I would love there to be a way to see the chords’s relativity (interval distance) to each other. Almost in the same way you already show the melody lines, but for chords. To see chords go up and down in a song and see how some chords are in the natural scale and some aren’t.
Additionally, being able to see the ‘form’ flow gives a visual guide to whole song and easily lets someone compare one song’s form to another.
Example - in the Key of C - C starts at the middle of the chart.
On the left are vertical numbers to represent the chords going up. (I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, VIIdim)
And inversely going down (I, VIIdim, vi, V, IV, iii, ii)
Let’s say that the interval is your standard I - IV - V - I pattern.
- I’d see a line starting at I
- then after a bar I’d see another line above at the IV
- then after another line a big higher at the V
- then after another bar down back to the I in the middle
This gives me a very visual and instant way to see the form of a I, IV, V, I progression. If I look at another song and see this line patter I can instantly tell “Oh! That’s a I , IV, V, I” without even knowing the key.
Furthermore, this allows me to compare different genres and even different cultural differences in music. A Japanese or Russian basic chord progression is going to look vastly different than an English chord progression. But you could tell at a glance “Oh, that Progression is similar to a Russian Dance” or “Oh that’s J-Pop.”
Thank you for your time, please feel free to contact me for any questions regarding this request.
I am a composer at night, and developer/project manager in my day job, so feel free to approach me for any details at the music or implementation level.