The Chord Wheel
Six chords in your key, one under the thumb
The left stick Left stick is the chord wheel: six wedges, each holding a chord of your key. Point the stick at a wedge and that chord is armed - it's what the next strum plays.
Three rules make it playable without looking:
- Arming is silent. The stick never sounds a note by itself. Sweep it, hover with it, change your mind - nothing plays until you strum.
- Letting go keeps the chord. Centre the stick and the last armed chord stays armed, so you can strum a groove without pinning the stick in a corner.
- Deflection means it, hovering doesn't. A firm point selects; drifting near a boundary won't flick between neighbours.
The layout
The wheel is arranged by function, not alphabetically. The tonic sits at the top, its two closest partners beside it across the top of the wheel, and the secondary chords below. In C Major that's F, C and G along the top, and Dm, Em and Am underneath.
Every wedge shows its chord name and its numeral, so the wheel reads the same in any key: the top is home, the neighbours are the chords that pull toward it.
Your key
Everything on the wheel comes from the key: a root and a quality, Major or Minor, declared once in the control bar at the top of the window. Change it and every wedge follows.
- Any root, any time. All twelve roots are yours in every tier.
- Major or Minor as home is a licensed choice; Demo Mode plays every key with Major as home.
- Relative keys hold the same six chords. A Minor's wheel contains C Major's chords, rearranged around a different tonic - declaring the key decides which chord the wheel treats as home.
There's no scale picker beyond the quality, and no wrong wedge: whatever the key, the wheel only ever offers chords that belong to it.