How to Use Palette

Palette is Stem Shovel's chord player (Chord Player in the Instruments menu, Palette in the footer, at /chord-player): the piano's sounds on a circle of fifths. It needs no account: press a chord and hear it, hold it as long as you like, and see which chords sit well together. Beginning songwriters find it a quick way to try a progression before the words are written.

The circle

The circle shows the twelve major chords on its outer ring, going round in fifths (C, G, D, A…), and each one's relative minor on the inner ring (the UI menu can write each key's signature beside it). Press a wedge with the mouse or a finger and the chord sounds until you let go; glide onto the next wedge without lifting and the chord changes; press two wedges with two fingers and both sound. The chords next to any chord are the ones that fit it best, so a song in one key lives in a few neighbouring wedges.

Key turns the circle so your song's key sits at the bottom; the UI menu's "Key Position" puts it at the top instead, and the menu can also show the key signatures, and stop dimming the chords outside the key (they are dimmed until you say otherwise). The IV button beside the keyboard button writes every chord's Roman numeral in the key on its wedge, the six chords of the key in yellow (I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi) and the rest, like ♭VII or ♯iv, in gray. The UI menu's Layout chooses the arch (the default) or the whole circle. The arch: the key and three fifths each way, the chords a song mostly uses, drawn big across the top, the four far keys as straight buttons running on down from its two ends, and the tritone (♯IV and ♯ii) left out, so the chords you play most get the room. With the key at the bottom (the UI menu), the arch turns over: a bowl with the key at the bottom and the far keys rising from its ends, which a thumb reaches on a phone. 7 adds a seventh to every chord while you hold it (or hold Shift): a dominant or major seventh on a major chord, as the Chords menu says, and the minor seventh on a minor; in another palette it raises each chord to its next extension. Stop, the square beside Chords and Notes in the Play group, lights while something plays on its own, a latched arpeggio or strum pattern or the pad, and stops it (so does ESC; on a phone it appears beside the 7 pad while needed). Sustain holds every note while you hold it, as the space bar does; tap it twice and it locks down (its icon becomes a padlock) until you tap it twice again or press ESC. On a wide screen the two are round pads either side of the arch, for a hand each; on a phone they sit at the lower left, under a thumb. The names on the wedges say what each will play in the palette you have on, with the 7 pad held or not.

Notes turns the circle into twelve single notes, chromatic from your key, for a melody; Chords turns it back.

The arpeggiator

Arp, beside Chords and Notes, makes a held wedge play its notes one at a time in time with the Timing tempo instead of all at once. That tempo is the session's, shared with the metronome and the drum machine wherever they are on the same page (the looper, the Idea Recorder, the home page), and the arpeggiator's Tempo setting runs the pattern at it, at half-time or at double-time. The Chords menu's Arpeggiator section sets the rate (quarter, eighth, triplet or sixteenth notes), the pattern (up, down, up and down, as played, random), how many octaves it climbs, the gate (how much of each step the note sounds) and Latch, which keeps the pattern going after you let go until the next chord or ESC (double-click or double-tap the Arp button to latch it on, and again to unlatch; a single click switches it off, latch and all; the button shows a padlock while it is latched). Patterns line up with bars (on to begin with): the pattern starts again from its first note at every bar, or every two, dropping whatever was left of it, so however many notes a chord and voicing give it, it lands the same way each bar. Chord changes land on the beat (on to begin with): while the pattern runs, a new chord joins it at the next quarter (the next eighth in sixteenth-note mode, the next beat in triplets), so pressed a little before the beat it waits and lands exactly on it, and pressed a little after it comes in on the very next step at that step's place in the pattern, so nothing after it runs late; that holds whether the last chord is still held, latched, or was let go within the last bar; switch it off and a new chord restarts the pattern as you press it. Swing pushes every second eighth or sixteenth late, up to a triplet feel at full (quarter notes and triplets stay straight); it is the chord player's one swing, the strum pattern's too, set from either menu, and the session's: on the looper, the Idea Recorder and the home page the drum machine swings with it, and a beat's swing moves it. While the pattern runs, the readout lights the note it is on, on the staff and in the written names, and with Latch on it keeps naming the chord after you let go. The pad plays a progression back through it too. Palettes and voicings decide which notes it cycles.

On the looper and the Idea Recorder

The chord player is a source on the looper and the Idea Recorder, beside the piano: a Chords source button and a chord player button in the toolbar open it in a panel of its own, where it plays into a layer or a take with everything it has here but the progression pad. It is the same instrument as the piano, so the two take turns as a source, and its settings travel with the idea or the loop.

The readout

The middle of the circle names what is sounding and, beneath the name, its notes: on a small treble staff with the names written under it (as it starts), the names alone, the staff alone, or not at all, as the UI menu says. The notes are spelled in flats on the flat side of the circle and in sharps on the sharp side.

Sound, presets and effects

The chord player has a piano engine of its own, so everything the piano has is here, with its own sound and effects remembered separately from the piano's (on the home page, the Idea Recorder and the looper, changing one no longer changes the other): the Sound menu's grand piano, electric piano, organ, synths, a sampled electric bass (an octave down, made for Notes mode) and a sampled acoustic guitar, the Effects menu with reverb, delay, chorus, tremolo, fuzz, wah, phaser, tone, rotary, a compressor (with a meter) and a stereo bounce in time with the session tempo (and a Reset all to defaults button at its foot), and the volume. The five preset buttons are the chord player's own, drawing on the same library of saved sounds as the piano's: the bookmark button beside them saves the sound playing now to a button, with the chord player's own settings (chords or notes, the style, the voicing, the octave, the strum with its speed, direction and accent, the seventh's kind, the Touch, the sustain pedal locked or not, and the arpeggiator with everything in its menu, on or off, latched or not, its tempo ratio included), which come back when the preset is pressed here (the piano ignores them), puts any saved preset on one, renames or clears it (signed in, the library is your account's, shared with every member; signed out, the buttons are this browser's). A sound that drifts from its preset shows "edited" on the screen, as the piano's does. Share, beside the UI button (a Share section of the wrench menu on a phone), copies a short link (on shvl.me) that opens the chord player set up as it is now, for a bandmate or a student: the sound and effects, the style, voicing, strum and arpeggiator, the circle's look and key, and the tempo; opening it puts those settings in place of the ones that browser remembered (your progressions and presets are untouched).

Chords, palettes and strums

On a wide screen these all live on the device: Color and Voicing as dropdowns, the arrow beside Color for the seventh's kind and palettes of your own, the Strum split button and its arrow, and the Touch slider. On a phone the wrench menu's Chords, Strum and Touch sections hold the same.

• Color: what the wedges carry by their place in the key. Plain is the triads, with the 7 pad adding a seventh. Blues puts a dominant seventh on every chord (the 7 pad makes it a ninth). Jazz gives each degree its own: maj7 on I and IV, m7 on ii, iii and vi, a dominant 7 on V and the borrowed chords, m7♭5 on vii; the 7 pad adds the ninth, or the thirteenth on V. Lush stacks ninths, elevenths and thirteenths for gospel and neo-soul. Folk is a guitar's open shapes for folk and Americana: add9 on I and IV, a sus4 on V, the minors as m7, and the 7 pad suspends (a sus2 on IV, a 7sus4 on V, a sus4 elsewhere) or, on I, augments it on its way to the vi. Fifths is power chords on every wedge, root, fifth and octave, the minor wedge playing its root's too; the pad adds a fifth above. Minor takes the key's relative minor as home (the inner wedge under the key, Am in C): i, iv and v plain minors with sevenths under the pad, a half-diminished ii, and the harmonic minor's V, a dominant seventh on the III wedge's major (E7 in A minor), so a minor-key tune plays from the inner ring. Honky-tonk is country's sweetness: sixths on I and IV (a 6/9 under the pad), sevenths on V and on the secondary dominants II, III and VI (a ninth under the pad), the minors as m7. Ragtime is stride's chains of dominant sevenths, VI7 to II7 to V7 to I, with I and IV plain (a 6 under the pad) and a diminished seventh on any minor wedge's root under the pad, the passing chord of the era. Bossa is the jazz palette tilted softer, for Brazilian and Cuban tunes: maj7 on I and IV with a 6/9 under the pad, a 9 on V with a 7♭9 under it, the minors as m7 and m9. Bebop is the hot half of jazz: a sixth on I (6/9 under the pad), maj7 on IV, a 7♭9 on V and on every secondary dominant (the 13 under the pad), m7 on the minors, m7♭5 on vii with a diminished seventh under the pad. Cool is the other half: 6/9 on I and IV (maj9 under the pad), unaltered ninths on V and the dominants (13 under), m9 on the minors (m11 under), m7♭5 on vii. The chord names on the readout say what you got, and a saved progression remembers its palette. Signed in, New palette makes a palette of your own, starting from the one in use: a row per degree, with what a major wedge and a minor wedge carry and what the 7 pad raises each to, saved to your account by name for every member to play; Edit and Delete keep it.
• Voicing: standard (the plain triad), spread (the root an octave down, the fifth an octave up), rich (two bass roots below and the root doubled above), bass (the triad over a low root) or root bass (a bass root under the first inversion).
• The seventh on a major chord (the arrow beside Color): a dominant seventh (C7) or a major seventh (Cmaj7).
• Strum is its own split button on the device: press it to switch the strum on or off, and open the arrow beside it for its settings, each explained by the small i beside its name. With the strum on, a press strums the chord (the notes a few milliseconds apart, as a hand plays them, at the speed you set) and holding the wedge strums it again and again in a pattern at the session tempo, down and up strokes as a guitarist's hand: down on the beat, down up, the folk D DU UDU, country, island, a waltz, or driving eighths, each slot an eighth or a sixteenth, with the chord player's swing (the arpeggiator's, set from either menu); Once keeps to the single strum on the press. The direction plays the pattern as written, turns every stroke over, or alternates each time through (press by press with Once). Latch keeps the pattern going after you let go, until the next chord or Stop: double-click or double-tap the Strum button to latch and unlatch (its icon a padlock while latched). The arpeggiator takes over while it is on; presets and demos carry the pattern too. On a phone the strum is a section of the wrench menu.
• Accent (in the Strum menu): every note alike, or the top note a touch louder (a melody on top) or the bottom (a bass under the chord).
• Inversions: while you hold a wedge, drag a little way up to turn the chord over (C becomes C/E, then C/G), and back down to turn it back; the readout and the pad name it with the bass note after the slash.
• Touch (a slider on the device beside Volume, with a section in a phone's wrench menu): how hard the keys are pressed, shown as the dynamic marking from pp to ff; the sound opens up and gets louder as you press harder.
• Octave: where the chord's root sits, and the notes of notes mode; 4 is middle C's.

The progression pad

Under the circle, the pad writes down what you play. Switch Jot on and every chord you press is added, lasting until the next one starts: one, two or four beats, measured against the tempo in the Timing menu, so the time it takes to find the next wedge is not a silence. Let a chord go and leave two beats or more of silence before the next, and a rest of two or four beats is written; a long pause while you think is not. The last chord keeps the length you held it until the next one tells the pad how long it really lasted. The pad shows the chords by bar, with a dot per beat, and counts the bars and beats.

Tap a chord on the pad to change it: one, two or four beats, a rest in its place, or Remove. Undo steps back through every change, Clear empties the pad (Undo brings it back). Play plays the progression through the chord player, lighting each chord on the circle and the pad as it sounds, with a click under it when the Metronome button is on (press the button while it plays to silence or start the click; a running metronome hands over to it and comes back when the progression ends); Loop plays it round and round; Play again, or Escape, stops. MIDI saves the progression as a .mid file for your DAW, at the pad's tempo and meter, as a piano. The pad keeps its chords in your browser between visits.

Signed in, the Saved button keeps a progression in your account by name, for every member to open, and opens the ones saved before; an editor can save over one, save a copy as new, rename it or delete it, and New starts a fresh pad with the saved one left as it is. A saved progression brings its tempo, beats to the bar and notes with it.

Notes

Signed in, a note board sits under the device, the Idea Recorder's: type and it saves as you go, and the notes are kept with the progression. Notes can stand alone: a note on a pad that was never saved makes a progression for it (untitled until you rename it in the Saved menu), and a progression can have chords and no notes. Empty the notes of a progression with no chords and it goes. The trash button clears the board.

Panels

On a wide screen the device and the notes each pop out into a panel of their own with the arrows button in their header: drag it by the header, resize it by the corner, and the arrows put it back in the page. The device lays itself out by the panel's width.

Learn mode and the demos

Demos, on the pad, lists progressions to learn from, from the four chords under half of pop to the twelve-bar blues, Pachelbel's Canon, the Andalusian cadence and traditional tunes like Amazing Grace and Greensleeves, and the jazz staples: the I–vi–ii–V and iii–vi–ii–V turnarounds, the minor ii–V–i, a jazz blues, rhythm changes, the backdoor ii–V and descending ii–Vs, each written by degree. Choose one and it sets the player up for it first (its key, sound, palette, voicing, strum, arpeggiator, octave, sustain and effects, so the blues comes up in E in the Blues palette over a bass root and the Canon in D arpeggiated with a long reverb) and goes onto the pad with Learn on: the circle outlines the next chord and the readout names it, and playing that chord moves the outline on to the next (a wrong one does nothing). Press Play to hear it instead, or Learn to switch the mode off and keep the pad. Learn works on any progression on the pad, your own included. Describe, beside Demos when it is switched on, asks a language model for a progression from your words ("a wistful indie verse in a minor key", "a twelve-bar blues with a quick change", "a jazz turnaround with a tritone sub"): it lands on the pad in your key and meter with the model's tempo, and when the description calls for it the model sets the player up too, anything a preset holds: the sound, the style, the voicing, chords or notes, the strum and its pattern, the arpeggiator and its settings, the key, the octave, the sustain pedal and the effects; then it is ready to Play, Learn, edit, save or export as MIDI. Undo brings the last progression back.

The Timing menu

The Metronome button (the tempo alone, bpm implied) starts and stops the click; the small arrow beside it opens the Timing menu: the tempo in beats per minute, by the slider, the steps, the number or Tap (tap the button in time and it takes your tempo); the beats to the bar, two to six, which is how the pad groups its bars; and Click, a metronome at that tempo to play along to while you jot, the same click the pad's playback keeps under it. The tempo and meter are the metronome's, the same ones the Metronome page and the looper show.

Playing on the computer keyboard

The Space, Shift and Esc shortcuts sit under the circle on a wide screen; press the keyboard button on the device to show each wedge's key, and the rows join them. As the player starts, the keys go by degree: 1 to 7 play the major chord on each degree of the key (I to VII), so a I–IV–V is 1, 4, 5; 8, 9, 0, - and = play the five chromatic chords in rising order (♭II, ♭III, ♯IV, ♭VI, ♭VII); and the row below plays the minor on the same root, so W is ii, E iii and Y vi, and a ii–V–I is W, 5, 1. Shift adds the seventh, the space bar is the sustain pedal (press it twice quickly to lock the pedal down, twice again or ESC to lift it, as a double tap on the sustain pad does), ESC stops everything, the left and right arrows turn the key a fifth down or up, and the up and down arrows change the octave (so do the small + and − buttons above the sustain and 7 pads on a wide screen). The keys follow the circle as you turn it, so 1 is always your key, wherever it sits.

The UI menu offers the other map, round the circle: the number row plays the twelve major chords clockwise from your key, 1 to 0 then - and =; the row below plays the minors, Q to ]. The keyboard button's labels follow whichever map is on.

On a phone

The device keeps one row: the power switch, the sound, the key and a wrench menu holding the chords-or-notes switch, the keyboard labels and chord numerals, the presets, the volume and the Chords, UI and Effects settings. The progression pad, the notes and the Timing menu are for wider screens. The 7 pad and the sustain pad sit at the lower left of the device, under a thumb, and the five presets as small round buttons at the lower right.

A note on latency

Bluetooth headphones and speakers add a lot of delay between a press and its sound. For the best experience use your device's built-in speakers or wired headphones.