- Home
- About Keys and Scales
About Keys and Scales
Free music theory tools: keys, scales, chords and notes.
What it is
Keys and Scales brings together music theory tools for students, teachers and anyone who plays: the circle of fifths, scales, key signatures, chords for piano, guitar and ukulele, intervals, note frequencies and a tap tempo. They all run in your browser, with no sign-up. The site is also available in Spanish.
How the tools are tested
Everything is worked out from the rules of music theory, and every result is checked automatically before going live against music21, an open-source music theory library: the notes of every scale in every key, the key signatures, the chords, the intervals, the MIDI numbers and the frequencies. Guitar and ukulele fingerings are checked by definition (every string plays a note of the chord, all its notes are there (in chords of four or more notes the perfect fifth may be left out), and the shape fits the hand). The pages are tested in the three browser engines (Chromium, Firefox and WebKit), on phone and computer screens.
The music symbols
The clefs, accidentals and notes on the staff are drawn from the Noto fonts (© The Noto Project Authors), used under the SIL Open Font License.
Mistakes
If something doesn't look right, check the root note and the type you picked: a C♯ chord and a D♭ chord sound the same but are spelled differently.