“What sparks musical creativity ?” That’s where it all began.

Scott would come up with a little “island” of music, then I would tinker with some unusual Chords and such until we both heard a “bridge” to Scott’s next musical “island”, and off he’d go again until he needed another “bridge” of inspiration to an even further “island”, and so on.

We started with my Excel-based Variable Chord Dictionary which accessed 14 types of Chords for each Major Scale, and also included Chords on the “fringe” of these Scales (not quite “in” the key, but not entirely “out” either).

The “fringe” Chords sparked a lot of ideas, but Scott needed to see what Notes the “fringe” Chords added/deleted from the Scale. So, we began enhancing, and enhancing, and enhancing the application around Scott’s imaginative curiosities and extensive abilities (as you can hear on the website’s many music tracks), until we arrived at The Interval Machine & 10 Ways to Spark Musical Inspiration.

Creating it led us to jaw-droppingly realize that 95% of the musical landscape had actually been mathematically inaccessible to musicians, until now. We’d built more than we thought we had – we’d built the world’s only tool of its kind (as far as we can tell) that calculates on demand :

-       30 different types of Chords,

-       in all 12 keys,

-       for 20 different Scales,

-       and displays each Scale or Mode or Chord,

-       not only for Keyboard and Bass,

-       but also for 1,000,000’s of possible Guitar Tunings,

-       and includes the ability to Add a Note to a Scale

(for expanded Melodies, and even greater Chord selection).

We then added in 5-String Bass and 7-String Guitar, and included “Lefty” versions.

We’re tinkering with adding an 8-String Guitar version. (Is this a valuable idea ?)

So, after countless hours of effort (and overcoming some mind-bending frustrations), we haven’t “arrived” – we’ve really just “embarked”.

We look forward to sharing our music, hearing your music, honing each other’s skills within the community, and so on; hopefully resulting in better music for all.