Independent product · Nara Digital Services

ChordVault: Building a Music Product End to End

A better way to find, organize, and use song chords, built around the way musicians actually play.

Years: 2025–present
Role: Product strategy, design, engineering, and ongoing product development
Status: Live at chordvault.online
Technologies: React, JavaScript, Firebase Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Functions, Firebase Hosting

ChordVault’s song reader showing Amazing Grace in G, with chords over the lyrics and key, text size and autoscroll controls beside it.

01 · Context

The opportunity

Musicians need to find song chord information and organise the material they use for rehearsal and performance. ChordVault is an independent product built to make that workflow more accessible, organised and practical.

02 · Responsibility

End-to-end ownership

Kavindu owns the product from concept and product decisions through design, engineering, release and ongoing improvement. That means working across the user experience, content discovery, performance, search visibility and production quality.

03 · Decisions

Built for the music stand

The reader is designed for rehearsal and performance rather than browsing. Chords stay aligned over the lyrics in any key, a performance mode lays a song across two pages for a tablet or screen, and autoscroll, text size and keep-awake are a tap or a key press away. Search uses an index generated when the site is built, so finding a song is quick and tolerates typos and romanised Sinhala spellings.

04 · Execution

What Kavindu built

A song reader with transposition, capo, autoscroll, adjustable text size, keep-awake and a two-page performance mode with keyboard and pedal shortcuts.
Guitar and piano chord diagrams for the chords in each song.
A public library of songs and artists, with search that tolerates typos and romanised Sinhala spellings.
A private vault where signed-in musicians save songs into folders and share them with their band.
Ordered collections that work as set lists, and a singer view with the lyrics only.
Curation tools for the public library, with writes checked on the server.

05 · Impact

Where it stands

ChordVault is live, with ongoing product and technical improvements. The next stage focuses on making song pages easier to discover through search while continuing to improve reliability and the musician experience.

Live independent product.
Product, design and engineering owned end to end.
Ongoing work on search visibility, performance and production quality.

Inside ChordVault

Performance mode laying Amazing Grace across two pages, with a compact control bar for key, text size and autoscroll. — Performance mode spreads a song across two pages for a tablet or screen, with pedal and keyboard shortcuts.

The chord library listing artists and popular songs, each with its key. — The public library, browsable by artist, popularity or title, free to read without an account.

The song reader in the dark theme, showing Silent Night in C with its chords. — The dark theme, for dim stages and rehearsal rooms.

ChordVault on a phone: Scarborough Fair with chords, and controls for key, text size, scrolling and keep-awake along the bottom. — On a phone, the controls sit within reach of a thumb.