Chord Walker is a training tool for musicians who need to “walk” through chord changes. It was written by a bass player to practice Real Book sight-reading, and would be helpful for anyone who needs to navigate progressions. If you play I-IV-V blues all the time, Chord Walker won’t be of much use. But if you’ve ever found yourself stumbling with fingering or note selection, trying to manage a clean line from a vi to a IV, time spent with Chord Walker can (eventually) make those shifts second nature.
The idea is this: diligent practice of a tune will lead your fingers to link its chords, but that progression pattern is specific to just that tune—or to tunes that share its structure. It won’t apply to new material, so you are back to repetitive and limited finger training.
That’s where Chord Walker comes in. To avoid the repetition trap and gain genuine fluency, the app generates random-but-reasonable chord progressions. They follow the major key conventions of chord leading, with standard cadences at the end of each phrase that lead back to the tonic. Each bar in a phrase displays the current chord’s root and its interval and character (major, minor, dominant, diminished). The progressions won’t actually be played by Chord Walker, since the goal is to master chord navigation on your instrument, reflecting your chosen style, personal taste, and tempo.
Want to switch to a different key? That’s one tap away. Find something especially interesting/tricky to work on? Save it for future study. Getting a bit bored? Generate a new progression. At the very least, Chord Walker will improve your ability to see and connect chord relationships. With some practice, you’ll also bump into new possibilities for composition and improvisation. Enjoy.
Features
- One-tap generation of musically “valid” chord progressions
- Root name and chord character both shown
- Select starting key
- Select modulation interval: perfect 4ths or 5ths
- Choice of flat or sharp accidentals
- Save any progression as a favorite
iPhone Screenshots
iPhone chord progression screen
iPhone progression control panel
iPhone starting key + accidentals
iPad Screenshots
iPad chord progression screen
iPad chord progression with key popover
Contact
If you have suggestions or any problems with Chord Walker, please send them to:
chordwalker@cleverlevers.com
You might want to add a video on YouTube showing what this app does. The description is not very clear.
Great idea. Let me see what I can come up with …
Hi. Great idea but I can’t tell from the description whether your app also plays back the chord progressions with an option to mute the instrument you are learning. Jon
Chord Walker won’t actually play the progression, since it’s meant to be a sight-reading study and practice aid. I should clarify that in the description. There are no plans to provide audio, but I’ve started work on an update adding note-selection guidance for approach tones to each chord.
An excellent app that plays audio along with chord suggestions is ProChords. But its focus is composition, not performance, and it does not generate randomized, complete progressions.
Hey, I just recently got your app. I love it. I’m already figuring out new ways to play chords that I thought i knew really well. I have a few suggestions too! I think having the option of having the chord progression played would be great. Another thing would be to have a built-in metronome so the progression can be played to a beat at varying tempos. A lot of metronomes stop beeping/clicking when you close the app, so that would be a great thing to put in. The last thing i could think of would be to have extensions on the chords (i.e. 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths). Possibly even the option of adding them progressively as you get better??? So you’d have the option to add just 7ths, and when you get those down, add 9s into the mix with the 7s, and so on with 11s, and 13s (just thought of that one haha) And then altered extensions! So that’s what I’ve come up with so far. Hope you’ll take those into consideration because you can make an already really good app and make it better.
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Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions … I really appreciate it. You’ll be glad to know that all of the things you’d like to see are on their way (eventually) for the app. But first up is something you didn’t mention, which is approach-note hinting from chord to chord instead of letting the user figure it out from scratch. After that comes the metronome and chord extensions.
In the months to come, you’ll be steadily annoyed by nudges to fetch another (free) update.