PROGRESE

Most songs you hear on the radio rest on a handful of simple principles: the progression stays in one key, alternates tonic and dominant function, and only occasionally borrows one extra "color" chord. That's why even a completely amateur progression can sound great as long as it sticks to the scale — and why even a technically correct one sounds off the moment it strays outside it. The fastest way to a usable progression is to start from the mood, not the chords: decide whether you want the track to feel happy, sad, dreamy, or epic, and let that mood dictate the key (major vs. minor) and the tempo. Only then worry about the specific chords — or let the generator pick them and try a few variations until one matches what you're going for.

A major scale generally reads to listeners as bright, confident, and open — which is why it anchors happy, epic, and nostalgic tracks. A minor scale carries tension and introspection instead, which is why it works for sad, dark, and dreamy moods. Tempo then fills in the intensity: a slow 60–75 BPM deepens melancholy or dreaminess, while 100+ BPM gives a progression energy and urgency. "Minor key + slow tempo + simple triads" is the classic recipe for a ballad, while "major key + mid tempo + seventh chords" shows up constantly in lo-fi and chillhop. Try the same key across a few moods in the generator above and you'll hear the difference immediately.

Drag the exported .mid file onto an empty MIDI track in Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, or Reaper — it contains four separate tracks (chords, melody, bass, arpeggio), so you can assign each one its own instrument or VST plugin. A fast starting point: put a pad or piano on the chord track, a simple synth bass on the bassline, and let the melody play through a lead or pluck synth. If the loop feels short, just copy and paste the whole block, or tweak individual notes directly in the piano-roll editor — the generated progression is only a starting point you're free to keep shaping. Downloaded files carry no license or watermark, so you can drop them straight into a commercial project too.

The tool offers eight built-in moods, each combining a different key mode, tempo, and set of typical progressions. Happy is major and faster (around 112 BPM), built on classic pop progressions occasionally spiced up with a 6 or add9 chord for a fresher, more modern sound. Sad and dark are both minor, but sad stays more melodic and occasionally reaches for a ninth or a sixth on the subdominant, while dark leans on tenser jumps between bare triads. Dreamy and romantic both add seventh or ninth chords for a fuller, softer sound and play at a slow tempo — dreamy also occasionally borrows a dense 6/9 chord. Epic is minor and dramatic, sitting around 90 BPM, while chill/lo-fi is also minor with seventh chords but a more relaxed groove and a touch of 6/9 and add9 chords typical of lo-fi and neo-soul production. Nostalgic is the only major-key mood among the slower/mid-tempo group, and leans on the vi–IV pull (occasionally IV6) that's characteristic of that sound. Moods can be switched anytime while keeping the same key, so it's easy to compare how one root note sounds across all eight.

Beyond plain triads and 7th chords, the generator occasionally reaches for a chord that gives a progression a slightly different shade without ever leaving the chosen scale. Sus2 and sus4 replace the third with a second or a fourth — the chord briefly loses its clear major/minor identity and "hangs" in tension that resolves nicely once the third returns in the next chord. A 9th chord extends a 7th chord by one more note a third above and sounds fuller, airier — common in dreamy, romantic, and jazz-leaning progressions. A 6th chord is simpler and more consonant by comparison: it adds a sixth to the triad without a seventh, so it doesn't sound like a dominant and doesn't pull anywhere — a classic retro pop/soul color, handy as a substitute for a closing tonic chord. 6/9 combines the sixth and the ninth in one chord, and add9 adds just the ninth without the seventh — both sound full but stay harmonically open, with no pull toward resolution, a favorite color in modern pop, lo-fi, and neo-soul. The generator builds all of these purely from the notes of the chosen scale, and only on the degrees where the added note is genuinely diatonic — so even a "spiced-up" progression always stays musically consistent.

Alongside exporting the whole progression at once (five tracks in a single .mid file), you can also download just one layer — chords, melody, bass, arpeggio, or drums on its own. That's useful when you only want part of the generated idea: laying the bassline under your own chords, for example, or keeping the chords while writing your own melody and bass from scratch. Separate tracks are also easier to hand off between instruments or collaborators, since nobody has to figure out what to mute in the project. Because every layer comes from the same chord progression, they all stay harmonically compatible once split apart, so you can mix and match them with other instruments or sounds without worrying they'll clash.