Chordify: Guitar, Ukulele and Piano Chords - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Before I founded Chordify with four friends, I worked as a front-end developer for several years. The Chordify team grew quickly over the last couple of years and the developers that work on the apps are all experienced developers.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

We started Chordify as a website for large screens. Getting all those interface elements on small devices was difficult, but we managed. Also, because mobile devices can be old and slow, it was a challenge to make the synchronous playback of the chords and the music video perfect.

_{Tijmen Ruizendaal}

Tijmen implements his passion for music and technology at Chordify, where he's CTO and co-founder. He plays drums in two bands, DJHAGY and Car Pets, and also played in a band with co-founder Bas during the early days of Chordify (that’s how they met!). Whenever he's not coding or jamming, he solves physical puzzles at the boulder gym.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

I love Karang. It’s a multi-string guitar tuning app, super easy to use. And I also love the weather app ‘Buienalarm’, because it predicts rain. Super handy when you have to deal with the unpredictable Dutch weather.

How long have you been working on this app?

We started Chordify in 2013, in 2016 we launched our iOS app.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

From the beginning we used the slogan “everyone is a musician, start playing.” I think that’s still accurate. We wanted to be the place where you can find all the chords to all the songs you want to play. Thanks to our algorithm that keeps improving and the database that keeps growing, we still are that place where everyone can become a musician and play the music they love.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

The core of Chordify is a deep neural network algorithm that calculates chords from audio signals. Other platforms claim to have ‘the biggest song database’, but that simply isn’t true. Chordify serves the chords for literally every YouTube video and every audio file, so we not only give access to chords for popular songs but also to the very niche genres and most obscure songs. And the fun part is, if your song is not yet Chordified it only takes a sec before the chord progression pops up.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We plan to align all features between all the platforms. For example, the setlists feature where you can organize your songs in different lists, will become available in the mobile app versions in the future.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

Pick up your instrument and get jamming!