Guitar, Ukulele & Piano Chord Finder

About the Guitar, Ukulele & Piano Chord Finder

Look up any chord and see how to play it: up to eight guitar or ukulele shapes with finger numbers, barres and the note each string sounds, easiest first, or the piano shape in root position and every inversion. Type a symbol the way songbooks write it — Am7, F#m7b5, Bb/D, Gsus4, C6/9 — or pick a root and one of 37 chord types, from triads and power chords to sevenths, ninths, elevenths and thirteenths, with any bass note. Every chord plays through your speakers as a strum or one note at a time.

Name a chord works the other way round: tap the frets you are holding (or type x32010), or press the piano keys, and the page names the chord, with the other names a musician might use (C6 or Am7/C, D/F♯, a chord without its fifth). Scales & keys shows 14 scales and modes — major, minor, the church modes, harmonic and melodic minor, pentatonic and blues — with their notes, steps, key signature and chords, on the neck or the keyboard, beside a circle of fifths you can tap.

Choose from 6 guitar tunings (standard, drop D, half a step down, DADGAD, open G and open D) and three ukulele tunings (high G, low G and baritone), add a capo, or mirror the diagrams for a left-handed guitar. Everything is worked out in your browser.

Common uses

• Learning a song from a chord sheet that uses chords you have not played yet (Fmaj7, B♭, F♯m7♭5).
• Finding a shape further up the neck, or an easier one with a capo, for a key that has awkward chords.
• Working out the name of a shape you found by ear, or of the notes in a piano part.
• Moving between guitar, ukulele and piano parts of the same song.
• Studying keys, modes and the circle of fifths, and the chords that belong to each key.

How chord symbols are built

The letter is the root. Nothing after it means a major triad (root, major third, fifth: 1–3–5); m a minor one (1–♭3–5); dim lowers the fifth too (1–♭3–♭5) and aug raises it (1–3–♯5). sus2 and sus4 replace the third with the second or fourth. 7 adds the minor seventh (C7 = C–E–G–B♭, the dominant seventh), maj7 the major seventh (Cmaj7 = C–E–G–B), m7♭5 (also written ø) is the half-diminished chord and dim7 (°7) the diminished seventh. add9 adds the ninth without a seventh, while 9, 11 and 13 include the seventh. After a slash comes the bass note: C/E is C major with E as its lowest note.

Notes are spelled by their interval, as in printed music: a third is two letters above the root, so B♭ major is B♭–D–F, F♯ minor is F♯–A–C♯ and G♯ augmented is G♯–B♯–D♯♯.

How the shapes are chosen

The page does not copy a chord book: it tries every way of playing the chord’s notes in each four-fret stretch of the neck, with strings open, fretted or not played, and keeps the shapes that sound every note of the chord (the fifth, and the ninth of a thirteenth chord, may be left out), have the bass note as their lowest note on guitar, leave out strings only at the edges (or one in the middle) and need no more than four fingers, one or two of which may lie across several strings (the index finger as a barre, and another finger across neighbouring strings, as in the C9 shape x32333). Shapes are ranked by how easy they are — low on the neck, a small stretch, few fingers, no barre, few silent strings, open strings ringing — and the open and barre chords of every chord chart come first. One shape from each part of the neck is kept in the list, so you also see where to play the chord higher up.

Using a capo

A capo raises every open string by one semitone per fret, so a shape played with the capo on fret 3 sounds three semitones higher: the G shape sounds as B♭. With Capo set to a fret, the diagrams count frets from the capo. With no capo, Easier with a capo lists open shapes that sound as the chord when they are easier than any shape without one.

Naming a chord from its notes

Every note you hold is tried as the root against every chord type, and a name fits when all the chord’s notes sound and nothing else does (the bass may be an extra note under the chord). Simpler chords, the root in the bass and nothing left out rank first. The same notes can have more than one correct name: C–E–G–A is C6 when C is lowest, but Am7 when A is lowest, so the page lists the alternatives with what each one means.

Scales, modes and the circle of fifths

The seven modes of the major scale use the same notes from a different starting note: D Dorian has the notes of C major, and its characteristic major sixth gives it its soulful sound. Each scale’s key signature comes from the circle of fifths: going clockwise adds one sharp (C, G, D, A …), anticlockwise one flat (F, B♭, E♭ …), and each major key shares its signature with the minor key three semitones below it (C major and A minor). The keys next to yours on the circle, a fifth up and a fifth down, differ by one sharp or flat: the closest keys to change to.

Tunings

Standard guitar tuning is E2–A2–D3–G3–B3–E4 from the low string. Most ukuleles are tuned G4–C4–E4–A4 with the G string higher than the C string (re-entrant “high G”); low-G tuning puts that string an octave down, and a baritone ukulele is tuned D3–G3–B3–E4, like the four highest strings of a guitar (ukulele tunings). Ukulele shapes are listed without asking for a particular bass note, as ukulele players play them.

Limitations

• Shapes are worked out from the chord’s notes and ranked by simple rules of reach and finger count; hand size, string gauge and playing style decide what is easiest for you.
• Shapes use at most four fingers, one or two of them lying across several strings; shapes that need the thumb over the neck are not offered.
• Shapes are searched up to the 14th fret and scale maps show 15 frets.
• The sounds are made in your browser (a plucked string and a simple piano tone), not recordings of real instruments.
• Piano fingering numbers are not shown; the keyboards show which keys to press.
• Scales are the common Western ones; ragas, maqams and microtonal scales are not included.

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