HARMONY ANALYSIS Online tool

This book is accompanied with an online tool that helps in learning keys, chords and harmonies and can be of great assistance during harmony analysis. The tool can find keys, chords and harmonies that contain the note names entered using an on-screen piano keyboard. The strengths of this tool are: 

• It distinguishes between enharmonically equivalent note names. Proper spelling of chords and harmonies is important.

• Besides chords, it recognizes all the harmonies described in the book: diatonic chords, borrowed chords, Neapolitan chord, augmented sixth chords and even secondary chords.

• It displays annotations, full names and descriptions for keys, chords and harmonies and it lets users to choose the bass note so that the position (inversion) of chords and harmonies can be properly annotated.

• Found harmonies can be filtered by keys. When we know the key, we can use it to narrow the found harmonies. 

• Optionally, distinguishing between enharmonically equivalent note names can be turned off and then even improperly spelled chords and harmonies can be found.

Short instructions 

• Click on the piano key to press it. This will highlight the piano key and show the corresponding note name below it. You can press as many piano keys as you want. The tool will find all the keys, chords and harmonies that contain the chosen note names. Keep in mind that octaves are not important when analyzing harmony. Thus, a one-octave on-screen piano keyboard is all we need.

• Click again on the pressed piano key (one or more times) to select between the enharmonically equivalent note names. 

• Press shift and click on the pressed piano key to release it.

• Click on the button below the piano keyboard (it looks like the eject button on a CD player) to release all the piano keys.

• Click on one of the three tabs (Keys, Chords and Harmonies) to show the corresponding results.

• Click on any result to see more details about it. The will open a small window. Click on the window (or any blank space) to close it. 

• To filter between all the possible harmonies select the key. To memorize the selection check "Memorize" checkbox.

• You can show chord and harmony annotations for different chord positions (the root position or inversions). Select the bass note to show the corresponding chord and harmony annotations.

• Check "Enharmonic equivalence" checkbox to disable distinguishing of enharmonically equivalent note names. 

MuseScore versions 3 and later

If you use MuseScore software version 3, you can use a plug-in as a more practical solution. It enables you to select notes in the score, instead of using the on-screen piano keyboard. You can download the plug-in from here.

NEW!  

Since MuseScore version 4 does not support the plugin, if you use MuseScore version 4, you can do this

1. Use Musescore version 4 to export your score to MEI format file.

2. Use this version of the tool to load the MEI format file and use it similarly to MuseScore version 3 plug-in. It enables you to select notes in the score, instead of using the on-screen piano keyboard. Additionally, if you click on one of the shown harmonies in the panel, it will be annotated in the score together with the chord and nonchord tones (as on the figure below).

This version of the tool was developed by using Verovio, a music notation engraving library.