Chord Progression Generator
Pick a key, genre and mood. Hear it, copy it, or download it as MIDI.
C major, pop, uplifting
- ICC E G
- viAmA C E
- IVFF A C
- VGG B D
Free, no account. The MIDI file is built in your browser: one chord per bar in 4/4 with the root doubled as a bass note.
Scale finder: which keys contain these notes?
Tap the notes in your melody or chord. You get every major and minor key that contains all of them.
Got the chords? Melodious turns the finished song into a music video — See how
How to generate a chord progression
To generate a chord progression, choose a key, major or minor, a genre and a mood, then press Generate. You get a sequence of chords shown both as Roman numerals (so you can move it to any key) and as chord names (so you can play it now). Press Play to hear it, copy the chords as text, or download a MIDI file with one chord per bar to drop into your music software. The genre decides how the chords are dressed: plain triads for pop and trap, sevenths for lo-fi and R&B, added ninths for worship. Every chord is taken from the key you chose, so whatever you generate will sound like it belongs together.
The progressions behind most songs
A small family of patterns accounts for a startling amount of popular music. I-V-vi-IV (C, G, Am, F in C major) is the most famous, and its rotations vi-IV-I-V and I-vi-IV-V cover most of what is left of mainstream pop. In a minor key, i-VI-III-VII (Am, F, C, G in A minor) plays the same role: it uses the same four chords as the major pattern, just starting from the minor tonic.
The reason they work is that they combine movement with return. The I chord is home, the IV and V pull away from it in two different directions, and the vi gives a minor-key shade of the same home. Chords that are close to each other on the circle of fifths feel related, so a progression made of them feels inevitable rather than arbitrary.
If you want to see why those chords belong together, the circle of fifths lays out each key and its neighbours, and shows the chords of any key you select.
What each genre setting changes
Pop keeps to plain triads and the best-known four-chord loops, because the arrangement and the vocal carry the character. Trap leans minor and sparse: long stretches on the i chord, with a VI and VII for lift, because the beat does the moving.
Lo-fi dresses every chord as a seventh and puts a ninth on the tonic, and favours ii-V-I and similar jazz-derived turnarounds. The chords are rarely resolved hard, which is the sleepy, unfinished quality the style is known for. R&B uses the same sevenths and ninths but with a dominant seventh on the V for a bluesier pull.
Worship music tends to be built on the I, IV, V and vi with open voicings, so the I and IV get an added ninth here, a note that adds air without changing the chord's function. It is easy for a congregation to sing over and easy for a band to arrange.
The mood setting then nudges which of the genre's patterns is chosen. Uplifting favours bright, forward-moving loops such as I-V-vi-IV; emotional favours loops that start on the vi; dreamy favours loops that avoid a hard V to I resolution; dark favours patterns that stay among the minor chords. The major or minor switch is separate, and decides which family of patterns is used at all.
From progression to finished track
A progression is a skeleton. The quickest way to make one sound like a song is to change the rhythm and the voicing before you change the chords: play the same four chords as an arpeggio in the verse and as full block chords in the chorus, or shift the chorus up an octave. Download the MIDI, split it into a bass part and a chord part, and the same bars will already behave differently.
Then decide how long each section lasts. A verse of eight bars repeating a four-chord loop twice is the usual starting point, with the chorus the same length or doubled. The song structure planner turns that into a bar-by-bar map with timestamps from your tempo.
It is at /tools/song-structure-planner, and it is free. If you also need lyrics, the rhyme generator will help with the line endings.
Honest limits
The generator picks from curated patterns and dresses them to a genre; it does not analyse a melody and it will not invent a chord the key does not contain. That is on purpose, since every chord is diatonic, but it means it will not give you a borrowed chord, a secondary dominant or a key change. Treat the output as a solid starting point, and then break it deliberately.
Playback is a plain synthesised tone, not a piano. The MIDI file is what you want for a proper sound: it uses standard note numbers, so any instrument plays it back correctly.
Frequently asked questions
What is a chord progression?
A sequence of chords played in order, usually repeating every four or eight bars, that gives a song its harmonic shape. Progressions are written as Roman numerals relative to the key, so I-V-vi-IV means the first, fifth, sixth and fourth chords of whatever key you are in. In C major that is C, G, Am, F.
What do the Roman numerals mean?
Each numeral is a position in the scale. Upper case (I, IV, V) is a major chord, lower case (ii, iii, vi) is minor, and a small circle marks a diminished chord. Extensions are added after the numeral, so Imaj7 is a major seventh built on the first degree. The advantage is that the same numerals work in every key.
Can I use the generated chords in my own song?
Yes. Chord progressions are not something anyone owns, and these are built from common patterns and the chords of the key, not copied from any recording. The melody, lyrics and arrangement you put on top are what make a song yours.
How do I use the MIDI file?
Download it and drag it onto a MIDI track in your DAW (Ableton Live, Logic, FL Studio, GarageBand and others all accept standard MIDI files). Each chord lasts one bar in 4/4 at the tempo you set, with the root note doubled as a bass note an octave and a half lower. Swap the instrument, change the voicing, or split the chords into an arpeggio from there.
Why does the genre change the chords as well as the pattern?
Because a genre is partly a harmonic vocabulary. Lo-fi and R&B lean on seventh and ninth chords for their smooth, unresolved colour. Worship music favours open added-ninth chords on the I and IV. Pop and trap tend to keep to simple triads so the melody and the production carry the character.
What does the scale finder do?
You tap the notes of a melody or chord, and it lists every major and natural minor key that contains all of them. If your notes do not fit any single key, it shows the closest ones and says how many notes fall outside the scale. It is useful for working out what key a riff is in, or whether a note you are adding is diatonic.
You have the progression. Want the video?
Attach a track and describe what you want in one message. An AI director storyboards it scene by scene, with the same character in every shot. Your first project's keyframes are free, so you see the whole storyboard before deciding to render.
Start your video