See chords as flags – Visual harmony of top composers on musescore
I designed a relative piano-roll-based music notation. I used 12 colored arranged in a specific way to make visible the main effects and oppositions of Western tonal harmony. The tonic is always white, so a manual annotation/interpretation is required for each MIDI file. All chords are flags of three to four colors. Minor mode is darker, major mode is lighter. Colors are arranged in thirds. I sorted the pieces from simple complex harmony. I also wrote a bit of text to explain what you may see. There's also a corpus of structures: hyperlinks of tags that allow you to find similar…
In plain words
This tool presents classical and popular music compositions using a color-based notation system designed to reveal harmonic structures. Each of the 12 colors represents a pitch class, with the tonic always shown in white, while major and minor modes use lighter and darker shades respectively. Chords appear as colored flags, making progressions visually recognizable without requiring traditional analysis. The platform includes over 3,000 scored pieces organized by harmonic complexity, along with a tagging system for finding similar harmonic patterns. It is intended for musicians and music students seeking to understand and memorize chord relationships visually.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
I designed a relative piano-roll-based music notation. I used 12 colored arranged in a specific way to make visible the main effects and oppositions of Western tonal harmony. The tonic is always white, so a manual annotation/interpretation is required for each MIDI file. All chords are flags of three to four colors. Minor mode is darker, major mode is lighter. Colors are arranged in thirds. I sorted the pieces from simple complex harmony. I also wrote a bit of text to explain what you may see. There's also a corpus of structures: hyperlinks of tags that allow you to find similar patterns throughout my corpus of 3000+ popular pieces. My method makes chord progressions memorizable and instantly visible in the scores. No preparation of Roman numeral analysis / chord symbols analysis is required. After a bit of training the chords will stare right in your eyes. It's not synesthesia, it's a missing script for tonal music which makes harmonically identical things look the same (or similar). I've also recorded lectures on my method in Russian (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzQrZe3EemP5pVPYMwBJG...). I'm sorry I haven't yet found time to re-record in English. I've also sketched a friendlier intro: https://vpavlenko.github.io/d/ Sorry, but this thing won't make any sense if you're color-blind. It's open-source: https://github.com/vpavlenko/rawl Earlier context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39165596 (Back then colors were less logical, and there was no corpus of 3000+ piece annotated yet)
Does the same job
all alternatives →- HWHarmopark – Web tool to visually build chords and progressions2019 · harmopark.app · ▲153
- CPChord Progressions2017 · peterburk.github.io · ▲161
Coffee PianoMay 2026 · coffeepiano.com · ▲101Browser music and piano studio with visual harmony tools
- IMI made a tool for learning scales, chords, and how to combine themMay 2026 · projects.alesh.com · ▲36
This started out when I vibe-coded a guitar scale fingering generator. It came out pretty good, and I started adding stuff to it: chords, then how chords and scales interact. Then I added charts for other instruments I mess around with: piano, cello, alto recorder. There's a complexity toggle to go from basic harmony to extended/experimental stuff. It's honestly still mostly a toy, but I thought other people might be interested in playing with it. Source is on github, so it's easy enough to run locally and fork. https://github.com/aleshh/gtr-scales
- IGInteractive guitar scales diagrams2018 · grunfy.com · ▲277
- NInoteZilla - Interactive sheet music2013 · notezilla.io · ▲275
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