Tools for chord selection

[cbelov]

I am considering purchasing iReal b for Mac OSX. This is a feature request to assist folks like me who don't know chords, aren't trying to learn to play an instrument, and just need a compositional tool to help me duplicate the music I hear in my head into a reproducible file. iReal b seems to go most of the way, but not quite; I think it could go a lot closer.

It appears to be easy to choose a chord if you know what chord you are looking for. But what if I don't know, and just want to listen to particular different chords before I choose the one I want to use? It would be nice if there were a chord preview feature.

The minimal feature for me to purchase would be to be able to hear a chord as I select it from the drop-down menus. That is if I change the dropdown from either C major or D harmonic minor to C harmonic minor, the program would play one C harmonic minor chord immediately so that I could hear whether that is the chord I intended. But it could be so much easier.

If I am building a song from scratch, it's tedious to have to choose chords from a pair of drop-down menus, then choose the current, preceding and following measures for looping, then choose another chord if the chord I chose turns out not to be to my liking. It would be nice to be able to choose chords from a grid.

That is C C# D etc along one axis, Major, Harmonic minor, etc. along the other axis.
Clicking the button at the intersection would provide a preview of that chord. Then, once I find the chord I want I could either double-click or click an Insert button. I have a desktop; I have room for such a grid.

Finally, it would be good to be able to choose to preview with the immediately preceding and following chords that are already in the song, not as part of a song with the repeats but just to be able to hear the three chords in a row before I click to insert that new chord into the song.

The ideal would be have the option to do an A/B test alternating between
previous chord, proposed chord, following chord
and
previous chord, current chord that would be replaced, following chord
so that I can compare whether it would be an improvement or a detriment.

I understand that this is not an existing feature, but I wonder whether it would be feasible to insert this feature into the product. Accomplishing this kind of preview in the existing product would seem to involve a lot of mouse clicks, and I don't like to click a lot.