The Starmap is another way to look at the Scales Explorer. Instead of the Circle of Fifths you see a ring of the 12 notes, and every chord you play lights up as a glowing star joining its notes, gliding from chord to chord as the music moves.
IMAGE · practice-starmap.png · 1600 × 1000 px · The Scales Explorer with the Starmap on: the ring of 12 notes with C at the top, the scale’s notes bright and the home note amber, a major chord drawn as a glowing triangle with its name in the centre, and the Semitones | Fifths switch in the corner of the ring.
Turn it on
The Circle of Fifths stays the default. The Starmap replaces it while the switch is on, and flipping the switch back brings the circle back.
What you see
IMAGE · practice-starmap-shapes.png · 1200 × 600 px · Three Starmap stars side by side: C major as a triangle, A minor as its mirror image, and G7 as a four-pointed star.
The star glides
When the chord changes, the star glides to the next one. Notes the two chords share stay where they are, while the others travel round the ring, the colour blends and the names cross-fade. From C to Am, C and E stay put and one point moves from G to A, so you can see how little changes between related chords.
The glide always finishes before the next chord, even at the fastest speed. With Windows’ animation effects turned off, the star jumps instead of gliding.
Pick a key
Hover a note on the ring: its band lights amber and the tooltip reads Click to play. Click it to play that key in the selected scale.
Maj | Min, next to the Starmap switch, decides whether you get the major or the minor key: switching it turns C major into C minor. A scale that already fits stays selected, so G Dorian stays Dorian.
Play it yourself
Hold a chord of 3 to 6 notes on your MIDI keyboard and the Starmap draws it as a star, with its name. Move to the next chord and the star glides along with you. Let go and it glides back to the explorer’s chord. What you play never changes the explorer’s own chord or key.
Semitones or Fifths
The Semitones | Fifths switch in the corner of the ring sets the order of the 12 notes. The star glides from one order to the other, so you can compare the same chord both ways.
Semitones
The notes in the order you meet them on the keyboard: C, C♯, D, D♯, E and so on, each a half step above the last, like walking up the white and black keys. The distance between two notes on the ring is the distance between them on the keyboard.
This order shows a chord’s intervals. A major chord is a wide triangle whose sides are a major third, a minor third and a fourth, and a minor chord is the same triangle flipped. A seventh chord adds a fourth corner, and you can see how close it sits to the root. Scales look like what your fingers play: C major covers the ring with a few small gaps where the black keys are.
Fifths
The notes in Circle of Fifths order: C, G, D, A, E, B, F♯ and so on, each a fifth above the last. Neighbours on the ring are the notes that sound most closely related, the way C and G are.
This order shows how chords and keys belong together. Any major scale becomes one unbroken arc of seven neighbours, and moving to a neighbouring key slides the arc one step. Chords that share notes sit close together. A chord made of the key’s own notes stays inside the arc, while one borrowing from outside reaches beyond it. A major chord becomes a slim, tight triangle, which shows how strongly its notes belong together.
Which to use?
Semitones shows the shape of a chord under your hand. Fifths shows its place in the key and its pull towards other chords. In both orders every chord of one kind keeps one shape, turned: all major chords match, and all minor chords are their mirror image.
Tip: See bigger stars
The tiles of the major, minor and mode scales are three-note chords, so they draw triangles. For four- and five-pointed stars, pick Major Blues or Minor Blues, or hold seventh and ninth chords on your MIDI keyboard.
See also: Scales Explorer · Appearance settings · Connect a MIDI keyboard