The Chord Player
Play the key, not the keyboard.
The Chord Player is the writing surface in Baking Powder. Pick a key and a scale in the top bar, and every chord in that key becomes a button that is already on screen. Press one and it sounds instantly, fully voiced, on every track you have armed. Hold it, scrub across it, latch it, or drag it straight into the arrangement.
There are no wrong notes and no menus. The whole chord vocabulary of the key sits in front of you, and the good dissonances are one press away.
The palette
This is the full palette in C major, as the app lays it out. Seven columns, one per degree. Eleven chord qualities in every column, a secondary dominant at the bottom of each, and controls for borrowing, altering, inverting, and shifting at the top.
Degrees, not note names
Most tools make you think in note names. Is F# in E major? The Chord Player thinks in scale degrees instead. The columns are the I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, and vii° of whatever key you are in, and the top bar offers 12 roots and 6 modes.
Each column header shows its roman numeral and the name of the chord it currently plays. Uppercase is major, lowercase is minor, and ° marks diminished. Chord spelling follows the key, so flat keys read Eb rather than D#, the way a musician would write them.
| Mode | Degree qualities |
|---|---|
| Major | I · ii · iii · IV · V · vi · vii° |
| Minor | i · ii° · III · iv · v · VI · VII |
| Dorian | i · ii · III · IV · v · vi° · VII |
| Phrygian | i · II · III · iv · v° · VI · vii |
| Lydian | I · II · iii · iv° · V · vi · vii |
| Mixolydian | I · ii · iii° · IV · v · vi · VII |
Anatomy of a column
Every column is the same instrument, top to bottom.
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1
Borrow and alter. The parallel pill borrows this one column from the parallel mode. ♯3 and ♭7 raise the third or flatten the seventh. The pills appear only where they can act.
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2
Bass position. 1st and 2nd move the bass alone, for slash chords with the harmony held still.
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3
Octave. −1 and +1 shift the whole column's voicing an octave down or up.
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4
The header. The roman numeral plus the current chord. Press it to play, and drag the grips on its edges into the arrangement.
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5
Eleven qualities. Every row is playable, from the plain triad to Dm7sus4, voiced from this degree and spelled by the scale.
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6
The DOM row. The secondary dominant that pulls into this column. On the seventh column this cell is a reset button for the whole palette.
Eleven qualities per degree
Every column carries the same eleven rows. The labels follow the scale, not a generic template. The same row reads Cmaj7 on I, Dm7 on ii, and Bø7 on vii°, so the palette always names what you are about to hear.
| Row | What it is | On the C major I column |
|---|---|---|
| Triad | The plain chord | C |
| 5 | Power chord, the third dropped | C5 |
| add9 | Triad plus a 9th on top | C(add9) |
| 6 | The 5th swapped for a 6th | C6 |
| 6/9 | 6th and 9th together | C6/9 |
| 7 | Seventh chord | Cmaj7 |
| 9 | 7th plus 9th | Cmaj9 |
| 11 | 7th, 9th, and 11th | Cmaj11 |
| sus2 | 3rd lowered to the 2nd | Csus2 |
| sus4 | 3rd raised to the 4th | Csus4 |
| 7sus4 | sus4 plus the 7th | Cmaj7sus4 |
One guard runs quietly underneath. On degrees where the diatonic 9th would sit a half step over the root, the add9, 9, and 6/9 rows swap the 9 for a high 11. You get B°(add11) instead of a grinding b9 cluster. The voicing is protected and the label tells the truth about it.
The last row of each column is DOM, the secondary dominant. It is always a true dominant seventh built a fifth above the column's root, the V7 that pulls into that degree. In C major, DOM under vi plays E7. Borrowed tension and release in one press, with no theory homework. On the seventh column the cell becomes reset. One press returns every column to its defaults, and anything still sounding morphs to its reset voicing instead of cutting off.
Why one press sounds huge
A chord player lives or dies on its voicing. The home shape here is five notes spread across four octaves. The root lands twice in the bass, in octaves 1 and 2, for immediate sub weight. The third and fifth sit as a cluster in octave 3. An octave root rides on top. Extensions stack onto that frame, so voicings run four to eight notes.
Inversions move only the bass. 1st puts the third in the bass pair, 2nd puts the fifth there, and the cluster above does not move. That is the sound of a bassline walking under a held harmony. C, then C/E, then F, in two clicks, without the whole chord lurching around.
Playing it
Press any row and the full voicing sounds immediately on every armed track. Release and it stops. The pressed row becomes the column's selection, so the header follows what you last played.
Keep the mouse down and drag. Every row the pointer crosses takes over from the last, across rows and across columns, so one sweep of the hand auditions a whole progression. The gaps between rows are sticky and never stutter the sound.
The top bar HOLD pill latches chords, one per track. Press a chord and it keeps ringing after you let go. Press it again for silence, or press a different chord to replace it. A latched drone survives switching views and editing other tracks. It holds until you stop it.
Toggle an inversion, octave, borrow, or alteration while a chord is sounding and it morphs in place. Only the notes that changed retrigger, and shared pitches keep ringing. Sound design on a held pad, live.
The top bar VEL field sets how hard every press plays, 1 to 127. On the Core synth, velocity drives loudness and filter brightness together, so soft presses come out quieter and darker, like a real instrument.
Borrow and alter, per column
Four small controls sit above each header. They are set per column, so each degree carries its own state, and they compose.
Borrows this one column from the parallel mode. Major third modes flip to natural minor, minor third modes flip to major. In C major, flipping iv gives you Fm. In A minor, flipping V gives you the major dominant. Only that column changes. Everything around it stays diatonic.
Raises a minor or diminished third to major. That unlocks the plain II, III, and VI triads that no diatonic mode provides. On the diminished column it also naturalizes the flat fifth, so vii° becomes a true major triad. Add the 7th row and you have built a real applied dominant.
Flattens a major seventh, so the 7th family rows play dominant. Imaj7 becomes I7 and IVmaj7 becomes IV7. With the diatonic V7 that completes the blues trio in one key, with no workarounds.
The pills appear only where they can do something. ♯3 does not show on a column that is already major, and ♭7 does not show where the seventh is already flat. In C major the V column shows neither, because V is born dominant. The pill row itself teaches you what each degree can become.
Everything you drag into the arrangement snapshots the column's settings at that moment, so tweaking a column later never rewrites what is already in your song.
From the palette to the song
Every column header carries a drag grip on each edge. Drag one onto any bar of any instrument track and the column's current chord lands there as a clip, voicing, label, and all. Hold Shift and every row becomes a drag source, so you can take the exact quality you want, the Dm11 itself, straight to a bar.
Drops are data, not references. A dropped chord is baked into real MIDI notes, stamped with its chord name and the key it was written in. Change the song's key afterward and the parts you laid down do not silently respell. What you wrote is what plays. Open any drop in the piano roll to edit it note by note, and edited chords wear a small dot so you can see where you diverged from the original.
A fourth surface, Progressions, deals in whole moves. Draggable cards like I V vi IV, resolved through the same key and scale machinery, with looping audition. Drag a card and four bars land at once.
One press, many instruments
The palette fans out over the armed set. Shift click several instrument tracks and one press plays all of them, each track reading the same chord through its own setup.
A plain track sustains the full voicing. Add HOLD and it drones while your hands move on.
A track with the Arp device on turns the held chord into motion, with 18 chord orders to run it through.
Or draw a step riff on the Arp. It collapses the chord to its root and transposes the riff through your progression.
One press can sustain a pad, arpeggiate a pluck, and drive a bass riff at once. Three parts, one finger. Hit record and everything you play lands in the arrangement with its velocities.
Four surfaces, one instrument
The Chord Player is surface A of four, switched by one control in the header. All four drive the same armed tracks, the same HOLD, and the same Arp devices. Four grips on one instrument.
Chord Player
The whole vocabulary of the key, laid out as buttons. This page.
Triad grid
Twenty four raw major and minor triads, chromatic, for leaving the key on purpose. Cells light up when they are diatonic.
Piano
A full keyboard for melodies and free playing. Your computer keyboard plays it too.
Progressions
Cards that drop four bars of a classic progression at once, with looping audition.
Played, not configured
Every choice in Baking Powder is tested against one question. Does this feel like playing an instrument, or operating software? The Chord Player is the clearest answer. Writing chords is playing them, and the first chord you press sounds like a record.