ChordBankPro will raise the bar for chord apps beyond just translating the kinds of diagrams we all grew up with in books to a little screen in your pocket. For the first time, an app will tell you not just how to play a chord, but why you should play that chord. It’s really a huge step forward in translating some of the great things we can figure out on an iPhone to some of the great things users want to do in real life on the guitars.

Like the Genius button in Apple’s own iTunes and iPod apps, ‘Smart Chords’ suggests chords that go well together. The app draws on popular chord changes to generate dozens of chord progressions for each of the thousands of chords in ChordBankPro.

The ‘Smart Chords’ feature swings the app’s virtual fretboard back like a door on hinges, exposing dozens of progressions ready to be popped into a hit song, each organized by the target chord’s ‘alias’ in a scale. The G major chord, for example, is shown in progressions as I of G major, IV of D major, or V of C major. For each progression, chords pop over the screen, with diagrams for left and right-handed guitarists, each playable with a tap.

Making that understanding accessible to all players, especially left-handed guitarists, was a key design decision that impacted every aspect of the latest release, much of which was rewritten from scratch, Ladd says.

“Smart Chords are the big, flashy new thing – that’s what everyone’s going to notice. But honestly, the thing I’m most excited about is supporting lefties,” Ladd says. “If you’re left handed, you string your guitar exactly opposite from a right-handed person, and so all the chords need to be flipped around, too.”

Device Requirements:
  1.  iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
  2. Requires iOS 4.0 or later 
  3. 9.9 MB

Purchase and Download