Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
App to find the flat version of a chord?
Looking for something that lets me easily figure out what a chord’s flattened version is as in I-bIII-IV for example. It’d be nice to pick A Dorian and see what the bIII is or to find what the flat version of Cmaj(III) is
Comments
In A dorian, CMaj is the bIII.
It’s not too difficult to figure them out in your head if you learn how each mode differs from the major scale. The dorian mode has a flat 3rd and a flat 7th, so the bIII in A is a C major as it neither contains a 3rd (C#) or a 7th (G#) that would need to be flattened.
Any chord app (Suggester {non-AUv3) or Scaler 2) can let you select a Minor scale as you I (NOTE: most Roman numeral chords systems show minor chord as lower case).
With the minor root set: the 3 chord in the scale will be a Major bIII.
With a major root set: the 3rd chord would be a minor biii (or bIII if you prefer).
Memorize those 2 rules and any chords in scale app will be your guide. Do a ton of these and you’ll start to learn Major and Minor thirds in the 12 possible cases.
A music teacher would assign drills to memorize this skill and once mastered throw another level of music mastery at you. If you are like me… you will work to some point of mastery and use the skills so far to just play on a few keys.
The @Linearlineman seems to have some favorite keys too if you find the roots of his catalog there are many in the same key… but what he does within and without of those scales shows an impressive level of variety so his music his highly varied and without much repetition. Using a few scales and still sounding so fresh just shows how many potential paths he has explored over the years of developing his craft.
When we ask him for the chords of some piece he always fires back: “I have no idea.” But then his listens and reports on what he can hear so his mind is on another level musically. He was trained NOT to repeat himself or copy anything he has heard before.
His teacher must have been pretty demanding but she got him to do the work and free his mind from just playing the same shit over and over like I do.
Ah, I think I am confused with the notation and definitions.
Wikipedia says that the ‘b’ is for denoting the borrowed chord from the relative scale. The Prog Machine app calls these flat degree progressions and shows the major scale chords that have been lowered one degree.
I thought that the ‘b’ in the roman numeral meant a chord had a flattened degree, but maybe that only applies to major scales
Thanks! I posted my previous reply before I saw this. Thank you folks for the explanations!
The ‘b’ in diatonic notation usually means the chord is flat. Uppercase numerals denote major chards, and lowercase denotes minor. It’s also possible that they can have a diminished or augmented symbol, and can also be designated as having other qualities such as the relatively common V7.
For example, a major scale should be:
I ii iii IV V vi vii°
Agreeing on what these symbols mean is the biggest part of the battle.
In C major:
I-bIII-IV
could mean Major 1 then a III that is NOT in the major scale.
Now should that 3 be a major or a minor?
If we agree upper case is MAJOR then we get Eb Major as the bIII.
If we don’t use the Major = upper and Minor = lower then it’s open to ambiguity.
Now that Wikipedia rule is useful:
I in C Major and bIII in the [edited] parallel scale of C minor where the 3 is Eb Major.
Both paths produce Eb Major.
So In a scale app select your root and toggle the scale from Major to Minor to see that bIII.
Toggling from minor to major is also helpful.
Chromatic Mediants which are my most recent theory discovery uses these 3rd chords to
Create wonderful fantasy music. With the extra tip of going down a 3rd to the VI or vi chords.
From any chord you can progress to 2 options up or 2 options down and it will sound like “The Lord of the Rings” fantasy music. Set up scaler to do this and you can skip a ton of theory and just get the results. For most cases up it skip a letter in the alphabet:
C -> E -> G -> B -> D -> F -> A - C
For up go left to right.
For down go right to left.
Using the Major Scale for the current chord will get you the iii minor and vi minor options.
Using the Minor Scale for the current chord will produce the III and VI options.
There’s probably a nice flowchart that could be made to show the paths from chord to chord.
Each chord would be connected to 4 other chords with 24 chords in all (12 major and 12 minor).
The fact that Db is also C# could be ignored or label as C#/Db in that chord node.
I’m sure there’s an IOS app that could make such a chart and set you free to just walk a path through the Chomatic Median Puzzle. So, many paths and no Wong solutions if you follow the connecting arrows.
Here I think you mean the parallel key, no? As the relative would be Am.
I would think so based on the context. Probably just a typo.
Thanks. I will fix my text.
I would respectfully suggest that theory is best used as inspiration rather than as a set of rules to be followed. Creative people always break those rules. Chord apps can be useful to give suggestions for harmonic moves to try out. I don’t use them so cannot recommend one, but some people rave about them.
Tonaly
I do love breaking rules. In this case the word “recipe” makes more sense because the OP asked for help to find the bIII chord every time.
Ionian. Modes will change this.
I fear like I might sound like an asshole saying this, but internalizing the recipe by ear is the best way to grow as a musician. Some people get irked by this advice, but it is what will have to be done eventually. Using an app to evade doing the work will only delay your growth.
In this case, play A min to CMaj on your instrument until you can hear it. Then change to a different minor chord and try to hear what the second chord should be. Poke around your instrument until you find the sound.
How do you find this ° diminished/degree symbol? I used cut and paste to use it.
In what way? Ionian and the modern major scale are C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. All the other modes use these notes but emphasize another root note:
D = Dorian
E = Phrygian
F = Lydian
G = MixoLydian
A = Aolean
B = Locrian
The major scale is definitely a good start point to figure out the other modes, and it’s not too difficult to remember each one as an altered major scale. That’s definitely easier than remembering each mode in each key.
What do you mean the flat version of Cmajor? Flattened version of Cmaj doesn't really make sense. A flattened-3 chord means the chord built off the flat-3 of the root.
@McD Hold down the number zero and you’ll see the ° symbol above it..
There must be another keyboard related setting to expose it. I only see the closed paren ) when I press 0. My keyboard is set to “QWERTY”.
On the on-screen keyboard, pressing and holding the 0 key, I get the º symbol on the iPad -- with the default QWERTY keyboard. and typing option-0 creates it on my MacBook Air keyboard.
Can confirm this works with a long hold on all my iOS devices.
I wasn’t Turing on the NUMERIC keyboard to reach the correct 0.
I was using the 0 on the Alpha Numeric QWERTY keyboard.
Thanks for the assistance solving this.
I don't think you're an asshole for saying that. It's true that your ear can get you anywhere, but it's like knowing the shapes of the chords on an instrument; they become tools that you can use whenever you like, and the ear is always there anyway. Being able to listen to a song and knowing why it feels this or that way can really help you create things that evoque that feeling (or any other).
A scale that is formed with different intervals will lead to different chords. For example, the chords of a Phrygian mayor scale will be different.
Yes this, playing a mode in a scale, or playing the mode as a solitaire scale with its own chords, that is something different. This gets mixed up. How would you call the second concept, "modal playing" instead of "playing modes"? I don't know...
I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding for many, who think that a mode is a scale that you can play over an entire song dependent on the chords of that song, but it is not really that simple.
The scale/mode determines the chords and vice versa. For example, if you play in C Ionian, the chords in that piece that would allow you to play that scale are Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7, and B°. But if you play in C Mixolydian, you now have a Bb in that mode that would change those chords (C7, Dm7, E°, Fmaj7, Gm7, Am7, Bb7). But that is just if you stick to that specific scale, what happens if you have an altered dominant? Or a secondary dominant? In a piece in C major, you don’t play C Ionian if you are using E7, because… well, some notes just won’t work.
Harmony can be very simple at its most basic, but it can really break your brain a bit as you keep studying. Part of it, as @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said, is dictated by your ear, and listening to music and experimenting can help; other parts are counterintuitive or difficult to figure out by yourself. Luckily there are tons of free and very cheap resources if you want to learn it.
Hi all!
Thank you so much for trying to help me out and being patient.
I think that I'm in the situation where I just "know" enough theory to confuse myself into knots. My whole question started from an app I have called Prog Machine. It just lists out some common progressions and their actual chords. You can switch between major scales (C through
to have the chords spelled out for you.
One of the progressions tabs is called a "flat degree" and lists out some of them:
Here is the short explanation the dev gives for this:
Using the I-bIII-IV example for A major, it seems like if you start with I-iii-IV of that scale (Amaj-C#min-Dmaj), and turn that iii into a flat degree (bIII), you somehow end up with Amaj-Cmaj-Dmaj.
I thought that you could apply these progressions to every mode. For example, taking I-bIII-IV and trying it out in other keys and modes like A dorian. So the idea was like, take A Dorian i-III-IV = Amin-Cmaj-Dmaj, and figure out what i-bIII-IV would be (Amin-???-Dmaj). It sounds from the answers I've gotten that this is a misconception on my part.
My original question/concern, given that misunderstanding, was that I don't really know what rule they used to "flatten a degree". Going back to their example of the A major scale, where the iii (C#min) is "flatted" into bIII (Cmaj), I wanted to infer some sort of formula for doing that. In that case, from what I can tell, the first and third notes of the C#min triad are flattened and you get Cmaj, but I couldn't really tell if this was a rule you could apply across the board to "flatten a degree".
Like, I thought that in A Dorian, maybe I could take that III (Cmaj) and flatten the first and fifth notes to get Bsus4 and that would be bIII, but I have no idea if any of that is correct. Hence the question about there being an app to just figure it out for me in as many modes as possible.
No offense taken for something that is true. I just enjoy the generative apps too, and I get a lot of fun out of putting things into them and click-whirr they come out with something at the other end. I thought it would be fun to just take some progression, pick some mode at random, and see what Piano Motifs and Riffler would do.
Not being a musician, sometimes I guess I have a more engineer like mindset about music. Or maybe it's just my primitive monkey brain playing with tech it doesn't understand.
Someone had mentioned to me somewhere that in A Dorian that III was already flatted, so maybe that's why asking about bIII doesn't make sense in that context?
Sometimes I feel like I'm back at trying to understand Calculus lol.