No plugin this week as I’m working on stuff in the pipeline (and using January to get other stuff done) but I’ve improved something I use for music :)

PaperChordReference(147k)

Here’s a further refinement of something I use in music making! It’s my Circle Of Fifths chart (that shows you what chords go with what keys). Except now it fits on an 8.5×11 piece of paper… and can be rolled up to make a little tube of music theory you can have!

It works like this: let’s say you want a major key like C. The first column says Am (the relative minor), the second Bm (avoid starting from here, it’s Locrian mode) and the third column is where you find your major key! All the chords across the chart will work in that key, and there’s a little piano keyboard reference showing you what black keys (if any) are in play.

Minor keys are in a slightly darker gray, and major keys (with major thirds) are in a slightly lighter gray. There’s a hard to read white lettering across the grays, but that’s just the name of the mode (simplified to minor, locrian, major, dorian, phrygian, lydian and mixolydian: the main ones are going to be major and minor, and another popular major and minor mode are lydian and dorian)

This time it’s stripped right down to the basics. No suggestion that you should cut out an elaborate slide rule, or fine print, and the key you’re in reads directly across and ends with a depiction of what keys those are (the notes are what the chords are if you ignore the m that indicates you’re to play a minor chord). Also, if you do roll it into a tube and tape it, and put the key you’re in facing forward, related keys are the most visible. You’ll raise tension by moving to a key that’s higher up, or drop back by moving to a key that’s lower than the one you’re in. For the classic big key change moment, jump up two like going from C major to D major! It’s almost the most related key you can have, but it’s still a big jump. Or if you’re Coltrane, spin the tube wildly and jump to keys about a third of the way around, each couple bars :) in this context, that would be jumping to a key you can’t see because it’s around the back of the tube, for every key change.

Lastly, one final note: I made all the chords that I consider easy to play on the guitar down around the nut (like folk chords or full strums), boldface. So there are a few like E flat or D flat minor, which are of course still playable but less easy to reach, and they’re in normal font: lighter.

This is way easier than making a slide rule or whatever, and now it includes a little keyboard symbol just to make it super obvious where the notes are. Hope this helps to bring new musical ideas!

There are two earlier versions: PaperChordReferenceOriginal, and PaperChordReferenceCrunchy. The original is very simplified, but pretends the ‘locrian’ column can use minor chords (nope, they have to have a diminished fifth) and gets note names wrong by not understanding how sharps and flats work. The crunchy version suggests you should use not only diminished chords, but also sixths and augmented chords, which turns out to be a little intense for silly old guitar players like me. The final version highlights which diminished chords might actually be convenient to play if you wanted, ditches the augmented chords and uses minor sevenths in the dorian column because they sound like you should be playing a cool mode over them (you can drop the seventh down a note if you want to get crunchy and play the sixth that defines the mode, or just stick to the seventh).