Chord identifier · guitar & piano
Guitar Chord Identifier
Tap the shape you are holding and the chord name appears instantly — with the root, third and fifth named, inversions spotted, and every other name those notes can go by.
Tap a fret to place a finger, tap it again to lift it. The circle beside each string switches between open and muted. Arrow keys move around the board.
No notes yet.
Tap a fret on each string you are playing — the chord name appears here as you go.
Chord Identifier for Piano
Switch the tool to Piano keys and the same identifier works from the keyboard: tap every key you are holding down and read the name off the panel. Because the keyboard shows the chord as a stack of pitches rather than a hand shape, it is the faster way to see why a chord is called what it is — the gap between the root and the next note tells you major or minor, and the note at the bottom tells you whether you are in root position or an inversion.
Two octaves are shown at a time with the octave buttons moving the window, so a left-hand voicing and a right-hand voicing can both be entered in full. Octave doubling makes no difference to the name: play C in three octaves and it is still one C. What does change the name is the lowest note, which is why the panel always tells you which note is in the bass.
Identify a Chord by Sound
There is no microphone in this version. Nothing you play is listened to, and no audio is uploaded anywhere — so if you are looking for a tool that hears a chord and names it, this is not that tool yet. Being straight about it saves you the three minutes of hunting for a record button.
What works instead is ear-matching, which is how most players do this anyway:
- Find the bass note first. Hum the lowest note of the chord you can hear and hunt for it one string or one key at a time.
- Build a plain major chord on that note in the tool, press Hear it, and compare it with the recording. Major and minor are the fastest thing to tell apart, so settle that next.
- If it still sounds thinner or richer than what you hear, add one note at a time — a 7th, a 6th, a 9th — pressing Hear it after each. The panel renames the chord as you go, so you learn what each added note is called while you search.
This is slower than a magic microphone, but it trains the thing you actually want: the ability to hear a chord and know what it is without a tool at all.
How chord identification works
A chord is a stack of intervals measured from its root. The identifier tries all twelve notes as a possible root and checks the stack above each one against the standard formulas — major (root, major third, perfect fifth), minor (root, minor third, perfect fifth), dominant 7th (add a minor seventh), major 7th, minor 7th, 6ths, sus2 and sus4, diminished, augmented, half-diminished, add9 and 9. Whichever root explains every note you played wins.
Two details separate a real identifier from a lookup table. The first is the bass note: the same notes in a different order are the same chord, but the lowest note decides whether it is written C or C/E, so the bass is tracked separately from the rest. The second is notes a voicing leaves out. The open C7 shape on a guitar has no G in it at all — the fifth is dropped because the flat seventh is doing the harmonic work — and a tool that insists on all four notes will refuse to name the most common C7 on the instrument. This one names it, and tells you the fifth is missing.
That is also why more than one name can be correct. Names come from context: the key of the song, the note in the bass, and what came before. The tool ranks the readings and explains each one; you choose.
Where to go next
Found the chord but can’t get to it cleanly? The chord practice tool drills the change with a metronome. If the shape is one of the standard beginner chords, its own page has the fingering, the common mistakes and the audio: easy guitar chords or the piano chord chart.
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify a guitar chord?
Put the shape into the fretboard above exactly as your hand holds it: tap the fret you are pressing on each string, and mark the strings you don't strum as muted with the circle beside them. The name appears as soon as three different notes are in place, along with what each note is doing in the chord.
Can it identify chords by sound?
Not from a microphone — this version has no audio input, and we would rather say so than pretend. What it does instead is work in the other direction: recreate the chord you can hear on the fretboard or keys, press Hear it, and compare. If the two match you have found the chord; if not, move one note at a time until they do.
What is a slash chord?
A slash chord names the chord first and the bass note second, so C/E means a C major chord with E as its lowest note. It is the same three notes as C major, just stacked differently — an inversion. The identifier detects the bass note and shows the slash name whenever the lowest note is not the root.
Why does it show more than one name?
Because some collections of notes genuinely have several names. A–C–E–G is A minor 7 if you hear A as the root, and C major 6 if you hear C as the root; both are correct and both appear in real music. The reading with the root in the bass is listed first, and the others are shown underneath so you can pick the one that fits your key.