FlowPad

The FlowPad is a three-by-three grid, laid out like the numpad on your keyboard, showing the chords in your key and how naturally each one follows what you just played. Press a number, get a chord.

It is one of two views in the theory panel. The Circle of Fifths lays every major and minor chord out as a two-ring wheel and highlights the ones in your key. The toggle in the panel header switches between them.

The question the FlowPad answers is "which chord fits next". The highlighting tells you what tends to work, pressing a key inserts it, and the highlighting updates for the chord you just placed. The chords themselves never move, so the layout is worth learning once.

Layout

Each chord sits at a fixed numpad position based on its scale degree. In C major:

+-----+-----+-----+
|  7  |  8  |  9  |
| Am  |Bdim | Cm  |    vi, vii dim, parallel tonic
+-----+-----+-----+
|  4  |  5  |  6  |
|  F  |mode |  G  |    IV, mode toggle, V
+-----+-----+-----+
|  1  |  2  |  3  |
|  C  | Dm  | Em  |    I, ii, iii
+-----+-----+-----+

The seven diatonic chords always sit at the same positions. Numpad 9 holds the parallel tonic, the tonic chord with the opposite quality, Cm in a major key and A major in a minor key. It is the standard mood-shift chord. Numpad 5 toggles between chord and note mode.

What the highlighting means

Each cell is lit according to how well that chord follows your last one. A green cell is a common, smooth transition. An amber cell works and adds variety or colour. A cell with no highlight at all is the unexpected move: still playable, and sometimes exactly right, but nothing is recommending it to you.

The ranking comes from functional harmony, how chords typically move in Western music. When a genre profile is active the rankings adapt to it: jazz promotes ii-V-I chains, folk favours I-IV-V, blues leans on dominant sevenths.

Using it

Select a chord-aware track, and the FlowPad appears in the theory panel. Press a numpad key to insert that chord at the current position. The highlighting updates, and you press the next key.

A chord lasts one bar by default. Numpad plus adds a bar, numpad minus removes one, down to a single beat, and the duration dropdown sets a different default before you insert. Numpad 0 inserts a rest, skipping a bar without a chord.

Triads and sevenths

The button above the grid switches chord size. Triads are three-note chords, clean and simple, and suit pop, rock and folk. Sevenths are four-note chords, richer and more complex, and suit jazz, R&B and neo-soul.

The genre profile sets which one you start in, and you can switch at any time with T.

How the ranking works

After each chord, every chord in the key is re-evaluated. Functional harmony does most of the work: the engine knows that V to I is the strongest resolution, that IV to V builds tension, that vi to IV is a classic pop move. Chords whose roots are a fifth apart get a small bonus, because those transitions sound smooth. An active genre profile replaces the defaults with its own table.

The result is sorted into three tiers and shown as the highlighting described above. Only the colours change; the positions never do.

Where the chords go

The FlowPad feeds every chord-aware editor.

In the guitar editor, chords placed here appear in the chord progression strip. In the piano roll they inform next-note suggestions and drive the Bass line compose source. In the wind and strings editors, chord tones tint the grid and bias the melody recommendations.

You can also place chords directly in the harmonic timeline above any melodic editor. Either way they act as the blueprint: the melody engine promotes chord tones, the bass engine follows chord roots, and note durations respect chord boundaries.

Getting the most from it

When in doubt, take a green chord; a run of them is a coherent progression. Then use an amber one when the progression needs interest, and an unhighlighted one before a green resolution when you want contrast and tension.

Numpad 1, 4 and 6, which is I, IV and V, is the most common progression in pop and rock, and those three positions are worth memorising first. Numpad 9, the parallel tonic, turns a section suddenly dark or bright and earns its place in bridges and pre-choruses.

Place a few chords and then switch genre profiles. The same progression reads differently through a jazz lens than a folk one, and watching the highlighting change teaches more than reading about it.