Every feature, explained simply — open exactly the chapter you need. New to the app? Chapter 00 gets you playing in five minutes. Everything applies to iPhone and iPad alike.
Your first five minutes, in three steps. Prefer watching? Chapter 01 is all video.
On the home screen, pick anything under STARTER PACKS. It's a finished example you can poke at — you can't break it.
Tap the big pads. Each one is a chord. Tap near the top for soft, near the bottom for loud. That's the whole trick.
Change one thing — a strum feel, a chord, the key. The app saves your own copy automatically. Now watch the tours below.
How the app is organized, and where your music lives.
The home screen is the front door to everything you make.
Explore freely — you can't break a starter pack.
Jam and Song are different rooms for different moods.
Everything else in this manual builds on these.
| Word | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Jam | A grid of chord pads you play live. Loose, fast, for finding ideas. |
| Song | A structured arrangement — sections in order, played by the transport. |
| Section | One part of a song (Verse, Chorus…). Owns its chords, drums and bass. |
| Feel | How a chord is performed — strummed, comped, arpeggiated, or pulsed. |
| Voicing | Which exact piano keys a chord uses. Same chord, different color. |
Each screen introduces itself the first time you open it.
A grid of chord pads with pro strum feels. Everything is one tap from sound.
The pads are velocity-sensitive by position.
Left to right, everything that shapes the session.
The card row above the pads is your feel menu. Each card's dots are the strum itself — five voices, left to right in time:
The grid grows with you.
Every chord in the app is built here. No theory required — pick a root and a quality, and the Factory does the naming.
Three choices and you're playing it.
A full C1–B6 keyboard — scroll to reach any octave, always.
Collect a progression without leaving the screen.
What you build is what plays, everywhere.
Sections, chords, and a feel for each. Compose is where a jam becomes a song.
A song is a list of sections; each owns its chords, drums and bass.
Tap any chord to edit it in place — no separate editor screens.
Song-level musical settings, changeable at any time.
Big moves, safely.
A feel is how a chord is performed. Pick one per section, give any single chord its own, or design yours from scratch.
| Feel | What it does | Key controls |
|---|---|---|
| STRUM | Guitar-style rolls across the voicing | Speed (note-value snaps), direction, curve, humanize, velocity ramp |
| COMP | Piano comping with two-hand voicing and touch | Groove pattern, dynamics, strike length, per-strike shape |
| ARP | Arpeggios that follow each chord | Mode, octave range, rate, note length — plus bass modes (Hold / Hold + 5th / In arp) |
| GATE | Rhythmic pulsing of the held chord | Pattern, gate length — long gates turn legato |
Every feel has an “Edit feel” panel where the character lives.
When the built-ins aren't yours yet.
A drum machine built into your song. Each section has its own beat; the kit and drum tuning belong to the whole song.
A step grid that is always exactly one bar of your meter.
An MPC-style surface for finger drumming.
This is where songs get their own drum sound.
Good grooves shouldn't be trapped in one song.
A per-section bass sequencer that always lands on the right notes.
Steps snap to chord tones, so wrong notes are hard to hit.
The oldest trick in rhythm sections, automated.
The bass has its own voice controls, like the drums.
From your couch to their studio — songs travel as files. No accounts, no uploads.
One file carries the whole song.
Three formats out, depending on the destination.
Import is just as file-based as sharing.
ChordCodex plays into GarageBand, Logic, AUM — anything that listens to MIDI.
Zero setup on the same device.
Bluetooth gear, your Mac, and shared tempo.
The built-in instrument and the audio menu.
Settings that change how the pads feel.
Everything you need to write and share is free. Pro is for when you're ready to take stems to a DAW.
The five questions that cover almost everything.
