Session™ Key is $39 until September 8
Know the key and the tempo of whatever your Mac is playing.
Session™ Key sits in your menu bar, reads the audio your Mac is playing, and writes the key and the tempo into your open project in one keystroke. $39 once, up to three Macs, no subscription. It marks every read with how sure it is, so nothing gets built on a number the app was not sure about.
Session Cards™ is the second tool. 144 moves for the session that has stopped moving, $199, shipping 1 October 2026. Everything below the two of them is the reference behind the work.
What we make
Session™ Key
One keystroke writes the key and the tempo into the open project in Pro Tools and Logic Pro. Ableton Live and Studio One each take a one-time setup that the pages below walk through, and FL Studio gets the tempo only, because it has no project key field to write into.
$39 once, up to three Macs. Available now. Detection runs on the device, and nothing is uploaded, recorded or stored. Requires macOS 14.4 or later on Apple Silicon.
The price goes to $49 on 9 September 2026, and the license key is emailed the moment the payment clears.
Session Cards™
A deck of 144 session moves in eleven color-coded categories, from the blank page to the final polish. Each one is a concrete action to take on the song in front of the room, and two categories exist for the session that has already gone wrong.
$199 with free worldwide shipping. The second pressing ships 1 October 2026, tracked, and a Session™ Key license comes with it.
The first pressing was 500 decks and it sold out. Duties and taxes on an international order are the buyer's responsibility.
Start with the question you came in with
The answer, in the first screen. Plain reference on how key and tempo actually work. Anything said here about another company's product is read off that company's own live page, with the day it was read printed beside it, and any page that compares a tool to ours says which one is ours.
- How to find the key of a song The ear method in three steps, and what changes when a machine does it.
- How to find the BPM of a sample Counting it by hand, the half-time trap, and why a one-shot has no tempo.
- Why does the key change halfway through a song? A written modulation, a borrowed chord, or nothing changed at all.
- Relative major and minor Same seven notes, so nothing in the pitch tells them apart.
- Why do drums have no key? A key is a relationship between notes, and a hit has no stable pitch.
- Why does key detection get the wrong key? Six situations where the audio does not carry enough evidence.
- A key reading you do not believe How to tell the six causes apart from the outside, in the room.
- What accurate actually means Four counting methods, and why a percentage on its own says nothing.
- Does key detection work on a live stream? Yes, and it is a different measurement from analyzing a file.
- When the key or the tempo is what is holding you up 91 moments in a working session, and the ones where nothing helps.
Inside a DAW
What gets written into each program, what the one-time setup is, and which fields a program does not have.
- Pro Tools Session tempo and the Key Signature ruler, set directly.
- Logic Pro Tempo and key signature, written into the open project.
- Ableton Live Tempo and key, through a companion the app installs itself.
- FL Studio Tempo only. FL Studio has no project key field to write into.
- Studio One The file route, and the direct route that needs a grant.
Comparisons and alternatives
We make one of the products on each of these pages, and each page says which one. Every fact about somebody else's product comes from their own live page, with the day it was read.
- Mixed In Key alternatives Nothing replaces all of it, so this is sorted by the part you actually use.
- Mixed In Key vs Session™ Key A library and set-prep tool against a live reader. Different jobs.
- Tunebat alternatives Five, sorted by free and offline, paid desktop, or live while you write.
- Tunebat vs Session™ Key A file you hand over, or the audio already playing.
- Key and BPM detection tools worth using Six, sorted by when you need the number rather than by rank.
- Songwriting prompt decks worth buying Five, each checked against the maker's own live page.
- Oblique Strategies alternatives Four, and the case for keeping the original instead.
- Oblique Strategies vs Session Cards™ A provocation, or a move. They are not the same object.
Background
Who builds the software these pages describe, and how the pages are checked.