Chord Machine CM-01
Problem
Learning piano chord theory as a music producer felt unintuitive and overly technical, with few tools that allowed for fast, creative exploration based on sound and emotion rather than theory.
User
Music producers, beginners, and creatives who want to explore chords quickly, hear ideas instantly, and build musical intuition without needing deep theoretical knowledge.
What I Built
Chord Machine CM-01, a web-based music composition tool that transforms chord exploration into a hardware-inspired experience. Users can play all 24 major and minor chords, hear them instantly using the Web Audio API, explore harmony through a Mood Map organized by emotional feel, and build chord progressions with a queue that supports looping, saving, and MIDI controller input.
Where AI Fits
Used Claude Sonnet 4.6 and OpenAI Codex as agentic AI coding assistants to explore implementation approaches, accelerate development, and solve unfamiliar audio programming challenges.
My Role
Conceived, designed, and developed the entire application independently using vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, focusing on intuitive UX, sound design, and translating music theory into an interactive tool.
Outcome / Intended Impact
Makes chord exploration more accessible, intuitive, and creatively driven, helping users quickly generate ideas, understand harmony through feeling, and integrate music theory into their workflow naturally.
Desktop browser only.
