a free chord progression generator. lives at tryad.net.
i wanted to mess around with chord ideas for a song. the alternatives wanted my email, or $19/month, or both. so i spent a weekend building this instead of, you know, getting better at writing chord progressions on my own.
picks a key, a scale, a mood, a voicing. spits out a progression. plays it back. exports MIDI. nothing leaves your browser.
under the hood it's actual music theory:
- 9 scales, 12 keys, correct diatonic qualities per scale
- 10 mood templates (pop, sad, happy, epic, jazz, r&b, dreamy, lofi, cinematic, random)
- 6 voicings (triad, 7th, 9th, sus2, sus4, add9)
- secondary dominants (V/V, V/vi, V/iv) at mood-specific rates
- modal interchange (borrowed iv, ♭III, ♭VI, ♭VII)
- cadence-aware endings (authentic / plagal / deceptive)
- voice leading with manual inversion override
- 11 play modes (block, pulse, syncopated, strum, rolled, four arps, alberti, ballad bass+chord)
- piano + guitar visualizer with the literal played voicing
- 5 drum styles synced to tempo
- MIDI export with separate chord + drum tracks
- save to
localStorage, never uploaded
vite + react + typescript + tailwind + tone.js + @tonejs/midi. pure static build. no backend.
pnpm install
pnpm devthen http://localhost:5173. build with pnpm build, output lands in dist/.
| key | action |
|---|---|
space |
play / pause |
g |
regenerate |
cmd/ctrl + s |
save |
cmd/ctrl + e |
export MIDI |
tab |
focus chord |
enter / space (focused) |
preview |
i (focused) |
cycle inversion |
shift + ←/→ (focused) |
move chord |
del (focused) |
remove chord |
MIT. samples are CC from Salamander Grand Piano and nbrosowsky/tonejs-instruments.
triad (the basic 3-note chord) + try (give it a try) + the ry prefix shared with my other ry* sites. the wordmark renders t ry ad with the ry in copper.