CadenzaPaid module — sold separately
Rootless voicings, drilled into your hands.
Grips is a working jazz method inside Cadenza: the root goes to the bass player, your left hand learns one shape with two rotations, and every finger becomes a switch. It ships as its own module — sold on its own, or cheaper as an add-on.
A real drill, mid-course. The chord, its staff, the fingers that hold it and a panel that explains why this rotation — every sentence computed, so it is right in all twelve keys.
The method
A jazz chord doesn't need its root. It needs a Grip.
The root belongs to the bass. Your left hand learns one four-note shape — the Grip — in two rotations, from the VII and from the III, and every finger owns one degree of the chord.
- Registers are picked by centre, so voicings sit where a pianist would put them.
- One hand shape gives nine dominant colours — two fingers are the switches.
- Cadences are voice-led: the rotation is chosen so the fingers barely move.
The course
Twenty-eight rungs, one ladder.
From shells and rooted forms, through the Grip and its switches, to cadences, upper structures, Red Garland hands, tritone substitutions and turnarounds. Every rung carries its own short lesson.
- 28 rungs · over 2,000 questions, dealt fairly — never a dice roll.
- A course screen that says what each rung is for before you enter it.
- Jazz words stay English, and a built-in glossary defines them.
How it grades
It watches how the chord arrives.
The grader reads the MIDI itself: which keys, in what order, in which octaves, what stayed held through a change. The strict demands are switches you turn on yourself — building from the 9th, no wrong keys, a clean lift, the 9th on top.
- Ear mode plays the chord first — the name appears only after your hands answer.
- Identify mode names whatever you play, in every spelling the method knows.
- The 12-keys clock: the same question around the circle, against time.
Progress
A map that never forgets.
Every key-by-shape cell is unseen, shaky or solid. A slipped answer makes a cell shaky again — never unseen, because you did know it. The exam deals twenty-four questions from your weakest cells, and the whole map prints to PDF.
When, and how much
Grips ships as its own module — on its own, or cheaper as an add-on; prices are announced on release day. The core of Cadenza (Keys, Staff and Chord) is free forever, and the rest is sold as one-time modules — see the tiers on the buy page. Want a note when Grips is out? Write to [email protected].
Play it once.
macOS 12 or later · Windows 10 and 11 · no account, no card
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