NextChord: Chord Suggestions 4+

I didn’t major in music theory so when I’m trying to write a song, I rarely know what chord should come next. Sure, I could futz around with my guitar until I randomly land on something that sounds good...but sometimes I want help. Enter NextChord.

NextChord provides a list of recommendations based on popular songs everybody already loves. So instead of wasting my time trying to determine what chord makes the most sense, this app provides me with a list of suggestions that actually sound good without me having to know anything about music theory - what key I’m in, is it major/minor, whatever. Furthermore, it shows me the tabs for each chord suggestion so the app actually helps me learn new chords and try progressions outside my comfort zone / existing knowledge base.

As an amateur musician / songwriter, I’ve found NextChord to be super helpful when I’m trying to answer the age old songwriting question, “What next?”. But even if I were more than just a hobbyist, I think this app would be super helpful if I had writers-block, wanted to see if my song / chord progression aligns with mainstream taste, or wanted to share my progression with writing partners/bandmates/friends.

There’s a lot of artists who could benefit from using this app. Chords can be daunting to play or learn, but this helps make them simple. I would love a piano instrument but the guitar’s sound wonderful as a place holder. The app is very smooth & I love the icon for it. I do know my way around a piano, however, I’m no Beethoven yet, so I can’t exactly fact check every chord possibility, or variation. But I do like all the options they provide. Found this off reddit btw, so shoutout to u/nextchord

The app should have an option to input the specific notes you were playing on your instrument via a chord, chart or diagram. Similar to a reverse cord search. The app should also have some thing that listens to your Hall Chord progression so we can identify what key you are in. also, the manual search for a specific cord is oddly displayed - when I type in a letter of a cord, it should first show results for the corresponding cord, but what it does instead is display in alphabetical order, all chords with that character in it. So if I type in a capital A then the search results display C chords first that have an A in the name. So that’s pretty lame. Lastly, the app uses my microphone to pick up what chords I am playing - it shoul understand the inversion and the position since it can hear the order of the pitches from lowest to highest. I want my cord progression to reflect the inversion and position when I tap on the displayed chords afterward. And I don’t want to hear a full six note chord if I’m only playing three notes for a given cord. Lotta ways to improve this app, but it’s not a bad app. Period. Next cord and hook theory should call one another and make an app together.