Guide
How Emotion → Chord Progressions Work
The studio doesn't use a lookup table of pre-written chord progressions per mood. It derives every chord live from two smaller, reusable pieces: a scale for the mood, and a weighted template of scale degrees.
1. Mood picks a scale, not a chord set
Each of the 18 emotions (Dark, Melancholic, Dreamy, Uplifting, Tense, Nostalgic, Epic, Mysterious, Romantic, Chill, Hopeful, Cinematic, Triumphant, Bittersweet, Groovy, Serene, Brooding, Exotic) maps to a scale/mode known for that character — for example Dark and Tense lean on Harmonic Minor for its raised leading tone and augmented-second tension, while Chill and similar moods use Dorianfor its brighter, more modal minor color. The scale is the only music-theory fact that's hard-coded per emotion.
2. A generic algorithm builds every chord
Instead of a chord table per mode, the engine stacks every other scale tone starting from a given scale degree (root, third, fifth, and optionally a seventh) to build a chord for any degree of anyscale. A second generic classifier looks at the resulting intervals and names the chord quality — major, minor, diminished, augmented, or a seventh-chord variant — and renders the correct roman numeral (e.g. i, VI, vii°, V7). This is why the studio can support 18 emotions without 18 separate chord-table maintenance burdens: only the scale and the progression template are emotion-specific.
3. Progression templates are weighted, not fixed
Each emotion also carries a set of weighted degree-sequence templates — think of it as “this mood usually resolves through these scale degrees, in roughly this order, but not always the same way twice.” When you hit Regenerate, the studio samples from that weighted set and runs a quality check on the result before showing it to you, so you get variation without landing on progressions that sound aimless.
4. Locking slots keeps what you like
Found a chord you want to keep while you keep exploring the rest of the progression? Click its slot to lock it. Regenerating only re-rolls the unlocked slots — locked chords stay exactly where they are, including their voicing. This makes it practical to build a progression incrementally: lock the opening chord, regenerate until the second chord clicks, lock that too, and so on.
5. Voice leading and visualization
Once degrees are chosen, chords are voice-led across the progression to minimize awkward jumps between consecutive chords, and rendered on-screen via a Circle of Fifths view and a Tonnetz (tone-network) grid so you can see the harmonic relationships, not just hear them.
Try it
Open the Emotion → MIDI studio, pick a mood and key, and hit Regenerate a few times to feel how the scale and template interact. When you're happy with a progression, add a melody and see how to export both to your DAW.