The Substance

ChordWeaver is a musical composition app based on modern 5-part tonal harmony with real time audio feedback. This kind of harmony is used extensively in symphonic music, cinematic soundtracks, jazz chord changes and contemporary songwriting.

ChordWeaver features 3636 chord resolutions/combinations and 10 instruments or instrument ensembles with 1920 sound files.

For some composers ChordWeaver will provide a fast, easy way to work with modern harmony.

For other composers it offers a whole new world of possibilities and variations on traditional progressions.

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For the seasoned pro, it is a huge time saver.

ChordWeaver extensively uses techniques like altered chords (or unresolved appogiaturas), parallel ninths, giant steps, tritone substitutions, bi-tonal ambiguity. Although the app includes the traditional I, IV, II, V, I progressions, it offers multiple alternatives to the obvious.

This type of harmonic language was first firmly established by composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Sergej Prokofiev etc. in the classical domain, adopted later by jazz greats like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker etc., before gaining popularity among film composers, pop artists, songwriters, new age musicians.

However you do not have to know the theory behind altered chords, tritone substitutions and these other techniques, in order to use them. ChordWeaver does it for you. Just listen, make your choice and compose away.

The Process

Here is how ChordWeaver efficiently guides you through the composition process. You choose your starting chord, and ChordWeaver instantly shows you and lets you listen to multiple resolutions to that chord, traditional ones and more creative, unusual ones.

With each subsequent chord choice, the process is repeated, There is no longer a need to spend hours at the piano or keyboard trying to find the right harmonies for your composition.

ChordWeaver seamlessly guides you to multiple possible chord options (some you will be familiar with and others you will not have considered), lets you listen to your work in progress, offers the option to transpose up or down and allows you to save your final product as a .chords file or .mid file and export or share it.

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There are different ways of working with the app: you can establish the harmonic frame for your work completely, then add your melodic components later or you can take a more gradual approach and add melodic elements as you go.

You can also mirror ChordWeaver on your main system, play back the audio and improvise on your favorite instrument.

Likewise you could import the MIDI file into your sequencer and play back the harmonies using your preferred sample libraries.

These chord options in ChordWeaver are the result of decades of studying the scores of the masters in various genres. They reflect the actual use of these chord progressions and resolutions by these composers and are not simply based on purely theoretical considerations.