Pick notes on a guitar fretboard or piano and instantly see the chord name, alternate names and voicings. Free, no signup. Or detect chords from audio.
Every chord is a stack of intervals above a root note. A major chord is a root, a major third (four semitones up) and a perfect fifth (seven semitones up). Swap the major third for a minor third (three semitones) and you get a minor chord. To identify an unknown chord, find the root, measure the other notes against it and match the pattern. The chord finder does this for you as you click.
The lowest note you pick is treated as the bass. If the bass is not the root, the result is shown as a slash chord: C/E is a C major chord with E in the bass, also called first inversion.
Select a fret (or the open string) on each string you play. Strings you leave unselected are treated as muted. Voicings that leave out the fifth, which is common for seventh chords, are still recognized, so C–E–B on three strings is correctly read as Cmaj7.
Switch to the piano keyboard and click the keys you want. The chord finder reads the pitch classes you select, ignores octave doubling and names the chord the same way it does for guitar.
A–C–E–G is Am7, while C–E–G–A is C6. These are the same four pitch classes, and the right name depends on the bass note and the musical context. The chord finder uses your lowest note to choose the most likely name and lists the other common names underneath.
If you want the chords of a recording rather than a shape you are holding, use Chord AI, which detects chords from an MP3 or YouTube link. To work out which key a song is in, try the key detector, explore notes on the neck with the interactive fretboard, or build progressions with the chord progression generator.
It takes the notes you select, removes duplicates across octaves, and compares the pattern of intervals against known chord formulas such as major, minor, seventh, sus and diminished. The most common matching name is shown first.
Yes. The lowest note you select is treated as the bass. If it is not the root, the chord is shown as a slash chord. For example, E–G–C is shown as C/E, a first inversion of C major.
Some sets of notes can be named in more than one valid way. A–C–E–G can be read as Am7 or as C6 with A in the bass. The finder picks the most likely name from your bass note and lists the other common names.
No. Select only the strings you play and leave the rest muted. Three- and four-note voicings work, and common chords that leave out the fifth, such as Cmaj7 or C7, are still recognized.
Yes. Switch to the piano keyboard and click the keys. Piano and guitar use the same detection, so the same notes give the same chord name.
The chord finder names a chord from notes you pick. Chord AI listens to an audio file or YouTube link and detects the chords played in the recording.
The notes you picked do not fit a standard chord name, for example a tight cluster of neighbouring notes. Try removing or changing one note. When one note is the likely culprit, the finder suggests the closest chords.