The other guides assume you can put a chord under your fingers. This one starts before that: where C is, why the black keys come in twos and threes, and the one hand shape that makes every chord in a key. Everything here fits on a two-octave controller, plays live in the browser, and — if you plug the controller in — listens to what you actually play and scores it.
Twelve notes, then it repeats. That is the whole instrument. The black keys are grouped in twos and threes so you can find your place without counting: C is the white key just left of any pair of black keys. F is the white key just left of any group of three. Everything else is one white key along from one of those.
Click a key, or play it on your controller once it is connected. The readout names what is held and, if you hold more than one note, names the chord. Turn NAMES off in the bar once you can find C without them — that is the first thing to learn and the only thing to memorise.
Computer keyboard works too. The same map Ableton uses: A is C, W is C♯, S is D, and so on along the home row to K for the next C, then L and ;. Z and X shift octaves. Not a substitute for the controller, but enough to work through every lab on this page on a laptop.
The seven white keys are C major. They are also A minor — same seven notes, you just treat A as home instead of C. This is the entire reason to start in A minor: on white keys there is no wrong note. Play anything, in any order, over the bed below, and it will be in key. Everything you learn on this page transfers to other keys later by lighting up different keys; the shapes do not change.
Change the key in the bar above. The lit keys are the seven notes of that key; the count tells you how many black keys you have just signed up for. A minor and C major are zero. That is why they come first.
Relative keys. Every minor key shares its seven notes with a major key three semitones up. A minor and C major, E minor and G major. So each set of lit keys is really two keys; which one you are "in" is decided by which note your bass keeps returning to, not by the notes you use.
A kick, a hat, a bass on the root and a held pad. Press play and noodle on the white keys — on screen, on the computer keyboard, or on your controller. The counter records how many notes you played and how many landed inside the key. In A minor the second number is trivially 100% as long as you stay on white keys; that is the point. Switch the key to something with black keys in it and watch it fall.
A chord is a hand shape, not a theory fact. Play a key, skip one, play, skip one, play — three fingers, two gaps — on white keys, and you have a chord. Slide that same shape to any other white key and you have another chord in the same key. Some come out major, some minor, one comes out diminished; the shape decided that, not you.
Click a chord card or click a lit key on the keyboard to make it the root. The keyboard shows the three notes; the readout gives the name and the semitone counts that make it what it is. Add the seventh, change the inversion, and watch the span — the number of keys under your hand — change with it.
Why some come out minor. "Skip a key" skips either one or two semitones depending on whether there is a black key in the gap. Root to middle note of four semitones is a major chord; three is minor. Same shape, different gaps — the key decides the gaps for you. The seventh chord in a minor key (the B in A minor) gets two small gaps and comes out diminished. It is the one that sounds wrong on its own and right in passing.
Thirty loops, from four bars of white keys to eight bars with borrowed chords and moving bass lines. Pick one, press play, and the keyboard shows each chord as it lands — copy it with your hand. Filter by family; the outside the key count on each card is how many black keys you are signing up for. The voicing switch is the single biggest upgrade on this page: root position makes your hand jump around; auto voicing picks the inversion closest to the last chord and measures the travel saved in semitones; as written uses the inversions and slash basses the loop was built on.
Read the number, then trust your hand. "Total travel" is how many semitones all the voices move across the whole loop, added up; "per change" divides it by the number of chord changes so a four-bar and an eight-bar loop can be compared. Root position on the classic loop is roughly seven times the travel of auto voicing with the same four chords. The auto version is what a pianist would do without thinking; the root version is what a piano roll does by default. That gap is most of what "sounds like a demo" means.
Two octaves is enough for two hands if you are disciplined about who gets which octave. Left hand takes the bottom octave and plays one note — the root — or the root and fifth. Right hand takes the top octave and plays the chord. That is a complete house part. Anything fancier gets recorded as a second pass with the octave button moved.
Pick a chord and inversion; the lab places a left-hand root in the low octave and the chord in the high octave and reports whether both fit inside the two-octave window at once. When they don't, it tells you the inversion that does — or that it is a two-pass job.
Improvising over a loop is three rules. Not thirty. The lab below plays a full bed — drums, bass, and whichever progression you chose in section 4 — and scores what you play against those three rules while you play it.
In the key, no exceptions until you can hear why you want one. In A minor that means white keys. If it is lit, it is allowed.
When the kick hits, be on a note of the chord that is playing. Between kicks, be anywhere in the key. The bed lights the chord tones for you.
Play a short thing. Play it again. Then change one note. Repetition is what makes it sound intentional; the first time through is never the hook.
Press play. The keyboard lights the current chord's notes brighter than the rest of the key. Play. Everything is recorded and exportable as MIDI. When you stop, the four numbers are your score; the first two are the rules, the third is how tight your timing was to the nearest eighth note, and the fourth is what percentage of what you played was a repeat of something you had already played — rule three, measured.
The export is the take. Everything you play while the bed runs is recorded with its timing. The MIDI file has three tracks — you, the chords, the bass — so the accidental good bit is never lost. Reset score clears it.
What a good score looks like. In key above 95% is the floor — below that you are not looking at the lit keys. Chord tones on the beat between 60% and 85% is the sweet spot; 100% is a chord, not a melody, and under 50% sounds like you are avoiding the tune. Timing under 40 ms is tight. Repetition above 30% is a hook; under 10% is noodling.
Five, all short, all scored, all playable on screen or from the controller. Ten minutes a day is enough: two rounds of the first two, one round each of the rest. Best scores are kept for this session only.
The controller is only useful if the DAW is ready when the idea arrives. Six settings, all of them one-time.
M. Same map as this page's A W S E D F row.Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+C. Live is always listening. Play something good without pressing record, press Capture, it appears as a clip. Use this constantly; it removes the fear of the red button.Cmd/Ctrl+U on the clip with amount around 50–70%. Fully quantised chords sound like the piano roll drew them; half-quantised sound like a person.Everything on this page as counts. Semitones are keys, black and white together.
| Chord | Semitones from root | Hand |
|---|---|---|
| Major | 0 · 4 · 7 | play, skip, play, skip, play (big gap first) |
| Minor | 0 · 3 · 7 | same shape, small gap first |
| Diminished | 0 · 3 · 6 | two small gaps — the B chord in A minor |
| Sus2 / Sus4 | 0 · 2 · 7 / 0 · 5 · 7 | middle finger one key left or right — neither major nor minor |
| Minor 7 | 0 · 3 · 7 · 10 | minor plus one skip |
| Major 7 | 0 · 4 · 7 · 11 | major plus one skip |
| Dominant 7 | 0 · 4 · 7 · 10 | the G chord in A minor / C major with a 7th |
| Root + fifth | 0 · 7 | left hand, always safe |
| Octave | 0 · 12 | same name, thirteen keys apart |
| Key | Black keys | Same notes as | When to learn it |
|---|
Learn keys in black-key order. A minor first, then E minor and D minor (one black key each), then B minor and G minor (two). Most house and techno lives in the first three; you may never need the rest of the table.
| Scale degree (minor) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semitones from root | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 10 |
| In A minor | A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
| Triad built on it | minor · i | diminished · ii° | major · III | minor · iv | minor · v | major · VI | major · VII |
| Feels like | home | passing only | bright home | away | tension | lift | pull back home |
Roman numerals are just the scale degree the shape sits on. Capitals for major, lower case for minor, ° for diminished. i–VI–III–VII in A minor means the shape on A, on F, on C, on G. Once you can read that line you can read every progression in Chords and Melody & Harmony as a set of hand positions.
You do not need to be able to play piano. You need seven shapes, three rules and a working octave button. Everything past that is either taste, which the rest of this set is for, or technique, which is worth ten minutes a day and no more until the tracks demand it.
Field guide 15. All audio synthesised live; MIDI input via Web MIDI in Chrome and Edge; exports carry the current key and tempo. Nothing is saved between reloads.