor, and a degree sign (°) marks the one diminished chord in the key.
Picking 4 chords completely at random would often sound aimless — so progressions are drawn from patterns known to sound pleasant.
Diatonic chords are the chords built only from the notes already in a given scale. Stacking every other note of the scale on top of each of its 7 degrees produces 7 chords, and in standard music theory each degree always comes out as the same chord quality — for example, in a major key the chords are major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished in that order.
Each roman numeral marks a scale degree's position in the key. Uppercase numerals (I, IV, V) are major chords, lowercase numerals (ii, iii, vi) are minor chords, and a lowercase numeral with a degree sign (vii°) is diminished. This is standard notation used throughout music theory.
Picking 4 chords completely at random from the 7 diatonic options would often sound jarring or aimless. Instead, this tool picks from a set of common, pleasant-sounding degree patterns used across countless real songs, such as I-IV-V-I, so every generated progression is musically coherent.
Yes — click any of the 7 chord chips above the generator to hear that chord played by itself.
Yes. In a major key the diminished chord sits on the 7th degree (vii°), while in a natural minor key it sits on the 2nd degree (ii°). Everything else about the diatonic pattern shifts accordingly too.
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