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Write the chords

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Mark a track as the chord track

Select the instrument track with the chords and press ⌘1 to show it in the Inspector’s Tracks tab. Switch on Chord Track in the Grid section, and the chord names appear on its clips.

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Play along with Follow

Select another instrument track and choose Follow in the Inspector’s Keys Layout picker. Press D, F and G, and move the playhead into the next chord: the same keys now play that chord. The layout itself: Play With the Keyboard.

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Snap notes to the chord

Open a MIDI clip under the chords with ⌥↓. Click the Pitch Snap chip in the focus bar and choose Chord, then drag notes or mark them and press ↑ / ↓. How snapping works: Pitch Snap.

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Good to know

  • Gridshift reads the chords out of the notes in the chord track’s clips. Block chords, broken chords and arpeggios all count. Each chord’s name is written across the clip, and that is exactly what everything that follows the track reads.
  • It covers the whole song. Each chord clip governs from its start until the next chord clip begins. The first also reaches back to the start of the song, and the last runs on to the end.
  • Inside that stretch, the clip repeats. A four-bar chord clip followed by twelve empty bars plays its four bars three more times.
  • Only one track carries the role at a time. Turning it on for a second track asks Move the chord track? first, because every track following the harmony changes with it. Move it to that track, or Cancel (Escape) to leave it where it is.
  • Follow and Chord snap need chords on the chord track. Both layout pickers and the Pitch Snap chip offer them only while it has chords.
  • A chord is a statement, not a guess from whatever the timeline happens to sound. Other tracks can’t color it: a busy lead line elsewhere never changes what the chord track says.
  • It holds through silence. A chord lasts until the next one starts, including over a bar with nothing played.
  • Muting doesn’t change it. The chord track normally sounds like any other instrument track, but muting it (⇧M) leaves the harmony in place.
  • Chord names hide together. Zoom out until they no longer fit and all of them hide, rather than some.
  • The project key only spells the chord names, and on the computer keyboard sets which octave a Follow root lands in. The scale plays no part in reading the chords.
  • The chord track needs chords before anything can follow it. Play or record them in, draw them in the piano roll, or stamp a progression.
  • Each progression row is four bars, one chord per bar, in your project’s key. Every highlighted row plays through the selected track’s instrument. The clip is named after the progression: in E minor, 1 · 6 · 3 · 7 writes Em, C, G and D.
  • ⇥ steps the picker’s feel between Original, Half-time and Double-time before you place it. Half-time gives each chord two bars. See Patterns for everything else the picker does.
  • Turning it off, or marking the first one, happens at once and is one undo step (⌘Z). Command Palette → Chord Track On/Off does the same as the switch.
  • A track whose Keys Layout is Drums can’t be the chord track. Its notes are pads, not pitches, so kick and snare would read as a chord. Its toggle is dimmed until you switch the layout away from Drums; a chord track later switched to Drums can still be turned off.
  • Any instrument track can use the Follow layouts, including the chord track itself. A MIDI controller has its own Follow in the Controller Layout picker.
  • Take the chords away and Follow falls back. A track already set to Follow keeps the setting, but its keys play the Scale layout until there is something to follow again.
Last modified on October 22, 2026