Open—Shape vs Tonaly

Open—Shape helps guitarists find playable chord voicings across the fretboard, including in different tunings. Its chord engine searches for shapes, filters them by note count, and supplies difficulty labels and fingering details. Users can chain and reorder chords, play progressions, and save them. The Free plan includes the full chord engine, every voicing, 33 built-in tunings, real acoustic guitar playback, a microphone tuner, and up to three saved progressions. Pro costs $9.99, paid once, billed one-time, and adds unlimited custom tunings and saved progressions. The tuner identifies strings in alternate and custom tunings; capo settings update chord voicings and progressions. A visual Canvas board for connecting chords, tuning, and capo runs in a desktop browser. Open—Shape is available on iOS and the web, and an account is not required. Saved tunings and progressions are stored in browser local storage, with backup export and import in Settings. Its privacy policy says tuner audio is analyzed in the browser and is not recorded or transmitted.

Tonaly is a songwriting and practice app that uses the circle of fifths to help musicians find chords, write songs, and learn scales. It highlights chords in a key, suggests progressions, supports borrowed chords and extensions, and helps develop melody ideas for hooks, basslines, or solos. Musicians can practice scales, progressions, and solos with key changes and stepwise difficulty increases. A progression generator, chord audio playback, and chord chart export are also available. Users can export MIDI and PDFs or share song links for collaboration; MIDI export to Ableton, Logic, or GarageBand is listed. Tonaly is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with iOS 16.0, iPadOS 16.0, and macOS 13.0 or later required. Its Mac Pro features include MIDI drag and drop, Core MIDI output, keyboard commands, and lead sheets. The Mac page says iCloud supports working across devices. Tonaly has a free plan and free trial. US App Store purchases include $3.99, paid once for 80+ Scales, $5.99, paid once for PDF lead sheet export, $9.99, paid once for Supporter, $39.99 a year, and $79.99, paid once for Lifetime.