24 Studio Syllabus lessons and 18 Studio Advanced lessons. Every one shows what it teaches, the worked keyboard example and the quiz you'll take. Nothing to sign up for — buy when you're ready.
Learn a key as one seven-chord neighbourhood instead of seven separate facts.
Every major key contains the same seven chord qualities in the same order: major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished — I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii°. That order never changes. Learn the shape once and you have not learned one key, you have learned…
Video: Why reading teaches nothing
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — the shape in A major
A timed fifteen-minute session that ends with one borrowed chord.
The keys you dodge are the keys costing you songs. If every idea you have ever written lives in C, G or Am, the session starts in E, A♭ or B. Discomfort is the point: you are buying geography, and geography is only worth buying where you do not have it.
Video: Recite, then reveal
Workbook p. 2
Worked example: Worked example — a full fifteen minutes in E♭
Three drills, the mistakes that waste the session, and the bar for moving on.
Blind quality call: key on screen, eyes on your hands, call each degree's quality before you press. Ten in a row without a miss or the key is not yours yet. Four-key sweep: play I–V–vi–IV in four keys back to back with no pause — the pause is where you were…
Video: Borrowing one chord
Workbook pp. 3–4
Worked example: Worked example — the four-key sweep
Watch the walkthrough, print the log, run one recorded session today.
The walkthrough shows the call-and-check loop at real speed, including the part written guides skip: what it looks like to be wrong and keep going. Watch it once at full attention rather than three times in the background.
Video: Borrowing one chord
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — your first logged row
Find your default progression, then discover the styles it belongs to.
Everyone writes the same three or four progressions without noticing. Genre Matcher's real job is diagnostic: play what your hands do when you are not thinking, and see which styles the app matches it to. That match is a mirror, and the first honest look is…
Video: Your default loop
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — one loop, three styles
Run the route in both directions: match a loop, then build to a target style.
Forwards is the diagnostic pass. Improvise a four-bar loop, let the app match it, then read what it says the style leans on. Do this three times without editing yourself — the third loop is usually the most honest one.
Video: Borrowing backwards
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — building towards neo-soul
Genre roulette, the one-chord swap, and knowing when a style is yours.
Genre roulette: pick a style at random, give yourself four minutes, and produce a loop that matches. Speed prevents perfectionism; four minutes is enough to get the ingredients and not enough to write a song. One-chord swap: take a loop that matches a style…
Video: Deliberate mismatch
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — the one-chord swap
The walkthrough plus the log that turns borrowed moves into your own vocabulary.
The walkthrough runs both directions end to end and, crucially, shows the deliberate mismatch at the end — a loop that keeps the writer's own harmony but wears another style's clothes. That is the move most people miss when they read the guide.
Video: Deliberate mismatch
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — logging a stolen move
Why a two-minute daily puzzle outperforms a two-hour weekend session.
Recall improves with the number of separate retrievals, not with total time in the chair. Ten two-minute sessions across ten days beat one twenty-minute session, because each new day forces you to reconstruct the knowledge rather than merely continue holding…
Video: Why daily beats long
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — a two-minute session
The two minutes after the puzzle — and the floor that keeps bad days from breaking the habit.
Answer, then immediately play the correct answer twice at the keyboard, then write the reason. That three-part routine takes ninety seconds and converts a quiz result into a physical memory.
Video: Logging the reason
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — the ninety-second routine
Reading your own log, and the honest bar for this route.
Once a week, read the last seven reason lines in one sitting. You are looking for repeated words: 'minor sixth', 'inversion', 'flat seven'. Two repeats make a target; three make it next week's Focus Mode pair.
Video: The bad-day floor
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — a read-back that produces a target
The walkthrough shows the whole session in real time, including the deliberately unglamorous part: closing the app after two minutes while you still want to keep going. Stopping early is a skill.
Video: Logging the reason
Workbook pp. 3–4
Worked example: Worked example — setting up your fortnight
Treat Test Knowledge as a cold diagnostic, not a score to farm.
Take the test before you warm up, before you revise, before you 'just check' anything. A warmed-up score measures your ceiling; a cold score measures what you can actually do when a song needs it.
Video: Why cold results matter
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — tallying a cold test
The three-step review that converts every miss into a drill.
For every wrong answer: first, play the correct answer and the answer you gave, back to back, and describe the difference in plain words. Second, name the category. Third, write the smallest drill that would have caught it.
Video: The three-step review
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — one miss, fully processed
Weekly retakes, the traps, and the bar for calling this route done.
Retake cold, once a week, and compare category counts rather than totals. A score that stays at seven while your misses migrate from seventh qualities to inversions is real progress that the total hides.
Video: Turning a tag into a drill
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — comparing two weeks
The walkthrough and the diagnostic sheet you keep for a month.
The walkthrough takes a test cold on camera, misses several, and processes each one with the three-step review. Watching someone review a miss properly is far more instructive than reading the steps.
Video: Turning a tag into a drill
Workbook pp. 3–4
Worked example: Worked example — a full test cycle
Why the right difficulty feels bad, and how to find the 70–80% zone.
Focus Mode should feel slightly unpleasant. If you are getting more than about 80% right, the material is revision; below about 70% you are guessing and learning noise. The useful band is narrow and it does not feel like success.
Video: Why it should feel bad
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — calibrating in one block
Play every reveal three times — the step that makes Focus Mode stick.
A reveal you only read is worth very little. Play every revealed chord three times: once as written, once as an arpeggio, once with the top note sung. Three passes across three senses beats thirty passive reveals.
Tracking a pair to fixed, plus the pass mark for Focus Mode.
Each block is twenty reveals on one pair; log accuracy for ten blocks across at least four days. A pair is fixed when the last three blocks are all at 90% or better on different days and roots.
The walkthrough runs an uncomfortable session honestly — including misses — and shows the three-pass reveal at real speed so you can see how long a block actually takes.
Video: Playing the reveal
Workbook pp. 3–4
Worked example: Worked example — your first block row
Deduction, not recognition — how Chord Detective actually works.
Chord Detective rewards the same skill as transcription: narrowing a field of candidates using evidence. Each clue removes possibilities; your job is to say out loud what has just been removed before you consider what remains.
Video: Deduction, not recognition
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — the first two clues
Spend one attempt trying to disprove your favourite candidate.
Once you have a favourite, deliberately spend one attempt looking for evidence against it rather than for it. Ask: if this were actually the other candidate, what would I expect to hear that I have not checked?
Video: What a clue removes
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — disproving a favourite
The solve log, the traps, and the pass mark that means you can transcribe.
Log the case, the number of clues used, whether you guessed at any point, and the one test that settled it. Clue count is your real score — solving in three clues is a different skill from solving in seven.
The walkthrough and the casebook that takes you to a real transcription.
The walkthrough solves a case out loud, including the moment of resisting an instinct, and then reverses it into a clue sequence. Hearing the internal monologue is the point — deduction is a verbal habit before it is an aural one.
Video: Disproving your candidate
Workbook pp. 3–4
Worked example: Worked example — your first real transcription
Move between the seven diatonic chords without your hand leaving one position.
Any two diatonic chords a third apart share two notes; any two a fourth or fifth apart share one. Voice-leading is nothing more than refusing to re-play notes you already have. Hold the shared notes, move what is left by a step, and the progression stops…
Video: Recite, then reveal
Workbook pp. 2–3
Worked example: Worked example — voice-led I–vi–IV–V in C
Pick inversions from the bass line you want, not from where your hand happens to land.
An inversion is a decision about the bass. First inversion puts the third down there and softens the chord — good for passing between two root-position chords. Second inversion puts the fifth in the bass, which is unstable and leans hard towards a V chord,…
Video: Borrowing one chord
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — a stepwise bass in C
Get six new colours out of a key you already know by moving the centre of gravity.
The white keys are C Ionian from C, D Dorian from D, E Phrygian from E, F Lydian from F, G Mixolydian from G, A Aeolian from A and B Locrian from B. Nothing about the note set changes; only which note your ear treats as home does. That means you can write in…
Video: Why reading teaches nothing
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — one scale, three homes
Turn one progression into three genres by moving nothing but the rhythm.
Listeners identify genre in about a second, long before the harmony has done anything interesting. What they are reacting to is rhythm: where the chord lands relative to the beat, how long it is held, and whether the bass arrives early or late.
Video: Matching genre by feel
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — one loop, three genres
Use exactly one borrowed chord to make a stock progression sound written rather than found.
In a major key: ♭VII (a whole step below the tonic, major — instantly anthemic), iv (the minor four, which aches), ♭VI (grand, cinematic) and V/V (the secondary dominant, which sharpens the pull into V). Those four cover the vast majority of non-diatonic…
Match voicing density to the style before you blame the chords.
Neo-soul and gospel live on four- and five-note voicings: sevenths, ninths, elevenths, often with the third omitted and the root left to the bass. Country and folk sit on triads, frequently with an open fifth on top. Punk and much rock is two notes and a lot…
Video: Voicing for the style
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — three densities on one loop
Make speed the measurement once correctness stops being the challenge.
There is a difference between recalling a chord and deriving it. Both produce the right answer; only one is available to you mid-song. A time budget separates them cleanly: set twelve seconds per puzzle and any answer that arrives late is a miss, even when it…
Video: Building the streak
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — a timed set of ten
Turn scattered misses into a two-item practice plan that actually changes your week.
A useful error log has three fields: the chord quality, the key, and what you answered instead. The third field is the one most people skip, and it is where the pattern hides — consistently calling half-diminished chords minor sevenths is a different problem…
Video: Logging the misses
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — a week of logging
Close the gap between the three keys you are fluent in and the nine you guess at.
Most players are quick in C, G and F and slow everywhere else, because that is where they have spent their hours. The fix does not need new sessions — it needs a rule attached to work you already do: every solved puzzle gets replayed immediately in two other…
Prove you know the theory, not just the shape under your hands.
Answering with a keyboard in front of you lets your fingers do the recall. That is real skill, but it is not the skill you need when a bandleader calls a chart or a producer asks what the third chord is. Take the keyboard away and answer in writing first.
Video: Testing what you know
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — a silent set of twenty
Score first attempts only and get a number you can actually improve.
If a second attempt counts, you are measuring how quickly you can search rather than what you know. First-attempt scoring is uncomfortable precisely because it is accurate: most players lose ten to fifteen points overnight, and that lower number is the one…
Video: First attempts only
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — a cold weekly test
Answer with function as well as name, so substitutions become obvious later.
'A minor' is a spelling. 'vi in C — soft home, sits under the tonic, can replace I at a section start' is an answer you can use. Function tells you what a chord can be swapped for, where it can land and how much tension it carries.
Video: Naming the function
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — functional answers
Point the drill at the thing that is actually costing you, not the thing that feels good.
Drilling shapes you already half-know produces the pleasant feeling of fluency and almost no learning. The reliable test: if a drill feels good in the first two minutes, it is probably too easy. Real repair work feels clumsy for at least a week.
Video: Choosing the weakness
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — choosing this week's target
Build shuffled three-item sets that feel worse today and test better next week.
Twenty repetitions of the same chord in a row lets short-term memory carry you: after the third rep you are copying yourself, not recalling. Shuffle three related shapes and every repetition forces a fresh retrieval, which is the thing that actually builds…
Video: Interleaving the set
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — a shuffled set of three
Write the retirement condition before you start, so drills end on evidence.
Retire a drill when you hit ninety percent accuracy at your time budget on two separate days with at least one rest day between them. A single strong session proves nothing more than that you are warm; the gap is what shows the learning survived sleep.
Transcribe from the bottom up so every chord has only two candidates left.
Trying to hear a full chord at once is guesswork with four variables. Get the bass note first and three of them collapse: in a given key, a bass note usually implies one diatonic chord, occasionally two if an inversion is in play. Then decide the quality,…
Video: Bass first
Workbook pp. 1–2
Worked example: Worked example — eight bars, bass first
Identify the four non-diatonic chords that explain most 'strange' pop harmony.
A chord that will not fit the key is far more likely to be ♭VII, iv, ♭VI or V/V than anything exotic. Test those four before you reach for altered dominants or modal mixture theory — in pop, soul and rock they account for the great majority of surprises.
Video: Borrowed and modal chords
Workbook p. 3
Worked example: Worked example — testing four candidates
Find the exact bar where the old tonic stops being home.
Most key changes arrive in one of two ways. A pivot modulation uses a chord shared by both keys and slides through it, so the change feels inevitable rather than announced. A direct lift — usually a whole step up for a final chorus — simply moves and dares…
Video: Spotting the modulation
Workbook p. 4
Worked example: Worked example — marking the pivot
The Studio Syllabus unlocks all 24 lessons, six route quizzes, videos and printable workbooks for one payment. ChordCraft Lab Pro adds the 18 Studio Advanced lessons, the Simplex assistant and the whole Pro library.
