Chords
What chord is this?
Click the frets you are holding down and this will tell you what you are playing. It handles inversions and slash chords, shows you the notes and the intervals, and works in alternate tunings as well as standard.
Click a fret to place a finger. Click it again to remove it. X mutes a string, 0 is open.
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How to read the answer
If the lowest note you are playing is the root of the chord, you get a plain name like C or Am7. If the lowest note is some other note from the chord, you get a slash chord like C/E, which means a C chord with an E in the bass. That is an inversion, and it is extremely common, particularly in anything with a moving bass line.
Where more than one name genuinely fits the same set of notes, the alternatives are listed underneath. That is not the tool being indecisive. Some chords are honestly ambiguous out of context, and which name is correct depends on the key you are in and what came before it. A diminished seventh is the classic case, since the same four notes can be named from any of the four.
If it says it cannot name it
That usually means one of three things, and none of them is a fault.
- It is a fragment rather than a chord. Two notes are an interval, not a chord, unless it is a root and fifth, which is the power chord.
- You have a note in there you did not mean to hold. Check for a string ringing that should be muted. That is what the X is for.
- It is a genuinely unusual voicing. Plenty of good sounding shapes do not sit on any standard chord name. The notes and intervals are still shown, so you can work out what it is doing yourself.
The chord library works the other way round if you know the name and want the shape, and the key finder will tell you which keys a set of chords belongs to.