# Ackord

Sonic Pi has built-in support for chord names which will return lists. Try it for yourself:

    play chord(:E3, :minor)

Now, we’re really getting somewhere. That looks a lot more pretty than the raw lists (and is easier to read for other people). So what other chords does Sonic Pi support? Well, a lot. Try some of these:

- `chord(:E3, :m7)`
- `chord(:E3, :minor)`
- `chord(:E3, :dim7)`
- `chord(:E3, :dom7)`

## Arpeggios

We can easily turn chords into arpeggios with the function `play_pattern`:

    play_pattern chord(:E3, :m7)

Ok, that’s not so fun - it played it really slowly. `play_pattern` will play each note in the list with a call to `sleep 1` after each call to `play`. We can use another function `play_pattern_timed` to specify our own timings and speed things up:

    play_pattern_timed chord(:E3, :m7), 0.25

We can even pass a list of times which it will treat as a circle of times:

    play_pattern_timed chord(:E3, :m13), [0.25, 0.5]

This is the equivalent to:

    play 52, sustain: 0.25
    sleep 0.25
    play 55, sustain: 0.5
    sleep 0.5
    play 59, sustain: 0.25
    sleep 0.25
    play 62, sustain: 0.5
    sleep 0.5
    play 66, sustain: 0.25
    sleep 0.25
    play 69, sustain: 0.5
    sleep 0.5
    play 73, sustain: 0.25
    sleep 0.25

Which would you prefer to write?

Note that `play_pattern` and `play_pattern_timed` alter the sustain of the notes to fill the times. You can remove this behavior by setting the `sustain:` opt to `0`:

    play_pattern_timed chord(:E3, :m13), [0.25, 0.5], sustain: 0