Explore Scales and Chords on the Keyboard

Tap Play in the bottom nav. You'll see the on-screen keyboard with a sidebar panel on the left. The sidebar has two tabs — Scales and Chords — that control what gets highlighted on the keyboard.

The keyboard is fully playable at all times: tap or swipe keys to hear them, or connect a MIDI keyboard and play directly.

Tap the Scales tab in the sidebar. Choose a root note from the note picker at the top (C, C#, D…), then choose a scale type from the list below: Major, Natural Minor, Harmonic Minor, Melodic Minor, Pentatonic Major, Pentatonic Minor, Blues, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Locrian, and more.

The keyboard updates instantly — scale tones light up in the mode's colour, and the tonic gets a filled dot so you always know the root.

Tip Tap highlighted keys to hear the scale tone in context. Swipe from the tonic upward to play the scale in sequence.

When a scale or chord is active:

• Filled dot — root note (tonic or chord root)
• Coloured key — scale tone or chord tone
• Plain white/black key — outside the scale or chord

The note name strip below the keyboard (toggleable in Settings) labels every key so you can cross-reference names with positions.

Tip Turn on the note name strip when learning a new scale shape — it makes it much faster to connect key names to positions.

Tap the Chords tab in the sidebar. Pick a root note, then browse chord types: major, minor, dominant 7th, major 7th, minor 7th, augmented, diminished, sus2, sus4, add9, and more.

The keyboard highlights all chord tones simultaneously. Tap any lit key to hear that note within the chord voicing, or tap the play button in the sidebar to hear the full chord at once.

Tip Use the Practice Chord button to launch a single-chord practice session directly from the Chord Explorer — no navigation needed.

Connect a MIDI keyboard via the Lightning/USB-C adapter or over Bluetooth. Tiny Instrument detects it automatically — no setup required. The on-screen keyboard reflects every note you play in real time.

The scale/chord highlight stays active while you play, so you can see which of your notes are in the key and which aren't. This is useful for improvisation: keep the scale highlighted and experiment with the lit keys.

Tip If Tiny Instrument doesn't detect your keyboard, check Settings → MIDI to confirm the input port is enabled.