Play Full Chords with Chord Lab

In Play mode, open Chord Lab from its card on the Play surface (iPad and Mac), or switch the dock's chord-instrument tool on. A chord bar appears below the keyboard, and every key you press now plays a full chord instead of a single note. The four base types and a bass voice are free to use forever.

The top row of the bar holds the chord types: Maj, Min, Sus, and Dim. Tap one to arm it, then play any key to hear that chord rooted on the note you pressed. Types are mutually exclusive — tapping a new one swaps it in.

Tip The armed type is colour-coded — Maj is blue, Min purple, Dim orange — the same colours chords use across the app.

With the Chord Lab pack, the bottom row adds extensions — 6, m7, Major 7th, and 9 — that stack on top of the chord type. They're how you reach sevenths and added-note chords: hold Maj plus Major 7th for a major-seventh, or Min plus m7 for a minor-seventh. Combine a few at once for jazzier voicings.

Tip Extensions need a chord type — they don't sound on their own. Discovering the type-plus-extension combinations is half the fun.

Turn on Key Mode (set your Play key first) and every key you press snaps to the right diatonic chord in that key — one finger, always in key. It's the fastest way to play a progression that sounds right without thinking about chord types at all.

Use the Voicing control to shift a chord's notes up or down a step at a time — these are inversions, so chords flow smoothly into one another instead of jumping. Add a Bass voice to anchor the bottom of the chord.

Two ways the pads behave:

• Latch — tap a type and it stays on until you change it.
• Hold — the type is active only while you hold its pad; release, and keys play single notes again.

Latch suits playing chord after chord; Hold is handy for slipping between chords and melody.

If you have a MIDI controller with pads, you can map them to the chord buttons with MIDI-learn, so you trigger types and extensions from hardware while both hands stay on the keys. Connect your controller first, then assign each pad from Chord Lab's mapping screen.

Tip No pads? The on-screen bar does everything — Chord Lab works entirely without hardware.