What Fifths Studio does

Fifths Studio is a free chord companion for instruments tuned in fifths: mandolin (GDAE), octave mandolin (GDAE), Irish bouzouki (GDAE), mandola (CGDA), mandocello (CGDA), and tenor banjo and tenor guitar (either tuning). Type or paste a song's chords, or pick a tune from the library, and Fifths shows each chord as a fingering on your instrument's neck. Press play to hear the changes.

You choose where your hand sits on the neck and how far it may move (from Tight to Roam), which strings carry the chord (low, even or high), and whether the root must be the lowest note. You can add a capo and change key on a dial laid out as the circle of fifths. On octave mandolin, Irish bouzouki, and tenor banjo or tenor guitar tuned GDAE, when at least half of a song’s chords have no first-position shape, Fifths names the capo at which every chord has one (for example “capo 4 · G shapes”); tapping it sets that capo. Fingerings are checked against the instrument's scale length, so a stretch that is comfortable on a mandolin is not offered on a mandocello. If no fingering fits your settings, Fifths says so and suggests moving your hand or giving it more room.

The library holds about thirty traditional tunes and songs. Their chord charts were prepared with Claude’s help and checked bar by bar against published versions. Tunes can also be brought in from The Session (thesession.org, ODbL) in ABC notation. Each tune keeps its own tempo; a song you paste starts at 120 beats per minute. The library also holds common chord progressions, such as I–IV–V, ii–V–I and a 12-bar blues, lined up by scale degree so they can be compared side by side.

Fifths is drawn in two colour schemes, ink on paper or a blueprint; the switch in the header changes the colours only.

Playback uses a piano, an electric piano (Keys) or a plucked guitar sound, with chords played together or as arpeggios.

Save keeps a tune on a bench in your own browser, and the whole bench can be saved as one file that opens as a printable set list. Share makes a short link to your version of a tune once you have changed something from how it loaded; the tune is stored on Fifths’ server so the link opens anywhere, and shared links are not browsed. On a phone, Fifths opens a chord dictionary instead of the full workshop; it suggests a desktop for the full workshop and can show a QR code that opens fifths.studio.

The key dial and the tempo pendulum are each drawn as a real invention, and a patent stamp names it: PAT. 1923 on the fifths wheel (John Harwood’s self-winding watch rotor) and PAT. 1815 on the pendulum (Maelzel’s metronome). Tapping a stamp opens that invention’s drawing and its story.