Find the Chords

Find the Chords isn’t on the web: the web doesn’t play recordings or run the model it listens with. Open the song in Stab on a Mac, a PC, an iPad, an iPhone or Android; the chords it writes stay in the song.

Finding the chords

1. Line the song up with the recording first, so its beats fall where the recording’s do: Find the Beats does it in one go. Chords are heard a beat at a time, on the song’s beats.
2. Choose what to hear: drag along the recording’s waveform with ⇧ held to pick a stretch, or turn the loop on. With neither, the whole recording is heard.
3. Right-click the recording’s lane and choose Find the Chords, followed by what it will hear: “(the selection)” or “(the loop)”.

The pill over the pane counts it out: “Finding the chords: 40 % · Stop”. Click it to stop, or choose Stop Analysis (⌘.)Stop Analysis (Ctrl+.)Stop Analysis (not on Web); the lane’s menu says Stop Finding the Chords meanwhile.

When it’s done, a note says how many it wrote: “24 chords written in the Chords row (Undo removes them)”. Within the stretch heard, the chord symbols already there are replaced by those heard, in one undo step. Where it hears no chord, the one before carries on. Chords are spelt for the song’s key at that point.

On a take you recorded

Select a take recorded in Stab (tap its waveform) and choose Find the Chords from the take’s menu (right-click it), the action bar or the Inspector’s Recording section.

Where the chords go

Into the song’s Chords track if it has one. Otherwise into the track the chords would be typed on: the one you’re working in, if it isn’t drums or a Smart Track, else the first track shown that will take them. A song with only drums has nowhere to put them, and the menu says Find the Chords (add a track that isn’t drums).

What to expect

It knows major and minor chords, sevenths (7, maj7, m7), sus2 and sus4, diminished chords and power chords. It does best on pop, soul, ballads and folk; jazz and blues come out simpler than played, an extended chord as its triad or seventh, and a walking bass or a melody can pull a beat’s chord about. Read it as a first draft, by ear, and fix it in the Chords row or the Chart.

Its model

Find the Chords listens with the same model as Write Tab from Audio. Until it’s on this device, the lane’s menu offers Write Tab from Audio: Get Its Model… in its place: see Model packs.