Piano Companion is a music theory app which helps songwriters, producers, teachers and their students. It’s a flexible piano chords and scales dictionary with user libraries, reverse mode, the circle of 5ths, chord progression builder with common patterns. If you can’t remember the name of a piano chord or scale, this app helps you to find it by keys or using your external MIDI keyboard. For example, just press C, G and you will get C Major as the first piano chord in the search result. If you don’t see a piano chord or a specific scale, you can create a custom piano chord or scale and use it for chord charts or your user library.
The Piano Companion app shows chord and scale notes on the grand staff, degrees, relative scales, intervals, fingering for both hands in major and minor scales – and you can contribute your own custom fingering too. You can practice scales in different keys and clefs, practice progressions. Additionally, you can listen to how a scale or chord sounds in the loop or arpeggiated. You can see the list of compatible chords in the selected scale or list of compatible scales for a selected chord.
The app helps you to compose, practice progressions and experiment with different chord progressions using our Chord Progression Builder with relative or common chords.
- 1500+ piano chords, up to 6th inversions such as major, minor, diminished, augmented, sevenths, etc.
- 10,000+ scales, such as Ionian (major), Aeolian (minor), Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian, Harmonic minor, Melodic Minor, chromatic, pentatonic, blues, etc.
- Chord Progression builder with scale patterns (chord sequencer)
- Interactive Circle of Fifths with grand staff and relative scales
- Ability to input your own custom chords and organize your own chord charts and library
- External MIDI keyboard support for reverse mode
- MIDI output with the ability to connect your favorite DAW (Ableton, Garage Band, etc.) with Piano Companion
- List of available chords in Circle of Fifths, practice common chords.
- Popular key notations: English, Italian, German, Japanese, Russian, etc.
- Shows chord and scale in different octaves on the grand staff with treble and bass clef
- Analytical labels: Secondary Dominant and Secondary Leading-Tone
- Common degrees: Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, Subdominant, Dominant, Submediant, Leading tone (in Major scale) / Subtonic (in Natural Minor Scale)
- Displays compatible chords’ scales
- Ability to create custom chords or modify existing ones
- Audio support: the ability to play a chord in the loop or arpeggio; ability to play a scale in the loop
- Arpeggio in the chord progressions
- Relative chords in chord progressions
- You can create your own scale fingering and have the ability to use community scale fingerings
- Custom chord libraries and chord charts
- Ability to create favorite scales
- Chord Intervals: Unison, Perfect Fifth, Major Third, Minor Third, etc.
Has 1 year subscription for $1.99.
Payment will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase.
Subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
Account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours of the end of the current period, and the cost of the renewal will be provided. Subscriptions may be managed by the user. Auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user’s Account Settings after purchase.
No cancellation of the current subscription is allowed during active subscription period.
Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication.
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Staff/Keyboard can be magnified in settings: 1x, 2x, 3x
You can turn off MIDI output.
Fixed issue with Search scale by name.
Added Airbuds support.
Love our app? Please rate us - each vote is very important for us! Your feedback keeps us motivated to continue development.
Ratings and Reviews
Perfect Piano Companion
I’ve used this app on and off for several years. It’s always been a great tool to have on hand, but it suffered from a few shortcomings. Not anymore. The latest update added the one feature I needed to make this app something I use daily, and that’s the ability to keep my iPad awake during use. My iPad is part of my studio setup; it’s connected to everything via MIDI. Now I can put Piano Companion on my iPad as a reference while I’m composing and I don’t have to worry about constantly reaching up to tap it to make sure it stays on. It seems like a small thing but it’s a game changer for me. I often come up with strange voicings while composing. Being able to look up and see what chord I’m playing at any moment is a big deal. The most recent build seems very stable and everything works just the way it should. I’m so happy Piano Companion has finally come of age as a professional tool I can use every day. Thanks!
Extremely helpful and I wish I found it sooner!!
Within the time that I have discovered this application to now i can already tell how valuable of a resource this is going to be, especially taking university level music classes. Any struggling student just take the time to look for other resources to develop the necessary skills and with so much information to learn it can be an extremely daunting task. However Piano Companion has all that information and more within the basic version alone, including a virtual piano, Chord Progression generator, and even a Chord Dictionary!
The only suggestion I have is redesigning the presentation of the info, particularly in the Chord Dictionary section where it has lots of helpful things like piano diagram of the chords along with quality and an audio snippet of said chord when tapped on, however there is an overwhelming amount of information all at once when taking into account the diatonic chords, 9th, 13th chord, etc. When i opened the app initially i was immediately intimidated by it but after really looking through it i was able to decipher what i needed vs what was there because it simply exists. Cutting out the fluff with help streamline the use of the app and the user will have a much more straightforward experience, no explanation or intimidation (ideally).
Still overall I believe this application will give me the boost i need in my classes and really improve/expand my knowledge as a musician. 10/10 would recommend.
Developer Response ,
Thanks so much for your feedback! We are still thinking how to improve onboarding experience. It's really hard to find the balance between different level of user knowledge.
App needs work for basic functionality
The content of this app is great, it’s basically a chord and scale encyclopedia. Excellent reference tool. But it is so buggy that it’s virtually unusable. In the scales / chord dictionary sections, about 65% of the time there is no sound when you click the scale. You can open the scale and click individual notes which produces sound, but not from the main scale or chord dictionary pages. I have to keep hard closing the app over and over again until it decided to boot up with volume. I’ve run into similar issues in the chord progression section, where instead of playing back the chord, it’s just a single note.. (and I’m familiar with the chord / arpeggio settings in chord progression, not a settings issue)… This also can only be resolved (IF it decides to resolve) by hard exiting the app and reopening. Sometimes one reboot will get it to work and sometimes I reset the app 10 times and still can’t get any sound out of it, then all of a sudden it works. It’s a great idea for an app, but there are also a million apps that do the same thing as this one.
Piano Chords and Scales is the exact same app (the original) but much better functionality
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- Songtive SIA
- 150.4 MB
- Requires iOS 10.0 or later.
- Requires iPadOS 10.0 or later.
- iPod touch
- Requires iOS 10.0 or later.
English, Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish
- Age Rating
- © 2020 Songtive
- In-App Purchases
- Lifetime ∞ $11.99
- PRO for One Year Subscription $2.99
- Chords PRO $1.99
- Progressions PRO $2.99
- Scales PRO $1.99
- Chords & Scales Pro $4.99