The Chord Shed and the Personal Software Revolution
Music theory isn't a new concept or unsolved problem. There are plenty of avenues. Textbooks, apps like Tenuto, or YouTube rabbit holes. None of them meet me where I am in my journey.
Jazz improvisation requires a specific kind of fluency. You need instant recall while playing, what notes go into a Bb minor 7, which ones color it. Most music apps treat theory as a general subject. They're built for a broad audience, which means they're built for no one in particular.
So I built my own training tool.
The Chord Shed is a mobile-first web app that quizzes you on jazz chord-scale relationships. It audibly plays the chord so your ear and brain train together, and tracks where your weaknesses are. It does exactly what I need.
There's a broader idea here worth naming.
Software has always involved compromise. You find the tool closest to what you need and adapt around its edges. That's just how it worked. Building custom software was expensive, slow, and required a team.
AI coding agents change the equation. The Chord Shed took days, not months. It has no unnecessary features, no subscription. It's tuned to exactly one person's learning style and goals.
That's new. Not just faster software development, but personal software. Tools built for an audience of one, shaped entirely around how you think and what you need.
Most people still reach for the off-the-shelf option first, and often that's fine. But for the problems that don't quite fit any existing solution, the calculus has changed. Building your own is now a real option.
I built The Chord Shed because nothing else did what I needed. If you're a jazz musician, try it out at thechordshed.truegold.tech. But the bigger point isn't about music.
Think about the tools you use every day that almost fit. The spreadsheet you've hacked into a project tracker. The app that's 80% right but missing the one thing that would make it yours. The workflow you've given up trying to automate.
Those gaps are now closeable. Not by waiting for a product team to get around to it, but by building exactly what you need.
The barrier isn't gone, but it's lower than it's ever been.