Chord Lab plays full chords from a single finger. The Compose progression editor lets you play a progression straight in from MIDI, pick chords from an interactive circle of fifths, and read every chord by colour. Plus Two-Hand Drills, multiple MIDI inputs, and Do-Re-Mi note names.
A new chord instrument in Play: press one key and hear a full chord. Choose major, minor, suspended, or diminished — the four base types and a bass voice are free forever. The Chord Lab pack adds stackable extensions (6, m7, Major 7th, 9), Key Mode for automatic in-key chords, voicing control, and MIDI pad mapping.
Tap the new Listen button in the Compose progression editor and play chords on your MIDI keyboard — each one is detected and added as you release it, with a live preview of the chord you're holding. In-key chords show their Roman numeral; out-of-key chords stay fully editable.
On the Mac, the chord picker is now three collapsible sections — Key Chords, Any Chord, and an interactive circle of fifths. Tap any wedge to add that chord; the chords in your key are lit and labelled with their Roman numeral, and every name follows your sharp or flat preference.
A new practice mode for hand coordination: scales over a bass drone, parallel and contrary scales, chords with a walking bass, and arpeggio splits — generated from any key. Practice each hand on its own, then together, and earn bronze, silver, and gold tiers as your accuracy and tempo improve.
Multiple MIDI inputs
Activate more than one MIDI controller at once. Settings shows a per-device on/off list, and the bottom-bar device menu toggles each one and shows how many are active.
Do-Re-Mi note names
Switch note names to fixed-Do solfège and every keyboard, staff, and chord label follows along — with your choice of Si or Ti for the seventh. Find it in Settings → General → Note Names.
Improved
Colour-coded chords everywhere
Chords now read by colour across the progression strip, the chord quick-edit panel, the Play-mode Quick Chords strip, and Chord Lab's type pads: major blue, minor purple, diminished orange, and out-of-key green. Selecting a chord fills it with its colour.
Select any chord in a progression to step through inversions or set a slash bass; the chord name, keyboard preview, and sound update live as you re-voice it, and the picker auditions each chord as you pick it.
Accidentals setting moved to General
The sharp/flat spelling preference now lives in Settings → General beside the note-name system, since it applies to the whole app.
macOS drag-to-reorder in the progression strip
Reordering chords by dragging now works reliably on the Mac, with a full-opacity drag preview and a clear insert indicator.
Fixed
Change Key opens instantly
Opening the Change Key picker in the progression editor no longer pauses while it scans every scale — that work moved off the main thread behind a brief loading indicator.
Songbook dropped some chords with a flat fifth
Chord-chart lines using a hyphen-flat spelling (like F-5) were skipped on import. They're now parsed correctly so the line isn't dropped.
June 2026
Tiny Instrument 2.2
Music theory comes to Play mode: pick a key, see the scale, name every chord, and play along with a live-engraved staff that turns green note by note. Plus chord inversions and slash chords in the progression editor, sparkle effects across all practice modes, and a full-library thank-you to early users.
Pick a root and mode in Play; the keyboard highlights that key's scale and a strip below names every diatonic chord.
Chord name overlay
The note display above the keyboard names the chord you're holding in real time, slash chords included.
Global accidental spelling
Choose Follow Key, Sharps, or Flats; applies consistently across chord names, inversions, and lessons throughout the app.
Free Songbook lesson chapter
A new chapter on turning a chord chart into real practice, available to everyone at no cost.
Early-adopter full-library grant
If you downloaded the app before June 10, 2026, the full content library is yours — no unlock needed.
Natural staff notation and ghost play-along
The Play grand staff now uses real music engraving — stems flip by register, chords stack into one column, ledger lines always appear. Set a key and gray ghost notes show what to play next; hit each note and it turns green with a sparkle. Wrong notes appear at the cursor and fade. Finish the passage and the board holds green, then auto-clears.
Chord inversions in the progression editor
Each chord in a saved progression can now be voiced root-position or inverted, with the same ◀ ▶ stepper as Play mode. Inversions carry through to the chord strip label, keyboard highlight, audition, full playback, and Chase-the-Notes practice.
Slash chord bass in progressions
The progression editor now supports foreign-bass slash chords — a C chord over a D bass, for example. Pick any bass note from the Bass picker; chord-tone basses route to inversions automatically. The bass carries through the label, keyboard highlight, Play-mode loading, and Chase-the-Notes.
Improved
Load a progression into Play
Open any saved chord progression directly in Play mode; the app auto-advances through chords as you play.
Scale degrees and fingering in Play highlights
Play highlights now show scale degree numbers and fingering annotations, with hand-split colors when both hands are active.
About screen
Redesigned with a Metal ripple effect on tap, community links (Reddit, support), and a cleaner layout.
Settings: Live Rewind and stuck-note controls
Live Rewind can now be enabled or disabled from Settings. Stuck-note warning threshold and auto-clear are also configurable.
Compose: progression editor with Play-strip controls
The Compose progression editor now embeds the shared Play chord strip: select a chord, step through inversions with ◀ ▶, and audition it. Full-progression playback is cancellable; voice selections and play mode persist per chord.
Sparkle effects in all practice modes
The green correct-note sparkle now fires across every staff-based practice mode — Scale, Chord, Chord Progression, MIDI files, and Songbook songs. Effects settings moved to Settings → General so they apply app-wide.
Mode settings: per-mode drilldown
Settings → Mode is now a list of all five modes; tap any to open its own grouped panel. Play's panel is sectioned by Display, Effects, Playback, and Live Rewind.
Performance across Play and chord detection
ChordIdentifier is now memoized and runs off the main thread, cutting per-call cost from 10 ms to under 1 ms on cache hit. The chord explorer and key reference no longer block the main thread — 14 hangs per session down to zero. Progression-editor playback went from 24 main-thread hangs to zero. Diatonic triads precompute off-main so the chord strip appears instantly.
Fixed
Play staff snapping to bottom on free-played notes
The grand staff auto-scrolled to the bottom anchor on every free-played note. Now the follow-scroll only activates during song playback.
iPad: Play staff and chord strip after rotating
Two compounding bugs collapsed the staff to a sliver and hid the chord strip after a double device rotation. Fixed orientation detection and per-device height rules.
Advance-as-you-play stalled on high-voiced chords
Chords voiced above the keyboard's visible range had unreachable keys, so advance-as-you-play never triggered. The highlight now fits the voicing into the visible window automatically.
Chord highlight dropped the root note
After the high-octave crash fix, triads highlighted only the 3rd and 5th — the root was missing. The root is now explicitly prepended at all chord-highlight sites.
macOS: Compose progression footer layout
The Step/Free segmented picker showed its label inline on macOS, breaking the bar's height. Fixed with .labelsHidden().
MIDI input listened to all connected devices
MIDI events from any connected controller were forwarded. Input now filters to the selected device only.
High-octave crashes in the Scales explorer
Selecting a root above octave 5 pushed note numbers past MIDI 127 and triggered an Int8 overflow crash. All MIDI note construction is now clamped to 0–127.
Also in this release
Sticky keyboard dock — Play mode layout rebuilt to keep the keyboard pinned at the bottom across every orientation and device size.
Collapsible Play dock — A chevron collapses the guide panel and chord strip to a slim row, growing the keyboard into the freed space. State persists across sessions.
In-app 'What's New' sheet — After an update, established users see the release highlights once on launch as an illustrated swipeable walkthrough. Accessible any time from Settings → About.
Lesson tagging and topic lookup — Lessons can be tagged by topic; a chip row lets you filter by concept, and Aria can look up lessons by topic name.
iPhone chord-progression picker — iPhone Practice → Chord Progressions now opens the full saved + template list before setup, matching iPad and Mac.
Practice quality of life — Confirm before abandoning a session; reconfigure play mode, BPM, and hand split while a session is running.
June 2026
Tiny Instrument 2.1.1
iCloud sync for songs, chord progressions, and compositions across all your devices — plus a responsive song-practice layout that adapts to every screen.
2 improved
Improved
iCloud sync for songs, progressions, and compositions
Chord charts in your Songbook, saved chord progressions, and compositions now sync automatically across iPhone, iPad, and Mac via iCloud.
Responsive song-practice layout
The song-practice screen now adapts to your device and orientation. iPhone portrait splits the space between lyrics and staff. iPad landscape places the staff and note strip side by side. iPhone landscape surfaces lyrics with the keyboard sticky at the bottom. On Mac, the keyboard is pinned fully at the bottom with a unified non-scrolling layout.
June 2026
Tiny Instrument 2.1
Practice real songs. Paste any chord chart, follow karaoke-style lyrics as you play, drill sections with Chase the Notes, and build your Songbook from chord charts or existing Compositions.
Paste a chord chart from any source and Tiny Instrument parses it into named sections — Verse, Chorus, Bridge. Follow the highlighted chord as it plays, or drill any section with Chase the Notes and Falling Notes. For songs with lyrics, karaoke-style practice scrolls through the lines in sync: the active lyric center-screen, previous and next lines faded, with chord chips hovering above. Every chord shows its Roman numeral in the song's key. Tap any chord to hear it and see the notes on the keyboard.
A new Songbook in the Compose tab stores all your chord charts in one place. Import by pasting a chart, or convert any of your Compositions into a song — sections and chords carry over automatically as a starting point. Organise songs into categories and filter the Songbook to find what you need. Any symbol that couldn't be recognised is flagged before you start playing.
Deeper chord practice tools
Every chord exercise now offers a BPM-goal metronome that steps up as you clear exercises, a choice of play mode (Block, Arpeggio, Strum), a hand-split option that routes bass notes to your left hand, and per-chord inversion controls so you always practice the voicing you intend.
Improved
Richer slash chord split
For slash chords with a seventh or extension (Am7/G, D7/F#), the chord tooltip and practice note strip now show the hand split: bass in purple for the left, chord tones in blue for the right. The on-screen keyboard guide tints to match. Simple triad slashes stay a single shape.
Jump from Practice to Compose
Right-click or long-press any song or chord progression in Practice to open it in Compose for editing, or to rename, duplicate, or delete it — without leaving Practice.
Categorize your Songbook
Move any song to a category from its menu and filter the Songbook by category, sharing the same taxonomy as the MIDI library. The filter bar appears once your songs are categorized, on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Readable MIDI control names
MIDI control-change messages now show meaningful names instead of "CC 64". Standard controls read as Sustain Pedal, Mod Wheel, Expression, and more. Connect a recognised controller (Arturia KeyLab, Akai MPK, Roland A-series) and Tiny Instrument shows its actual button and knob names, detects the controller, and offers to set up its transport buttons automatically.
Hide the keyboard's navigation arrows
Settings → On Screen Keyboard → Show Navigation Arrows lets you hide the left/right octave-shift arrows for a cleaner look. The Mac Shift+Arrow shortcut and MIDI octave-shift still work.
Clearer song-practice header
The section jump menu now shows the section you're currently playing ("Verse 1", "Outro") instead of just "Section". The save button reads "Save Changes" on Mac when you have unsaved edits.
More consistent lists, with type badges
Rows across the app now share one card style. Items carry a small type badge on their icon — song, melody, MIDI file, warm-up — so you can tell what each item is when browsing the library together.
MIDI practice library inline on Mac
Picking MIDI Practice now opens the MIDI library in the main pane, the same way Melodies and Songbook do, instead of in a floating sheet.
Free-tier composition limit
Composition creation is now gated at 5 on the free tier, unlocked with Composition Studio.
June 2026
Tiny Instrument 2.0.1
Point release with refinements across the app.
1 improved
Improved
Aria narration reveals as it speaks
When chat narration is on, Aria's reply now appears one sentence at a time in sync with the voice, growing the conversation downward. The chat no longer dumps the full answer and jumps back to the top to start reading — and navigation cards land once narration finishes.
June 2026
Tiny Instrument 2.0
The biggest update yet. A full freemium model with content packs, iCloud sync, Live Activities on the Lock Screen, Aria device intelligence, 14 composition templates, a cross-mode metronome, and dozens of refinements across every mode.
Tiny Instrument is now free to download. Unlock the full curriculum with individual chapter packs or a full-library bundle. Previous purchasers are automatically grandfathered.
Cross-device progress sync
Practice on your iPhone, pick up on your iPad. Lesson progress and settings sync automatically across all your devices via iCloud.
Live Activities & Dynamic Island
Your practice timer and focus session now appear on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island — so you can glance at your progress without unlocking your phone.
Compose: Progression templates
Choose from 14 chord progressions spanning Pop, Jazz, Blues, and Classical styles. Browse by genre and drop any template into your composition in one tap.
Arm a slot, play a chord on your MIDI keyboard or on-screen keyboard — Tiny Instrument detects the chord and drops it into the progression automatically.
The metronome is now accessible from any app mode. Tap the toolbar button to dial in BPM, time signature, and volume, with beats that animate in sync across the whole interface.
Aria: Smart device support
Aria now detects whether your device supports Apple Intelligence. If it does but isn't set up yet, you'll get a guided setup flow. Unsupported devices get a graceful fallback.
Live Rewind
Play mode now keeps a rolling 30-second buffer of everything you play. Tap Rewind to hear it back, save it as a Compose composition, or adjust the duration — so nothing you improvise is lost.
Aria remembers your last conversation. Reopen the chat and pick up where you left off — previous exchanges are shown as read-only context, with the full history available via the clock button.
Home Screen widgets
Launch any app mode, see your practice streak, or jump into your last lesson — directly from your Home Screen in small, medium, and large widget sizes.
Siri Shortcuts
Ask Siri to open a mode, practice a specific scale or chord, or start a focus session. All major app actions are exposed as App Shortcuts and work with the Shortcuts app.
Spotlight Search
Lessons, scales, and chords are now indexed in Spotlight. Search for anything by name and jump straight in from the system search.
In-app notification landing
Tapping a push notification now opens the exact lesson, challenge, or session it refers to — no digging through menus.
Improved
macOS menu bar
A full menu bar is now wired up on Mac — File (New Composition, Open MIDI, Import), View (timeline, grand staff, keyboard toggles), Playback (play/pause, loop, tempo), Window (Tuner, Metronome, Debug), and Help links. All keyboard shortcuts work.
Scale fingering hints
Correct right-hand fingering is now shown for all 12 major and natural minor scales in the scale practice view, with finger numbers displayed above each key.
Fingering exercises
Two new Play & Explore exercises: thumb crossunder technique (3→1 crossunder) and triad chord shapes (major and minor).
Lesson narration highlights
Words light up sentence by sentence as they're spoken during narrated lessons — easier to follow along and great for learners who read while listening.
Lesson long-press menu
Long-press any lesson to open it, mark it as a favorite, or schedule a reminder. Reminders show a date badge on the lesson row.
Locked lesson upgrade screen
Tapping a locked lesson now shows a context-aware bottom sheet with the lesson name, chapter, pack highlights, and a direct purchase CTA — drag it up to see the full chapter.
Focus session: countdown + extend
The focus timer now counts down to zero and presents extend options (5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes) when time runs out rather than ticking on indefinitely.
Aria: sequential scale playback
"Play scale" in Aria now plays notes one at a time at a steady tempo instead of triggering all notes simultaneously.
Mode settings section
Play and Learn mode settings now live in a dedicated Mode section in Settings, making them much easier to find.
Settings row captions
Common settings rows now show a short description beneath the label, clarifying what each toggle actually does.
"Practice Chord" in Chord Explorer
Tap the new Practice Chord button from any chord in the Chord Explorer to launch a single-chord practice session for that exact chord.
Keyboard note name strip
A note name strip can now be shown below the on-screen keyboard — always on in Chapter 0 lessons, toggleable elsewhere.
TipKit onboarding tips
First-launch tips guide new users through key features at the right moment using the system TipKit framework.
Fixed
MIDI playback: control changes now applied
CC messages — sustain pedal, modulation, and others — are now correctly processed during MIDI file playback.
MIDI playback: tempo changes respected
Songs with mid-track tempo changes now play back at the correct speed throughout the entire file.
MIDI keyboard: simultaneous notes
Fast keyboard playing now triggers all intended notes at the same time instead of playing them sequentially.
Scale & chord practice: note name setting
The "Show Note Names" global setting is now correctly applied when you open a practice session.
Compose: track color stays consistent during playback
Track colors no longer shuffle when playback starts.
Compose: correct instrument per track
Each track now uses its assigned instrument during playback rather than the last globally-selected instrument.
Focus timer stops at zero
The focus session timer no longer continued counting past zero.
MIDI library: no more duplicates after iCloud migration
Moving files to iCloud no longer produced duplicate entries in the MIDI library.
Aria: chord names spoken correctly
"Cmaj7" is now spoken as "C major seven" rather than "C maj seven."
macOS: Settings no longer crashes
Opening the Settings window on macOS no longer caused a crash.
Performance: audio off the main thread
MIDI playback scheduling, metronome ticks, and chord preview audio have all been moved off the main thread for smoother performance.
Performance: keyboard rendering
Wide keyboard layouts no longer slow down during idle or playback. Fixed three compounding causes — redundant per-key Tonic construction, over-rendering from state reads in body, and ungated animation timelines — reducing on-CPU work by over 60%.
Performance: selection views and practice stats
Compose, Ear Training, and Practice selection views no longer re-render on every session publish. Practice stat lookups moved from per-render full-table fetches to a memoized store, eliminating render spikes during playback.
macOS: Aria preset question now sends on tap
Tapping a suggested question in the lesson Aria picker on macOS now opens the chat and sends the question immediately, instead of opening with the question unsent.