The Harmonic Alignment Engine was made to help analyse chord progressions and compose music. It’s a tool that allows you to visualise scales and chords like never before and understand their relationship to each other, as well as to the overarching piece of music. Above, you can use the free version which contains major and minor. If you find it useful, you can follow the link to unlock the full version, which gives you over 30 scales and over 20 chords! Here are 5 useful ways to use the Harmonic Alignment Engine:

1. Check the key of a song

If you are learning a song and you want to know what key it’s in, this tool will help. If you already have a suspicion of the key but just want to be sure, you can quickly check each chord against the key you think the song might be in.

a) Select the root note and scale of the key you are testing from the dropdown menus. This will light up the scale with green dots.

b) Select the chord type you are checking

c) Drag the slider to the root note of the chord. Notes that are shared by the chord and the scale will become purple.

If there are no red dots, then that chord fits the key. A red dot indicates a note outside of the key.

2. Identify non-diatonic notes

If you find a red dot in one of the chords you’re testing, but the rest of the chords in the song fit your suspected key, don’t assume you are wrong, because sometimes musicians use chords outside of the key. Check a few chords before you come to a conclusion. Run through all of the chords in the song to see if there are any points at which the song deviates from the key. This can be especially important if you’re going to improvise over the chords, as you’ll need to identify where you need to use a different scale or arpeggio etc.

3. Spice up your chords

If you are writing a chord progression and want to use some more interesting chords, you can check for inspiration using the Harmonic Alignment Engine. Just set up it up with your songs key and drag the slider to the root note of the chord you want to change. Then, use the dropdown menu and try different chords. You may wish to look up the chord shapes of the ones you don’t know, but have a go at figuring them out yourself, it will improve your knowledge of the fretboard!

4. Modal Interchange

Thinking of switching to a different mode? Easy! Just change the scale type, and now try different chords that fit in the new mode in place of the ones you’ve got. Writing music this way will familiarise you with how the modes compare to each other, and will expand your repertoire.

5. Target notes for improvisation

The Harmonic Alignment Engine is also useful when you are improvising or writing melodies over a chord progression. Instead of simply playing notes from the scale, you can identify the most important notes in each chord.

a) Set the key and scale of the song as usual.
b) Select the chord type currently being played in the progression.
c) Drag the slider to the root note of that chord.

The purple dots show the notes that belong to both the scale and the chord. These are the strongest notes to emphasise when improvising or writing melodies, because they reinforce the harmony while still staying inside the key.

By focusing on these notes as your “targets”, you can create melodies that sound more connected to the chords underneath, rather than just running up and down a scale.