Ability to search a chord progression more than just the key of the music itself for TheoryTabs and/or projects

Currently, you can search what scale the music is on, like C Major or E Minor. But what about searching the tabs based on the chord progressions other than the main one for the scale? For example, instead of just searching for F Major, you can search for a chord progression that consists of I (F) bVII (Eb) IV (Bb) V (C) or I (D) IV (G) iv (em) VII (A). It would be a neat way to figure out what songs utilize those chords, that you normally don’t see most of the time. You could even search if it has like 7th or sus4 chord on that progression. I know there’s Chord Crush, but the search variety is still pretty limiting and not as specific. Would this be a possible feature to add?

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There are currently two ways to search for chord progressions in relative notation. The first is using the Trends tool (hooktheory.com/trends). This tool allows you to build progressions either in a key or in RN notation and lists all Theorytabs that use that progression. To search all keys, use the “Rel” option.

The second is an experimental feature that we’re working on where you can type progressions directly into the search bar. Since this simply indexes the progression in plain text, it doesn’t work perfectly yet, but it gets the job done for simple progressions:

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Well then! The latter is working pretty nicely! The problem with the former is that I don’t really see borrowed Flat-b chords there. I’m glad your team is making that possible for us! :+1:
And I see that I bVII IV V is not that well known of a chord progression.

Yeah for trends, we’re thresholding on popularity, so if you don’t see the chord you’re looking for, then there’s a good chance there aren’t many songs in the database that have that progression.

Another thing to consider is that the progression you were looking for has a different spelling, for example: I → bVII → IV in Major, is much more likely to be spelled I → VII → IV in Mixolydian

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much more likely to be spelled I → VII → IV in Mixolydian

Very interesting!

Q: Is a song considered to be “in Mixolydian” based on an algorithmic chordal/melody analysis, or based on someone having applied a literal tag “mixolydian” to it?

The spelling of the chord progression is left to the discretion of the user(s) performing the analysis. While we do have models that can estimate the scale of a song based on its chords, we rely on users to make the correct interpretation.

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Could you add this as a way to search through our Hookpad files?
I have 3 full pages full of Hookpad files and it is easier for me to remember the chord progression for a song I wrote rather than what I named the file.