Songwriting Inspiration

The most valuable part of Songwriting Inspiration is that it knows which chords usually sound best following other chords, so it shouldn't give you any "duds" as far as progressions. It will randomly select chords that fit your criteria, so you should be able re-generate a new progression with similar criteria that is slightly different.

How it works:

First you select a key/scale/mode. Then you select the number of chords that you'd like in your progression. Finally you pick how you want your progression to end. Click the generate progression button, and it's displayed on the screen. For example, say you want to write a song in F# Mixolydian, and would like a progression of 8 chords long, with the progression ending on the V Dominant chord. Select that criteria, click the generate button, and it should give you a decent sounding progression. Click the play button, and it'll give you an audio preview of the progression using piano triads. If you don't quite like it, but want to stick with that criteria, just click the generate button again, and it will give you a slight variation.

You can pick progressions that end with any chord (but still sound good in the progression,) or select a plagal cadence (IV-I) or a perfect cadence (V-I) as well as some "standard" progressions like 12 bar blues and the ii-V-I jazz progression.

Teachers and composers can print out the chord progressions to share with others. Additionally, if you are a bit weak on playing the chords on piano or guitar, chord charts can be substituted for the music staff.

Songwriting Inspiration not only assists you when feeling stuck or unsure of where to start, but can also save you time by transferring the chords to your DAW! Save your progression to a midi file, and import it into Logic Pro, Fruity Loops, Pro Tools, etc. Additionally, it saves to MusicXML format which can be imported to Sibelius or Logic.

If saving as MusicXML, it will create two tracks. The first is a "chords" track for the progression, already converted to inversions for you, so all chords are in the C3 range on the keyboard. The second is a bass track an octave lower that contains just the root note. This is a huge time saver if you are a Logic user! Imagine you want to write a 12 bar blues song. Just select the key and 12-bar blues, click generate, then save to MusicXML. Import into Logic, and you'll have two 12 bar midi regions for piano and bass. Pick whatever 2 patches you want for those tracks, and voila, a song skeleton that took about a minute of your time!!! Of course you could pick a much more involved song structure, but even something "as simple" as a 12 bar blues song can be constructed much quicker with this method.

You can pick all of the standard modes that you'd expect Major (Ionian), Minor (Aeolian), Harmonic Minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Locrian. You can select progressions of 4,8,12,16 or 32. Your progression can end on Any chord, the Tonic, the Dominant, the Dominant to Tonic, the Subdominant to Tonic, and several others commonly used progressions.

You can also select to have the chords presented in standard (G Clef) staff format, as a guitar chord chart or a piano chord chart.

Another thing to try for inspiration is to select a 32 chord progression ending with Any chord, and rather than use the entire progression, listen to it and find that one little sub-progression that you find catchy.

Please note a minimum screen height of 1660 is required. Show More