What’s new

0.21.0

9 November 2026

Added

• Eight rhythmic ideas under Improvise › Rhythmic ideas: straight eighths, a late start, a run that lands, a triplet on three, a note held over the bar line. Eight advanced rows under Licks put the line through the form into them.
• The line through the form, with enclosures: before each new third, the note above and the half step below, landing on the third on the beat.
• The outlines in every key on the two ii–V–I practice sheets, major and minor, around the circle of fifths; and left-hand voicings around the cycle.
• The degree of every note under the voicing on Comp ("3 · ♭13 · ♭7 · ♭9"). Switch it off under View → "Voicing degrees".
• Bossa comp, the guitar's pattern, and a bossa bass and drums that sit closer to it.
• A second piano sound. Under Accompaniment → Piano, choose A or B while you play.
• Save as new exercise and duplicate, so a variant of your own exercise no longer starts from scratch.
• Every delete can be undone for five seconds — exercises, licks, session plans and session blocks.
• Your skills shows the last seven days as bars, colored by Harmonize, Comp and Improvise.
• Drag the tempo, or type it. Drag "♩ = 120" up or down, or tap it and type the tempo you mean.

Changed

• Analyze the piece: the question sits in a card beside the chord, ‹ and › step back and forward, and after a wrong answer you first read why it does not fit — the answer itself only after a second miss. "Finish & rate" stands beside the clock from the start.
• Stage lights. The key colors come from lights that stay where they are, with soft fog on the dark stage and a brush stroke under the chosen view on the light one. The third key of a tune is rose.
• The playhead glides evenly on the staff and in the form, and on Improvise it no longer flicks to the clef at each bar.
• Larger, steadier type throughout, darker hints, and small buttons that are easier to hit.
• One key per piece: a piece's page names the same key as the stage.
• Change the key in one place, the hearing button at the workbench; saving an exercise in another key can keep that version of the piece as a copy.
• The same ii–V gets the same scale. Secondary dominants in a minor key take their scale from the key's natural minor (Autumn Leaves, Gm7 C7).
• Reading on Comp says which reading you switched to, and a tap on a chip explains it on a tablet too.
• The share dialog says more: no account is needed to open the link, it is not listed anywhere, and it is a snapshot of the exercise.
• A loop takes hold at once while the band plays.
• One spelling: American English, and numbers written the same on every device.

Fixed

• The update notice no longer covers your buttons; it gets a row of its own.
• No leftover briefing in Explore freely after leaving an exercise.
• On an iPhone, play buttons show a plain triangle, and text held sideways keeps its size.
• The Comp line no longer dims at every chord change.

0.20.0

2 November 2026

Added

• Hearing and key on one page. A new tab with an ear opens the whole form of the piece — every bar with its chord, degree and key center. Try another hearing or key there; nothing behind it moves until you choose "Use this".
• Learn a tune by its degrees. Learn by Heart has a second exercise, Play it by degrees: each chord stands as ii7, V7, IΔ while bass and drums keep time.
• Three outlines over every ii–V–I. Under Licks, a tune offers three short lines over each of its ii–V–Is, each letting the seventh fall to the next third.
• Plan the analysis rows into a session, each with an estimate of how many minutes it takes on this tune.
• Change the key from the header of any exercise without leaving it. The exercise lists show a check mark for mastered and a half circle for getting there.
• The major blues scale on the I7 of a blues, beside the minor blues.

Changed

• Exercises play with the band, without the click: drums, bass and held chords, plus whatever the exercise is about. Your own mix returns when you leave.
• Exercise names say what you practice, such as "Name the scale for each chord" or "Charleston comping". Your practice history stays with each one.
• One line at the top of a piece: your practice time, Up next and Explore freely. Up next now skips what you have already rated as getting there or mastered.
• Analyze the piece is leaner. "Analyze the Form" and "Anatomy & Step Analysis" are gone; the key-center count is asked once per tune; every run keeps your place; the function exercise shades each cell by what the chord does; the Sound tab is back; and the first hearing is called Main key.
• Sideways on a phone, the tabs hang at the edge away from the camera, the question gets more room, and a wrong answer turns red instead of covering the card.
• A calmer header: Harmonize, Comp and Improvise are plain words, and the one you are in is underlined in its color.
• Sharper harmony. A short ii–V detour that never arrives stays in the home key (Misty, bars 21–22). A tritone sub brings its own ii. In a half-step chain of dominants only the last is called the sub.
• Sharper scales. Whole tone leads on an augmented dominant; on a blues I7, Mixolydian ♯9 comes first. Aeolian counts on a vi before its ii, and on a dominant in minor both "from the key" and "not from the key" are right.
• Cycle exercises suggest three or four keys at a time, looped with A–B.
• A new exercise says so on the screen, with a ribbon to save or discard it.

Fixed

• Updating no longer takes you out of your exercise. After Reload you are back at the same chord, question or session block, with your time kept.
• "Looks wrong?" no longer zooms the page on iPhone.

0.19.2

26 October 2026

Fixed

• The analysis in focus mode, sideways on a phone. Briefing sits next to the play controls instead of on top of them, and the timer moves up out of the way of the question.

0.19.1

26 October 2026

Changed

• The analysis stays on the chart, and you paint it in. No more magnifying glass: a "?" stands under the chord being asked about, every right answer colors its bar, and a counter shows how much of the piece you have painted. Sideways on a phone, the chart sits on the left and the question on the right.
• The Tribute row of a tune shows an open book instead of a level, and the Spotify button a small record in place of the note.

0.19.0

25 October 2026

Added

• Skills: where you stand, across all your pieces. A new page next to Your exercises and Your licks shows each skill and the keys in which it is solid, with a link to the piece you last worked on it.
• Tell the app where you are. A one-minute self-check in the library asks eight short questions; "Up next" then skips what you already play fluently.
• Each piece shows where you are with it. Five marks next to your practice time — understand, by heart, comp, color, improvise — fill as you rate its exercises. Nothing is ever locked.
• A new voicing exercise: Kenny Barron on the minor chords. Every minor seventh chord of your tune in two hands, with a version for smaller hands.
• In a blues, the blues scale covers the whole form. The minor blues scale of the key is offered on every chord, not just the tonic.
• Terms of use. One page, in English and German, linked from the sign-up card and from Legal & privacy. The share panel asks you to share only what you may pass on, and anyone who opens a shared link can report it.

Changed

• The tempo ladder lives at the tempo. Tap the tempo in the header to set it up and start it; while it runs it takes the slider's place.
• A tidier View panel. Three short groups — Show, Notation, Form strip & colors — and on Improvise the 3rd and the 7th can be highlighted together. Dark stage has moved to Your account.
• A rating says which key it was given in, for example "Mastered · in G minor", when that was a different key from the one on screen.
• Sideways on a phone, the library and each piece fit the width. No more dragging left and right.
• The welcome stays dismissed on every device you sign in on.
• ♭VI7 before a ii–V keeps its name in a minor key, as in Summertime.

0.18.0

16 October 2026

Added

• The band plays from the first bar. Press play and bass and drums join the piano straight away; the click starts switched off. A mix you set yourself stays as it was.
• A second hearing in the relative major. Tunes that open in minor and close their A section in major — In a Sentimental Mood, My Funny Valentine — now offer a hearing that reads the whole tune from the major key.
• Loop a passage: tap the start, then the end. The line under the bars says which tap comes next, and while the loop runs a tap shows that chord's scale and voicing.
• Your account says what Paint Music costs — during the beta and after it. What's new, About, Legal & privacy and feedback are one tap away at the foot of the page.

Changed

• Tunes written in major open in major. It Don't Mean a Thing, My Funny Valentine, Blue Skies and others open in the key of the lead sheet; the minor hearing is next in the list.
• Borrowed chords no longer pull a major tune into minor. What's New, The More I See You and similar tunes open in major; the minor key covers only its own ii–V–i.
• A bridge in a remote key shows as its own key — D major in I Can't Get Started, E major in Prelude to a Kiss — in the first hearing, not only the second.
• Chord names read like a lead sheet in every key: E7, not F♭7. Next to a degree, the strict spelling stands small underneath.
• Every row under Comp opens in Comp, the ii–V–I around the circle and Play It Through included.
• Signing in opens your library. A shared exercise still comes back to you.
• A session always says when it is done, even a short one, and a clock stopped by switching apps says so, with “resume ›”.
• What's new comes one release at a time, once a week.

Fixed

• Left-hand voicings and Drop 2 no longer play one key twice — on an augmented triad such as C+, and on a chord over its own seventh such as Dm/C.
• Left-hand voicings follow a pentatonic or blues scale and stay in the left hand.
• Left-hand voicings on plain triads add the sixth instead of a second fifth, where the chord's scale holds it — a fuller 6/9 sound on C or Am.
• The form strip stays in view when you turn your phone.

0.17.0

10 October 2026

Added

• A rhythm section plays along. A real upright bass and a drummer join the piano, each with its own volume fader, all equally loud at 50 %. The bass lands on the root when the chord changes, sits on the ride, and on Auto reads the chart: a ballad gets half notes, a fast tune walks from bar one.
• Pick the groove: Swing, Bossa — and a Latin pack. The Latin groove brings a real tumbao in the bass, the montuno, son montuno and mambo in the piano, congas, bongos, bell and claves, the clave marked under every bar, and its own shelf of exercises.
• Rhythmic ideas. Write a rhythm on Your licks — up to eight bars, with triplets — share it, and practice it on the new shelf under Improvise: the rhythm on top, your comping below, the notes yours.
• Practice charts. The drills that belong to no tune — the ii–V–I in major and minor, the turnaround, voicings and scales through twelve keys — now live in the library, and a tune's page holds only what belongs to the tune.
• Reharmonize the tune you are playing. Tritone subs (also with their own ii), passing diminished chords, tonic and subdominant substitutes, and Barry Harris's sixth-diminished scale as a comping exercise — all in your tune's key.
• Why? — the working, step by step. The analysis now shows how it got there.
• Chord names for B♭, E♭ and F instruments.
• Browse your library by key, style or era, read a tribute for each of 359 standards, and see every song you have practiced.
• A “What's new” page, with a short note for every change as it goes live.
• A dark stage, as an experiment. Under View, “Dark stage” turns the sheet into a stage at night: warm black, with a soft spotlight from above that takes the color of the key you are in and changes as the tonal center moves. The chord in focus, the title and the bar you are on in the form catch the light. Nothing moves or resizes — only the colors change. It is off unless you turn it on, and switching it reloads the page.
• Practice any line of yours in all twelve keys. Every lick in Your licks now has a “practice” button beside it. It builds a chart from the card's own chords, twelve times around the circle of fifths, and opens Improvise with your line on every station. The loop is set to the first key — the one you wrote the line in — so switch it off when you are ready to travel. A line that does not land on its own changes gets no button, and says why if you ask for it anyway.
• Write a lick from the bars you are looping. Turn on the A–B loop in Improvise, mark one to four bars, and a “Write a lick from bars 5–7 ›” button appears beside the loop badge. It opens the lick desk over the tune, already filled in with the key and the chords of those bars — you replace the rests with your line. Where the chords are not one of the eight shapes a lick card can be written for, it says so and names them instead of guessing.
• Click the name of the lick you are reading to open it. In Improvise the line's name is now a link into its card: edit it, or keep the old one and save the change as a variant.

Changed

• The first hearing shows the large form of the tune. A tune opens on its home key and the keys it really modulates to; a short ii–V–I to another degree — or a brief turn to the relative minor — reads as a tonicization, and the next Hearing still gives it a center of its own.
• Scales, read the way the books do. Diminished chords take an eight-note scale from the key, dominants into a minor chord get all eight notes, sus♭9 chords get Dorian ♭2, the vi before the ii gets Dorian, and blues, modal tunes and pentatonics follow the textbooks.
• Chord names and spelling. More chords get their proper name, symbols read the way a player reads them, and a transposed chart keeps the letter each degree asks for.
• Voicings. Drop 2 works on every chord and brings its ninth along, voice leading is steadier in the Standard and Shell voicings, upper structures that need their root get it, and the minor chord on the third step no longer rubs.
• Comp and Improvise. Choose the comping figure right on Comp, see the left hand's rhythm under the line, tap a chord to hear the scale or the whole lick, and listen to a lick while you are still writing it. Your licks are grouped by progression, and levels read at a glance.
• Phone and iPad. Hold your phone sideways: the workbench reaches the edges and the form stays on screen. Upright, the controls are tidier, pages share one width, the scale and the voicing are drop-downs, and saving an exercise fits the screen. Focus works on iPad and desktop.
• A drill through all twelve keys now carries the key signature with it. Practicing a lick around the circle used to keep the piece's one signature from start to finish, so the line collected accidentals as it traveled — measured on a ii–V–I card: 47 of its 108 notes carried one, and on the G♭ station eight notes out of nine. The signature now moves with the key center, and the same card reads with none at all. Ordinary tunes are untouched: a lead sheet keeps its one signature, and “Key signature follows the key” under View is there for anyone who wants it either way.
• When a lick cannot be practiced, the screen says why. A line that lands on a note its last chord does not contain gets no “practice” button — it now says “not yet” there, and names what is in the way. The line under the editor says it too: “lands on E — the 3 of Cm6, a note that chord does not contain”. A minor chord has no major third, and reading only the degree made that look fine.
• Your lines stay where a hand can reach them. Practicing a lick around the circle of fifths used to push it higher with every other key — it started at E4 and ended two octaves up at E6, jumping an octave back down every third station. The line now follows the one before it and stays inside the treble staff, the same rule the chord voicings have followed for a while. It applies everywhere a line is laid over a tune, not just in the circle, and exercises you saved before today come back into place the next time you open them.

Fixed

• Sound comes back after you switch apps, and the band keeps playing when you leave an exercise.
• Offline, the app opens with your own library — without sign-in links that cannot work there.
• When something cannot be saved, you are told — whether it is the browser or your account that will not keep it.
• You pick up where you left off, even after a quick look elsewhere, and scales stay where they are when you pick one.
• Licks no longer come in a bar late. Where two lines overlapped at their landing chord, the second one lost its opening — up to a whole bar of it, and sometimes every note — while the ribbon still drew it in full. Overlaps are now settled when the lines are chosen, so what is drawn is what sounds.

Every change in detail, as it went live: https://paintmusic.app/blog/whats-new.

0.14.0

29 August 2026

Added

• A second way to watch Improvise: bar by bar. A "Band motion" control in the View panel switches the ribbon from a flowing scroll to whole bars laid out on the page — the cursor sweeps the current one, and the page turns at each bar change. Calmer to read, and there to compare against the flowing ribbon.
• Highlight the 3rd or the 7th. A View-panel control colors just one chord degree in its own ink, on top of whatever the tension coloring already shows.
• Tap the blank sheet to play or pause. The touch equivalent of the space bar — no button needed, which matters on a tablet where the transport button can slide off-screen in portrait.
• Appreciate & Listen. A short history and a listening guide for the piece you're on — who wrote it, why it matters, and a link out to a recording. Deep links only; nothing embedded.
• Pin a lick into an exercise. "Save this screen" can freeze the piece's generated licks as exact, fixed lines instead of a recipe to regenerate them, so a shared or synced exercise always shows and sounds the same notes. "Pin this lick" does the same for just the one you're standing on.

Changed

• Tapping a chord in Improvise now plays that chord — its scale, or its lick when the Lick track is on — instead of a fixed triad. The round play button by the scale name is gone; every chord in the ribbon is its own play button.

Fixed

• Notes no longer pop in beside the cursor. On a chord that holds for more than a bar, the notes ahead of the cursor used to appear only once the cursor had almost reached them.
• The ribbon runs smoothly while it plays.
• "Chord tones" and "Avoid notes" now actually change the colors, instead of only hiding the legend underneath the run.
• A lick's last note stays visible for as long as it sounds, instead of scrolling out of frame before it finishes.
• What plays now matches what's drawn, note for note, even through dense chord changes — a lick used to occasionally sound different notes than the ones written on the staff.
• The Lick view no longer flickers to Scale on a piece with short, lick-less chords mixed in.

0.13.0

26 August 2026

Added

• Improvise reads like a scrolling score. The notes now run past a fixed cursor instead of standing in three fixed slots: bar lines fall where the tune's bars actually are, every bar holds exactly its own beats, and you can see two bars ahead instead of two chords. What sounds is what the cursor is standing on, to within a pixel.
• A count-in. One bar of clicks before the music starts — audible even with the metronome muted, and counted on screen.
• Every chord now comes with a lick. The Improvise view has a Scale / Lick switch: instead of the scale under the chord you can read a short generated line that lands on the chord it resolves to — written on the same staff, in the same colors, with the function of each note under it. It is generated from principles rather than copied from anyone's solo, so it is yours to use.
• A fifth voice in the mixer: Lick. Switch it on and the line plays along with the accompaniment, swung with the rest of the band. Off by default.

Changed

• Play waits for the piano. Pressing play used to start the transport before the samples had arrived, so the first bars were silent but for the metronome, with nothing said about it. The button now shows that it is loading and starts when it can actually sound.
• The three views are named for what you do with them: Harmonize · Comp · Improvise. The old names said what the app was doing (Harmony, Notation, Scales); these say what you came to practice, and they are the words the practice room already uses. Nothing moved — your saved settings, links and addresses are untouched.
• A shared exercise link now says which tune it is about. The link used to be a wall of characters, so one sitting in a chat window a week later told you nothing. It now begins with the piece and its key — …/x#Autumn-Leaves-in-G~… — while the exercise itself rides behind it exactly as before. The name is decoration: nothing reads it, links you were sent earlier still open, and a long exercise never loses anything to make room for it.

Fixed

• What you hear is what you see. Over some chords — the diminished and altered ones, whose scale has eight notes rather than seven — the scale track played the run displaced against the notes on the staff, by as much as one and three quarter beats. Sound and picture now come from one calculation instead of two similar ones.
• The play-along no longer jumps when it starts. Pressing play on a bar in the middle of a tune showed the beginning of the form during the count-in and jumped to the right place on the first note.
• The staff stopped flickering. A tapped chord kept its glow through the next chord change instead of losing it, and the colored key wash no longer drifted against the music.
• A bar line no longer sits under the first note of its bar. It stands clear of it, the way it is printed.

0.12.0

21 August 2026

Added

• Charts from three more formats. Alongside iReal Pro links and exports, the app now reads ChordPro (.pro, .chopro, .crd), ABC (.abc) and MusicXML (.musicxml, .mxl) — dropped or picked in the same place as always. Chords, form and time signature come across; melody and lyrics are deliberately left out rather than half-carried, and anything a chart could not carry is said in a line instead of being dropped in silence. A tune brought in this way behaves exactly like an iReal one: searchable, transposable, shareable, and it keeps the practice you have already done on it. (A .mxl is a zipped file, so it has to be dropped or picked — pasting cannot carry it, and the app says so.)

Fixed

• An exercise built in an older version of the app now opens, whatever has changed since. Before, a setup that named something this version no longer has could take the screen down, or — quietly, which is worse — put an element back that the exercise had hidden, so the drill showed its own answer. Now anything that can no longer be honored is stood in for, and the exercise says so in one line, with the details on hover. Set the screen up again and save it to bring it up to date.
• An exercise whose tab this version does not know is no longer dropped when it syncs, no longer shows a blank screen, and a link carrying one no longer reports itself as incomplete. It opens on Harmony and says which tab it wanted.
• An exercise saved back when colors were stored differently keeps its colors, the way your own view settings always did.
• The front page's numbers are the ones you can count. It advertised a library of 1165 tunes and, further down the same page, four — neither was true. It now says 110, which is what actually ships, and the scale and voicing counts are checked against the app itself on every build so they cannot drift apart again.
• A caption no longer contradicts the chord above it. Choosing a tritone substitute left the bracket claiming the old chord was preparing its dominant, which the substitute is not doing. Until that connection is worked out for the chord you actually picked, it stays silent instead of saying something untrue.
• Error messages are in the app's own words again. A few of them passed through the internal wording of the library underneath, and the crash screen showed the raw fault. Both now say what happened, in a sentence meant for you.

0.11.0

21 August 2026

Added

• Build a practice chart. When you make a new exercise, the library now also offers patterns written to be drilled rather than played — the ii–V–I around the circle in major and minor, the diatonic ladder, the turnaround through every key, and one chord quality on all twelve roots. Pick one, set the key in the ribbon, and lay the screen out as usual. These charts are rebuilt from their name whenever they open, so an exercise on one follows you to every device and shares as a link that carries nothing.

Changed

• Making a new exercise now goes straight from the piece to the workbench. The piece page in between offered ways to run things while you were trying to build one — and starting one would quietly end what you had begun. The key you author in moved to the ribbon, where you choose it while looking at the screen it applies to.

0.10.0

21 August 2026

Added

• Build your own exercises by setting the screen up. Pick a piece, lay the workbench out the way the exercise should open — which lens, what is shown, the sound, the tempo, the loop, the hearing — then save it with a title, a briefing, a length and a level. The old authoring form is gone; the screen you set up is the description.
• Your exercises are kept with your account and follow you to your other devices, along with the practice you do on them. They travel as a pointer to the piece and its key — your charts stay on your device and are never uploaded, as they always have been.
• Share an exercise by link. Send it to someone and they open exactly the same exercise: the same screen, the same key, the same briefing. A tune only you have travels inside the link itself, from you to them, and never touches our servers.
• Exercises appear on the piece they were built on, in the piece's own hub.
• Editing an exercise — which was simply not possible before.
• Your backup file now carries your exercises too. Older backups still restore.

Fixed

• An exercise no longer overwrites your own sound settings. It borrows the mix, the comping figure and the tempo while it runs, and gives them back when you leave.
• A practice block built on a community-library tune is no longer skipped.

0.9.3

21 August 2026

Added

• A note beside the import area: what you bring in is yours to answer for, and your charts stay on your device — nothing you import is uploaded.
• A trademark notice on the public pages and in About: iReal Pro® is a trademark of its owner, and Paint Music is independent of it. The name is used only to describe the file format the app can read.
• Full credit for the library that reads iReal Pro charts (author and license).

Fixed

• The privacy notice now says precisely what an AI explanation sends: one chord, never the piece itself and never its title.

0.9.2

19 August 2026

Added

• Save a backup of your imported tunes — a file you can keep in iCloud Drive or Files and drop back in on another device, or after clearing site data. Imported charts stay on your device and are never uploaded.
• The analysis walkthrough now survives leaving and coming back. A run you interrupt is offered back on the piece as "resume · N of M", with "start fresh" beside it. Only the ✕ ("leave without logging") discards it.
• A clock on Memorize and on the analysis walkthrough. It pauses when you do, and stops on its own while you are in another window or reading the finished chart — so the time written into your log is the time you practiced.

Changed

• Explore freely is now a full-width entry on the piece page, above the three columns, instead of a small link in the corner.
• Your practice on an imported tune now survives a rename: tunes are matched by their chords and key as well as their title, so re-importing an edited or re-exported chart keeps its history.

0.9.1

19 August 2026

Changed

• The standards library now draws its tunes from the open JAAH jazz-harmony dataset (credited under CC-BY on the About page).
• Imported iReal Pro playlists now dissolve into the same searchable A–Z library as the built-in tunes, instead of a separate endless scroll.

Fixed

• An installed home-screen app (PWA) now picks up new versions when reopened — previously it could stay on an old version indefinitely on iPad/iOS.
• The account avatar now sits centered next to "Account" and "Signed in".
• Narrow iPad views (portrait or Split View) show a "best in landscape" hint so the Notation colors no longer sit off the edge, out of reach.

Added

• The app version now shows at the bottom of the About page.

0.9.0

First closed-beta build. What you can do:

• Open a standard and work it — a built-in reference library plus a community library, and import your own iReal Pro tunes.
• Three lenses on every chart — Harmony analysis, Notation, and Scales.
• The analysis walkthrough — tap the tune bar by bar and answer what each chord is doing, at three depths.
• Memorize — progressive fade of the chart, reveal and self-rate.
• Study tools — transposition (all 12 keys), reharmonization, voicings, chord-scales, colors/tensions, comping patterns, and a minus-one play-along.
• Optional accounts — sign in to keep your practice across devices; without an account everything stays on your device.