ChordKit 4+

Simple Chord Library

I was looking for a tool to help me with triads, alternate chord voicings and dropped root forms and ChordKit does exactly that. It's free but I wanted to support active development and you should too. I'd love to see the collections expanded.

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much for the kind review. I'd love to hear more about how you're using ChordKit and ask you some follow-up questions regarding how you'd like collections to be expanded. If you're interested, please feel free to email me at hello@hdthomas.com.

Does what I want but...

I finally found an app that I can document chords I use and that's great. and the app looks good.
However the downside is the cumbersome interface.
Saving chords is a bit difficult.
It could use drag and drop so I can drag the tabs into Garageband or other DAW. That would be super helpful.
Also I can't seem to change the names of the collections. Maybe you can and I haven't figured it out. yet.

Finally a developer who gets it

I’ve tried for ages to find an app that simply allows me to save my favorite chords & be able to categorize them into separate folders. I’m not sure why this is such an abstract concept, but the only other apps that even allow chord saving are either crazy expensive, force you to save all chords into a single disorganized folder (forcing you to manually reorganize chords alphabetically), bloated with large file-size videos showing how to finger chords.

Aside from my delight of being able to save chords, I also like how the app is very clean, visually pleasing, relatively simple to navigate, and affordable. All of the features were immediately available without payment, though I opted to pay the beyond fair price of $2.99 regardless.

My only criticism with the app so far, is I encountered an issue with not being able to change the drop down option inside the favorited chords window. For whatever reason this got stuck and required a restarting of the app. After doing so the drop-down began working properly.

As for features that I’d love to see implemented…

1) I wish there was an option to hear what a chord sounds like. Many chord based apps include a play button along with a way to select from a few different instruments for sound playback of a chord, such as piano, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, etc. An option to choose between a strum or arpegiated playback of chords would be a nice addition as well.
2) It would be great to have the ability to organize non-diatonic borrowed chords from within a saved chord folder. For example, I currently have a folder of my favorite chords in the key of Dm, and a separate folder for borrowed chords for the key of Dm. The ability to have a way to keep all of these chords contained within a single folder would be handy. This could be done by automatically separating the borrowed chords from the diatonic chords. For example: including a separate section within a folder titled “Non Diatonic Chords”, or having these borrowed chords displayed in a different color. An option in the app settings could be ticked that would allow the user to designate a particular chord folders to include this functionality.

3) While this may be outside the intended scope of the app, an option to construct chord progressions would be a great addition, along with the ability to swap out diatonic chords for borrowed chords. Better yet, include a chord suggestion feature, where when you opt to replace a diatonic chord with a non diatonic chord, the app provides a diagram of sorts showing which borrowed chords might work best based. This concept is used in a product called ‘Chord Files’, which is a printed cardboard item. It would be convenient having this functionality included in an app like this.

Some icing on the cake features I’d love to see added:

1) The ability to construct, save and playback chord progressions, along with an option to set how many beats of a measure a chord would play. This wouldn’t need to be overly elaborate & include options for syncopated rhythms, multiple time signatures per bar, etc; but rather just offer a few basic functions. For example: the ability to move the chords around in a progression and adjust how many beats per bars/measure each chord is played. From there you could have the ability to adjust a few playback options for each chord (such as its BPM tempo, time signature, strum vs arpeggiated, beat style).

2) Being able to click any of the chords from within a chord progression & be shown a list of relative scales that could be used for soloing over the chord (chord tone soloing).

3) The option to export saved progressions & chords as midi into GarageBand & DAWs.

I understand that some of these features are included in other apps, but those apps lack the clean & well designed interface of this app, lack basic functionality, are very bloated & difficult to navigate, and/or are overly pricey for the value they provide. Thanks for this app. I hope you consider some of my suggestions.

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much for the great ideas. I'd love to hear more about how you're using ChordKit and ask you some follow-up questions regarding your feature requests. If you're interested, please feel free to email me at hello@hdthomas.com.