Harmony Pro vs Hookpad

Harmony Pro helps composers and producers explore chord possibilities while a piece takes shape. Its suggestion engine offers Balanced, Conservative, Exploratory, and Jazz Expert profiles, with controls for richness, boldness, modal character, continuity, exploration, and style fit. A progression workspace includes key detection and playback. Users can inspect harmony in keyboard, guitar, and sheet views, and use scale and common-tone controls, reverse chord lookup, a progression generator, and a voicing explorer. Chord audio playback is available. Harmony Pro runs on macOS, Windows, and the web. On macOS and Windows, it is available as AU and VST3 plugins; the maker says the VST3 version is intended for Ableton Live. The maker says the app has no AI. It may ask permission to send minimal usage statistics and technical data, while stating that musical content is not transmitted. Users can change this choice at any time. The listed plan is free.

Hookpad is browser-based songwriting software for composing chord progressions, melodies and songs with integrated music theory tools. Its chord suggestions draw on music theory and data from 75,000 songs. The free plan includes Smart Guides, transposition, tempo and looping, piano playback and cloud saving; advanced chord palettes and search are limited to one-minute previews. Standard adds more than 500 instruments, 11 band templates, up to four melody voices, lyrics, mixing, recording and MIDI input, along with MIDI and MP3 export. Users can also export sheet music, guitar tablature and lead sheets. MIDI exports can be imported into digital audio workstations such as GarageBand, Logic and Pro Tools. Audio import supports WAV and MP3; MIDI input requires a browser with Web MIDI API support. Optional Aria can suggest chords, melodies or both. Hookpad works in a browser and offers tablet touch mode, but is not suitable for smartphone editing. Standard costs $7.99 a month, billed monthly; the optional Aria add-on costs $14.99 a month, billed monthly.