Chord finder
Name the chord you are playing. Write the notes sounding under your fingers — in any order, with sharps or flats — and the finder asks the chord engine which of the chords the toolkit knows is made of exactly those notes. It answers with the chord, its tones and the intervals above its root, and draws a fingering when the toolkit holds one.
Name a chord from its notes
That is C Major.
C Major
Chord tones：C · E · G
Intervals from the root (semitones)：0 · 4 · 7
Open position
E-shape barre · fret 8
A-shape barre · fret 3
Note names are read with sharps and flats and answered with the toolkit's sharp spelling: Bb and A# are the same note and are always written A# here. The order you write the notes in is not part of the question and a note written twice is read once. The finder recognizes eight chord types and names a chord only when its notes exactly match one of them. Other note sets are reported as unnamed rather than matched to the nearest chord.
How the notes are read
A note name is read once, whichever string or octave it came from: which notes a chord is made of is a matter of note names, so C is the same note to this tool whether it is written on the second string or the fifth. The order of the notes is not part of the question — a chord is its notes, not the order they are played in — and a note written twice is read once. What the finder will not do is guess: the toolkit defines a fixed set of chord types, and when a set of notes is not exactly one of them the honest answer is that the toolkit has no name for it.
This page's examples, worked through
Every row is what the engine answers for the notes written beside it, worked out while this page was rendered:
C E G → C MajorC · E · G0 · 4 · 7
Three notes, the most common chord there is: the toolkit names it and holds a fingering for it.
A C E G → C Major 6thC · E · G · A0 · 4 · 7 · 9
A C E G → A Minor 7thA · C · E · G0 · 3 · 7 · 10
Four notes in an order nobody would play them in: the order is not part of the question.
C E G Bb → C Dominant 7thC · E · G · A#0 · 4 · 7 · 10
A seventh written with a flat comes back in the toolkit's sharp spelling.
Db F Ab → C# MajorC# · F · G#0 · 4 · 7
Written entirely in flats, and answered as the same sharp-spelled chord as its enharmonic twin.
C E G# → no chord named
C, E and G# make an augmented chord. That chord has its own detail page, but it is outside the finder's eight recognized types, so the finder does not choose a nearest match.
What the finder can name
The finder searches the toolkit's own chords: 12 roots and 11 chord types, 132 chords in all, each made of the notes and intervals below. It works the other way round from the chord pages, which start from a chord and show its notes; here the notes come first and the chord is the answer.
| Type on C | Chord tones | Intervals (semitones) | Fingering in the toolkit |
|---|---|---|---|
| C | C · E · G | 0 · 4 · 7 | yes |
| Cm | C · D# · G | 0 · 3 · 7 | yes |
| C7 | C · E · G · A# | 0 · 4 · 7 · 10 | yes |
| Cmaj7 | C · E · G · B | 0 · 4 · 7 · 11 | yes |
| Cm7 | C · D# · G · A# | 0 · 3 · 7 · 10 | yes |
| Cm7♭5 | C · D# · F# · A# | 0 · 3 · 6 · 10 | yes |
| C6 | C · E · G · A | 0 · 4 · 7 · 9 | yes |
| Cm6 | C · D# · G · A | 0 · 3 · 7 · 9 | yes |
| Cadd9 | C · E · G · D | 0 · 4 · 7 · 14 | yes |
| Csus4 | C · F · G | 0 · 5 · 7 | yes |
| Cdim | C · D# · F# | 0 · 3 · 6 | yes |
The toolkit holds 272 fingerings: 8 open-position shapes and 264 movable closed shapes. Every one of the 132 chords the finder can name has both a 6th-string-root and a 5th-string-root fingering.
When nothing matches
Notes that are not one of the toolkit's chords are reported as unnamed. Nothing is guessed and no chord is chosen for being close: an augmented chord, a chord type the toolkit does not define, and notes that are not a chord at all all get the same honest answer. The notes are still read and written back, so you can see what the finder worked from.
Sharp spelling
Note names are read with sharps and flats and answered with the toolkit's sharp spelling: Bb and A# are the same note and are always written A# here. The order you write the notes in is not part of the question and a note written twice is read once. The finder recognizes eight chord types and names a chord only when its notes exactly match one of them. Other note sets are reported as unnamed rather than matched to the nearest chord.