To get the latest version of Hookpad, relaunch your browser or do a hard reload of the app webpage (shift + refresh button) . This is since the 2.8.0 release where Hookpad became a progressive web app that gets cached for offline use.
2.35.2 (2025.03.25)
Under The Hood
- Temporarily removing service worker registration. Will update with improved version using Vite.
2.35.1 (2025.03.25)
What’s New
- Lead Drum Elements: Linear Beat patch
Bug Fixes
- Editing TheoryTab showed start banner
- Guitar view: double “b” are now using double flat unicode symbol
- Minor chords without chords are now written as power chords
- Delete button didn’t work ontouch devices
- Youtube and Hookpad playback could run at the same time → Pressing Youtube play button now stops Hookpad playback and vice versa
- Triplets tied with non triplet notes ignored swing timing
- Nudging a selection of notes which contains triplets now nudges by one beat to avoid triplet notes on impossible beats
- Triplets which get shortened to less than 1/4 beat by nudging another note now get cleaned up
- Enabled undo after nudging notes/chords by keyboard shortcut
- #9 was one octave too high for some chords
- Removed search results for some applied chords like I#9, I#11 or Ib13
- Couldn’t move right YouTube sync marker to last beat in some projects with meter changes
- Shakers get exportet to correct GM MIDI notes
- Lyrics at top notes didn’t have space and were written over cycle bar
- Substituted 11 Chords are now shown as slash chords like V11 chord
- “Deactivate all Solo” button didn’t deactivate solo of instruments in bands out of focus
- Some accidentals in relative chord notation used wrong font
2.35.0 (2025.03.11)
What’s New
- Lead Drum Elements: Single drum instruments can now be written as a lead voice. Drum elements aren’t full drum kits as they are meant to add additional drum hits to the exisiting drum patterns.
- All harmony, bass and drum instruments can now be played in double or half time. Look out for the “1/2”, “x1” and “x2” buttons in the instrument mixer.
- Setting to turn off warning for unsaved changes after saving to disk
- Spark/Band Template: Pop One Drop
Bug Fixes
- Pressing the “R” key when typing lyrics triggered record mode in rare cases
- Fixed standard rhythm patterns for odd time signatures
- Fixed Sign In with Google and Sign In with Apple on iOS
2.34.4 (2025.02.18)
Bug Fixes
- Fixing bug introduced in 2.34.3 causing copy/paste to break
2.34.3 (2025.02.17 )
Bug Fixes
- Blank Project button didn’t reset project
- Fixing bug introduced in 2.34.1 causing old projects not to load from disk
2.34.2 (2025.02.12)
What’s New
- Start banner and Open Song Modals are now responsive to mobile browser sizes
- Start banner navigation has been updated:
- Either click continue or double click on icon to continue to the next page
- You can use arrow keys and the enter key for navigation and song selection as well
Bug Fixes
- Keyboard/Guitar view crashed Hookpad on opening
2.34.1 (2025.02.10)
What’s New
- Swapped keyboard shortcuts M (toggle entry mode) with SHIFT+M (toggle meters window) to prevent accidentally switching the entry mode without noticing
- Added notification when entry mode is changed by shortcut
2.34.0 (2025.02.04)
What’s New
Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Press Ctrl + Space to start playback from the beginning of the song.
- Press Ctrl + L to toggle the lyrics editor.
Additional Drum Break Elements:
- Snare 3x1/4
- Kick 3x1/4
- Hi Tom: All 1/4 beat patches
- Lo Tom: All 1/4 beat patches
Bug Fixes
- Opening a new song from disk now correctly resets the “Edited” flag.
- Fixed a project crash that occurred after deleting looped measures and re-enabling the loop.
- Fixed a project crash that happened when adding a pickup bar in certain cases.
Score Export Fixes:
- Scores with pickup bars now correctly start at bar 0, omitting rests at the beginning of the pickup bar.
- Fixed a server error when exporting an empty project to score, tab, or sheet music.
- Fixed an issue where section markers with the same name as the previous section didn’t appear in score exports.
- Harmony and bass instruments using both staccato and legato sounds now export all notes properly to score and MIDI.
- Harmonizers on lead tracks are now correctly written in notation exports.
- Violin Section 8s staccato no longer creates an infinite loop when chords change on an eighth-note basis.
- Regional score export now only exports selected measures.
- Empty staves at the end of sheet exports have been removed.
- Lead/tab exports now retain at least one empty stave when chords are placed in the middle of the music.
Clef Adjustments:
- Deep basses now use an octavided clef.
- Strummed guitars no longer use the bass clef.
- Lead guitars now use an octavided treble clef.
Tab & Sheet Formatting Fixes
- Header text is now in a serif font.
- Adjusted margins, score size, and spacing.
- Removed links to Hooktheory and LilyPond.
- Tab exports:
- Added lead names
- Increased spacing between staves
- Reduced tab and fret number sizes
- Added end bar lines.
- Added double bar lines for section changes.
- Lead, harmony, and bass instruments are now grouped with brackets.
- Harmony and bass tracks with similar instruments are now merged.
MIDI Export Fixes
- Harmonizers of smart instruments no longer create a separate MIDI track for staccato sounds
- Melody and harmonized notes are now combined on the same track.
- Fixed an issue where smart drum pickups were placed on a separate MIDI track.
2.33.4 (2024.12.17)
What’s New
- Song Template “Upbeat Pop”
- Spark and Band Template “Upbeat Pop”
- Keyboard short cut: SHIFT + ENTER: Rewind to song start
- Dark mode for Piano and Guitar view
- Lock Entry button shows up after using keyboard short cut for Lock Entry mode
- Lock Entry mode gets temporarely disabled when recording
- Setting to mute locked voices during playback to jam without hearing their existing notes.
Bug Fixes
- Loading a song from disk and pressing save won’t overwrite previously opened song anymore
- Color of G was slightly off in Boomwhacker color palette
- Some relative keychanges produced 11 b accidentals instead of one #
- Score export was broken when # was used in section markers
- Metronome was silent on record precount
- Midi Note Entry: Fixed Octave Boundaries
- Power Strings Lead Bass instruments had wrong octave
- Default Lead Piano had incorrect release velocities
- Chord Lock Entry: Some rhythms played too many notes or none at all
- Thank you for purchasing Aria message was showing up regularly due to a race condition issue
Lock Entry Mode Fixes for Midi Controller:
- Chords are now playable again
- Some instruments were using wrong velocities or octaves
- Staccato notes where cut off when releasing the key
- Release samples were omitted
- Additonal Octaves were omitted
- Harmonized lead notes were omitted
2.33.3 (2024.11.23)
What’s New
New Instruments:
- Brass Section
- Lite Stacker
- Noise Rise
- Glide Rise
- Piano Glissando
New Patterns:
- Harmony: Pop Double 2
2.33.2 (2024.11.05)
What’s New
- Added Boomwhacker color palette → colors fit only in the key of C-Major
Bug Fixes
- Theorytab scale change hints were showing as “undefined”
2.33.1 (2024.10.26)
What’s New
- All Sparks and Band Templates have been updated with new harmony instruments
- New Demo Song and Spark: “Vocal Tides”
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Lyrics Export (broke in 2.33.0 release)
2.33.0 (2024.10.19)
What’s New
All Harmony instruments, except guitars, can now play a comprehensive list of 41 patterns. These include 15 basic patterns, 9 genre-specific patterns, and 17 arpeggiator patterns. This update adds over 1500 new harmony patches to Hookpad.
New Harmony Patterns
- Sustain Full Chords
- Sustain Three Notes
- Rolled Chords
- 2 Beats
- 2 Beats Short
- 1 Beat
- 1 Beat Short
- 1 Beat Offbeat
- 1 Beat Upbeat
- 1/2 Beats
- 1/2 Beats Short
- 1/2 Beats Up Down
- 1/2 Beats Offbeat
- 1/2 Beats Pumping Offbeat
- 1/4 Beats
- Arp 1/2 Beats Up
- Arp 1/2 Beats Down
- Arp 1/2 Beats Up Down
- Arp 1/2 Beats Down Up
- Arp 1/2 Beats Up Down +
- Arp 1/2 Beats Down Up +
- Arp 1/4 Beats Up
- Arp 1/4 Beats Down
- Arp 1/4 Beats Up Down
- Arp 1/4 Beats Down Up
- Arp 1/4 Beats Up Down +
- Arp 1/4 Beats Down Up +
- Arp Alberti
- Arp Chiptune
- Arp Club Up
- Arp Club Down
- Arp Electro
- Bossa
- Club Syncopation
- Funk Syncopation
- Hip Hop
- Pop
- Pop Double Time
- Reggae
- Ska
- Swing
New Strummed Guitar Patterns:
- Pop Double
- Pop Double Soft
Change Pattern Behaviour
- Smart Drums will play fill in regions which have only 2 bars (was set to 4 bars before)
- Strummed Guitars will continue pattern at chord change if pattern strums on beat of chord change
Under The Hood
- Refactor YouTube player interface to support native player and a (new) bridge to a player hosted on the Hooktheory website, needed for a future update to Chord Crush.
2.32.13 (2024.10.08)
Bug Fixes
- Attempting to fix “Thanks for purchasing Aria” message from showing up after Aria is intially purchased. This fix assumes the cause was a race condition between loading session info from local storage vs. retreiving fresh privileges from the API.
2.32.12 (2024.10.08)
Bug Fixes
- Inserting notes/chords with virtual piano didn’t work in some cases
- Fixed issues with loading a legacy Hookpad 1 created project when a Hookpad 2 project was already open and contained lyrics or sections.
- Restored left bracket, right bracket, and resize visual indicators when hovering over notes and chords for resizing. Inadvertently removed in 2.32.9. Thanks @dkirtley!
- If youtube is attached to song the youtube controls now correctly shows by default when the song is opened again
2.32.11 (2024.09.27)
Bug Fixes
- Changed label on preview/lock button to display right keyboard short cut
- Fixing issue with youtube sync control not redrawing when moved correctly (introduced in 2.32.9)
2.32.10 (2024.09.26)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug with YouTube keyframe lines on staff for weren’t showing up the first time a YouTube was attached (introduced in 2.32.9)
2.32.9 (2024.09.25)
What’s New
Keyboard Shortcuts
- SHIFT + SPACE: Play audio from Youtube video
- G: toggle lock (preview) button
Bug Fixes
- Settings to export stems or a single track to mp3/wav are saved and restored when opening Hookpad
- Settings to export the full band or a piano version to MIDI are saved and restored when opening Hookpad
- Lyrics were saved in wrong format and didn’t show up at next load in some cases
- Youtube syncs correctly when song has tempo and meter changes
- Midi melodies created duplicated notes when imported into project with an existing melody
- Fixing melody notes that span mode changes not always lining up correctly.
- Loop length now is updated when measures are deleted so that it remains in same place
- Fixing behavior of Youtube Gui to allow hiding and showing of interface.
- Shop Aria button now links to correct shop page on Hooktheory website.
2.32.8 (2024.08.20)
What’s New
- Midi Export: Added an option to export MIDI files with a reduced band that only uses a full piano voicing as harmony track and a sustained bass without any additional rhythms. The full piano voicing will make sure all notes of more complicated chords are exported. Each melody voice is reduced to one track and if needed a second harmonizer track.
Bug fixes:
- Bounced clips from band browser won’t be stored in a zip file anymore
- Browser will no longer ask for permission to use Web MIDI API unless Midi Preferences menu is open
2.32.7 (2024.08.13)
Bug Fixes
- Copilot thank you message doesn’t show up together with start banner anymore
- Improved blocked YouTube countries message
2.32.6 (2024.08.11)
What’s New
New Patterns
- Drums: Pop Double 1 + 2
- Drum Elements: Collection of simple patterns for the most important individual drum instruments, useful for layering and combining drumsounds.
- Drum Break Elements: Collection of simple break patterns for snare, kick and toms.
- Strummed Guitars: 2 straight 16th patterns, useful for breaks
- Bass: Folk 2, Pop Double Time
Behind the scenes
- Performance optimization: Drums only load samples the pattern needs.
Bug Fixes
- Labels on virtual piano didn’t update accidentals correctly when changing keys
- Loading multiple instances of the same instrument could lead to sample loss
- Importing midi files with invalid meters no longer crash playback engine
- Importing polyphonic midi melodies are now reduced to monophonic files
2.32.5 (2024.07.20)
Bug Fixes
- Fix logging first Aria suggestion as seen for proper counting.
2.32.4 (2024.07.20)
Bug Fixes
- Fix mp3 and wave bounce
- Fixing issue with YouTube blocked countries
2.32.3 (2024.07.18)
What’s New
- Aria purchase flow
- When selecting a different drum kit in the band browser, the pattern will stay the same if available.
Bug Fixes
- Warning when deleting band templates had transparent window
2.32.2 (2024.07.13)
What’s New
- When attaching a YouTube video, Hookpad now shows any geo restrictions associated with the video.
- New Sparks and Band Templates:
- Pop Rock
- Country Pop
- Acoustic Ballad
- Mellow Electro
- Funk
- Romantic
- House Pop
Bug Fixes
- Fix mp3 and wave bounce
2.32.1 (2024.07.09)
What’s New
- Minor visual changes to quickstart.
2.32.0 (2024.07.03)
What’s New
Quickstart
Hookpad now opens to a quickstart screen that allows you to select how you will start creating with Hookpad. Choose from an empty project, Tempates, Sparks, opening a recent project, or opening a demo song. Quickstart can be disabled for users preferring to start Hookpad with a blank project.
Sparks
Introducing Sparks, bite-size musical snippets in various genres with preselected instruments, tempo, and meter to get your creative juices flowing quickly. Find Sparks from the new welcome screen or by selecting “New” from the File menu.
Song Templates
Fully templated projects in a specific genre so that you can focus on writing music. You can optionally choose to start your project with a few key chord suggestions to help bridge sections of your song or track. Right now there are templates for Pop/Rock and Electronic/House, but more templates will be added soon! Find Templates from the new welcome screen or by selecting “New” from the File menu.
Also New
- Open song UI now combines recent projects with Templates and Sparks.
- New song UI allows options for starting a blank project, Template, or Spark
- Shift+N added as a keyboard shortcut to directly open a blank project without going to the New song UI
- Band Templates were remixed and some were renamed for clarity
- Harmony Rock Guitar updated with five new patches in Metal style
2.31.11 (2024.06.28)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug that allowed Aria use without first consenting to Aria Beta Terms of Service.
2.31.10 (2024.05.07)
What’s New
- Aria stop auto prefetching infills after 5.
- When running into Aria infill daily limit, the panel is no longer closed so that previous suggestions are not lost.
Bug Fixes
- TheoryTabs don’t load unused drum samples anymore
- When “Auto Add Measures” setting is turned off, no measures are added when last note or chord reaches end of song.
2.31.9 (2024.04.28)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed piano and guitar instrument in TheoryTab player from being cut off on the right side
2.31.8 (2024.04.28)
Bug fixes
- Fixed YouTube play not working on iOS due to autoplay block from YouTube API
- Fixed mouse down/up on YouTube sync scrubber to behave more like the scrubber on youtube.com. Speifically, if the YouTube is playing and the scrubber is clicked, the YouTube now continues playing at the new position. Before it would stop.
Under The Hood
- Removed npm youtube-player which wraped the native api from Google/YouTube in promises to enable more direct control and allow listning for autoplay blocked events.
2.31.7 (2024.04.27)
Bug fixes
- Semitone octave slider now correctly handles all halftone steps.
- Removed semitones from octave slider for strummed guitars.
2.31.6 (2024.04.25)
Bug fixes
- Fixing bug causing theorytabs to not play notes before cursor in looped regions
2.31.5 (2024.04.xx)
Bug fixes
- Renamed borrowed mode for chords which can’t be explained by bowrrowing another mode to “Other”
- TempoGui: Plus and Minus buttons created possibility to exceed range of tempo or swing
2.31.4 (2024.04.xx)
Bug fixes
- Fixed a bug introduced in 2.30.2 causing the Popular Chords palette to crash
2.31.3 (2024.04.12)
What’s New
- New Aria logo
Bug fixes
- Tritone substitution of 11th chord showed wrong label.
- Metronome is voiced correctly when loop is enabled.
- Custom chords now show “Custom” as borrowed chord option.
- “Slash chords containing multiple ‘b’ accidentals generated additional ‘b’ accidentals when the chords were altered.”
- Fixed Aria previews showing ‘rendering’ when the infill region was scrolled beyond the bounds of the viewable score area.
- Removed key, meter, tempo, and band labels from Aria previews
- Showing only the active melody voice in Aria previews
2.31.2 (2024.03.31)
Bug fixes
- Preloading Magic Chord assets in non-Chrome browsers to make Aria and other engines requring chord lookup to work without needing to download further assets. This also fixes a bug where Safari users could not use Aria to suggest chords.
2.31.1 (2024.03.30)
Bug fixes
- Fixed inconsistent behavior of the Aria panel when opening or creating new files when the panel is open.
2.31.0 (2024.03.27)
What’s New
Introducing Aria, your personal AI co-creator for chords and melodies.
Aria (beta) is your AI songwriting partner, fully integrated inside of Hookpad. Drawing from a vast database of popular music, Aria enhances your compositions with creative ideas that seamlessly fit into your existing music. Aria can write chords, melody, or both at the same time. It can write chords for your melody, and write melody for your chords. It can elaborate on a motif, or carve out an awkward phrase. Aria uses the surrounding music in your composition to generate suggestions that make sense within the context of your song and your style. Don’t know where to start? Aria can generate ideas from a blank page to spark your creativity. Aria gives you multiple suggestions at a time so that you always have options to spare. Aria (beta) is available to paid Hookpad subscribers.
Bug fixes
- Lyrics displayed “undefined” in rare cases
- Instrument names get truncated correctly in Paste Band Menu
- Ska 4 On The Floor now plays correctly
- Folk Metal pickup drum beats now play correctly
- Fixing bug causing borrowed chords selected in the “Popular” chord palette to crash in some cases
- Rewind didn’t work when notes or chords were selected
- Metronome is voiced correctly when loop is enabled
- Drums are voiced correctly when loop is changed
2.30.4 (2024.03.05)
What’s new
- Paste individual instrument groups: New buttons to copy and paste in Band Gui
Bug fixes
- Export stems modal in band gui couldn’t be closed
- For some instruments, pan settings were resetted after stopping playback
2.30.3 (2024.02.21)
What’s new
- Tritone substitutions primary relative chord graphic now labeled with text “∆-sub”
- Bass pattern “Funk”
- Button “Open Instrument Mixer” turns blue when mixer is open instead of showing piano icon
Bug fixes
- Progress bar stayed when already cached instruments were loaded
- Empty bars of TheoryTabs are trimmed (bug introduced 2024.02.17. The source of the bug was from a release of Hookpad from December 2023. However, we had not recompiled the TheoryTab player so the bug did not present until 2024.02.17)
2.30.2 (2024.02.17)
What’s new
- Tritone substitutions for secondary dominants. Use the chord inspector to swap a secondary dominant with its corresponding tritone substitution
2.30.1 (2024.02.13)
Bug fixes
- Songs with key changes crashed (bug introduced in 2.30.0)
- Last section flag couldn’t be deleted in rare cases
- Metronome was enabled on MIDI exports
2.30.0 (2024.02.12)
What’s new
- Automatic section colorization. Settings can be found in App Preferences → Section Colors
- Colorization now supports numeric and alphabetic section naming conventions.
- Improved buttons in measure GUI
Bug fixes
- User gets warned of lost unsaved changes before opening a song from disk, opening a demo song or recovering a song from an earlier save
- Couldn’t copy notes and chords into clipboard when lyrics editor was opened in rare cases
- Arrangement view crashed when no voices were selected in certain keys
2.29.1 (2024.01.29)
Bug fixes
- App settings for “Show Rewind Control” and “Recording Input Latency” are now remembered when App reloads
- Instruments playback is stereo again
2.29.0(2024.01.26)
What’s new
Instrument Mixer
- Added instrument mixer to band browser. New capabilities include:
- Better control over instrument volume with bigger fader
- Control group volume directly from instrument mixer
- Activate solo for individual instruments in band
- Pan: Position instruments from left to right in stereo panorama
- Delay: Adjust timing of instruments by up to 100ms
- Pitch: Detune drums by up to two octaves
- Deactivate all Solo: Deactivates all solo for both instruments and instrument groups
- Changed colors of all mute and solo buttons in Hookpad:
- Mute: Red
- Solo: Yellow
- Octave sliders for harmony and bass instruments now have a grid from -12 to 12 to account for every possible semitone in octave
- New button which switches between instrument browser and instrument mixer
Rhythm Patches
- Harmony: Piano : Funk
- Bass: Funk Syncopation
- Drums: Rock 4 On The Floor
Bug fixes
- Changed color of mute button in band browser to white in dark mode
- Fixed mp3/wav export for single instruments from band browser
- Buttons in band browser disapeared for smaller window with in Safari
- Guitars don’t struck chord again if chord is longer than on bar
2.28.6 (2024.01.03)
Bug fixes
- Fixed bug where in rare cases lyrics of older projects weren’t displayed in the correct position
- Chords on guitar fretboard using frets above 9th fret no longer crash Hookpad
- Muted strings on the guitar fretboard are now displayed correctly
2.28.5 (2023.12.20)
What’s new
- Lyrics editor now uses Ctrl/Cmd + Z to undo and Ctrl/Cmd + SHIFT + Z to redo written words when lyrics editor is focussed.
Bug fixes
Lyrics Editor
- Autoscroll function no longer hides Navbar and show Youtube field
- Lyrics from older projects are now displayed at the correct position in the music region
- Lyrics no longer disappear when skip notes are entered with “_” or “1”
- Lyrics with curly apostrophes are now displayed correctly in the note editor
- Song lyrics no longer show undefined in rare cases
- In rare cases the last section was missing
- In rare cases an extra section appeared at the end
Other fixes
- Lyrics export: Text content now wraps at page break
- Export: Sheet export no longer shows word “skip” under last note
- Some band templates didn’t work
- Erased export type from header of exported sheet music
2.28.4 (2023.11.25)
Bug fixes
- Lyrics editor: Punctuation after skip-note and punction after space before word don’t count as unique syllable anymore.
- Lyrics editor: Words with curly apostrophes are now syllabicated correctly.
2.28.3 (2023.11.22)
Bug fixes
- Fixing issue with loading songs containing empty lyrics sections sometimes causing Hookpad to crash
- Fix project scrolls navbar out of sight after opening lyrics editor
2.28.2 (2023.11.18)
Bug fixes
- Fix test config of hooktheory-auth
2.28.1 (2023.11.18)
Bug fixes
- Bump hooktheory-auth to 1.0.34 to fix issue with the header of the auth modal in dark mode
2.28.0 (2023.11.18)
What’s new
Improved lyrics editing and new lyrics export
- Lyrics editor now groups lyrics by section. Moving/editing/removing sections in the section editor will make corresponding edits to your lyrics.
- Lyrics editor now has a syllable counter that displays syllable counts for each line.
- Added buttons to control note skipping, as well as a note skip token in the lyrics UI to replace the underscore “_” and “3”. Use these tokens to create a single lyric over multiple notes.
- Added a new lyrics export to print out lyrics sheets for easy reading.
Bug fixes
- Serializing compressor and limiter on WAV and MP3 exports to fix compression artifacts that were occuring every 6 seconds or so due to OfflineContext refreshing.
- Clicking the text label on the WAV stem export radio button no longer toggles relative notation preference.
- WAV/MP3 export progress bar now properly reports which action is being performed (bouncing, encoding, zipping, compressing)
Under the hood
- Bump hooktheory-auth to 1.0.33
2.27.0 (2023.11.07)
What’s new
New WAV and MP3 export
- Migrated export technology to WebAudio OfflineContext. New capabilities include:
- Exports are now audio glitch-free. Data is recorded when browser resources are available rather than in real time, e.g., exports are now “bounced” rather than “recorded.”
- For most projects, this means exports happen 2-10X faster than before!
- WAV and MP3 export now support track stems!
Choose “Track stems” option to export each track type (e.g., lead1, harmony, bass, drums) to separate files at the same time!
- Instrument stem export now available! From the band browser, click the export icon next to the MIDI clip icon to export a single instrument from the current selection to WAV or MP3.
New Guitar instrument
- Added a guitar instrument that shows chords in relative notation as you add them to your project and during playback.
Other updates
- Added an option to display timestamps in section markers. Enable with Settings → App Preferences → Show Timestamps
- Added Sign in with Apple
Bug fixes
- Fixed bug causing exported sheet music where lyrics contained punctuation directly to the left of some words to fail (e.g. “Hello .now”)