ChordKey app review: writing music made easy

Introduction

ChordKey is an interesting little app designed to help you easily input musical chords. If you’re musically inclined at all you probably already know how much of a pain it can be trying to input chords with a standard keyboard; chances are your shift key is going to be working overtime.

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ChordKey allows you to quickly switch to a keyboard that inputs all the different types of chords quickly and easily. If you write a lot of your own music this can be a real time saving application. This app is available in the app store for $2.99 and it’s compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and the iPod touch.

Chords Made Easy

Creating your own music can be an exciting process. You may come up with an idea in your mind for a great piece of music and you want to write it down so that you’ll know how to play it next time or so you can share it with others. The frustrating part is trying to input major chords, minor chords, sus4’s, and so on; it’s a time consuming process. By developing a keyboard that simply allows you to input chords with a single tap, the developer of ChordKey has come up with a unique solution to an otherwise irritating problem.

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This app actually works quite well, the only problem is that the app itself is quite minimalist and so is its App Store description. If you don’t already know the app exists you’d probably never find it, and even if you do come across it by accident the description that the developer has in the app store doesn’t really do it justice. There is a support link in the app store that takes you to a page with a YouTube video; this was actually how I figured out how the app works. A little better app store description and in-app instructions would really help this app. The app itself isn’t very big as you’ll only need 4 MB of free space on your iOS device for this one.

How it Works

When you open the app the only thing you’ll see is a step by step guide for how to add ChordKey as an input keyboard for your device, and a link that you can tap on to take you to your settings and add the keyboard. That’s it. As mentioned earlier if you don’t already know what this app does, you won’t get an explanation when you open the app.

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Adding the app as a keyboard input is actually quite easy, simply select add keyboard in the keyboard section of your devices settings tab and it will be available as an input device in any app on your device – it works great with Apple’s Pages application. When you have the ChordKey keyboard selected within an application like Pages you’ll have access to entire chords at the tap of one key, and you can easily switch back to the standard keyboard at any time. It works seamlessly with any iOS device.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Easy to add to your devices keyboard options
• The keyboard allows one touch typing of chords within any application
• Seamless integration with your iOS device

Cons

• Lack of a proper description on the App Store and within the app

Final Chords

If you’re into music ChordKey could easily become an invaluable application for you. It easily integrates into your IOS devices settings and is available within any application once you’ve added it as a keyboard. Typing out chords has never been easier.