The instrument figure
A neck or a keyboard with a set's notes drawn on it — each a glyph labeled by its degree in the degree's color, the root by its name; a chord's shape outlined and its root ringed; the grayed notes around it the scale.
Most figures on this site are an instrument with a set of notes drawn on it. Tap around — a note, a chip, the picker under the drawing — and the text follows what you set.
A scale
Every note is a number in a colored face: its degree, how far it sits from the root. The root shows its name instead. The color belongs to the degree, not the note — a 5 is this color in every key, on every instrument, and on the wheel too. Tap a note to hear it.
Another root
The row of roots moves the whole set. Every note takes a new number and the color goes with the number: that is what a change of key looks like.
A smaller set
The chips above the drawing are the sets this figure offers, each drawn as its own wheel. Pick the pentatonic and two notes leave; the rest keep their numbers and colors.
A chord and its shapes
A chord is a set like any other, until you ask for its shapes: the menu picks a family — basic, useful, inversions — and ‹ › walk through them. A shape's notes wear a halo, its root a ring in the root's color, a barre a gray pill, and a line joins the notes in string order; on a keyboard the line is a bridge over the keys. The halo means this voicing, not every place a chord tone occurs. Tap a note under a shape and the shape holding it is picked; tap again for the next one.
The chords inside
On a major scale, Subsets › opens the chords built on each of its notes: a chip per degree, the chosen chord's notes plain and the rest of the scale drawn small, so the chord is seen in its context. ‹ brings the list back.
Where you'll meet it
On every concept page, in the lookups, pinned under the instrument essays, and as the home page's loop — the same drawing, the same rules. The picker under the drawing changes the instrument everywhere, and the site remembers your choice.