Guitar Chord Practice

The four drills

• Name the chord. A chord chart or a set of keys appears with the name hidden; pick it from four. This is the drill that turns shapes you can play into chords you can recognise in someone else’s song.
• Name by ear. The chord is played, not shown. Start with the beginner set on: major against minor is the first distinction to get solid, and 7ths after that. Replay as often as you like — nobody names chords by ear on one hearing at first.
• Build it. You get the name and place the notes yourself on the fretboard or the keys. Every change is checked by the same engine behind the chord identifier, so a wrong shape gets named rather than just marked wrong — put F where Fmaj7 belongs and it says so.
• Chord changes. Two chords, a metronome, and a target that alternates every downbeat for a minute. See the honest note below about what this can and cannot measure.

Random chord generator

The Random chords mode deals from the same reviewed sets: one chord to drill on its own, two to pair in the changes drill, or four for a progression to loop. Turn on Beginner chords only and it deals from the open shapes a first-year player actually has — no Bm barre landing in the middle of your practice.

Random progressions are a genuinely useful practice device. Left to ourselves we play the same three changes we already own; a random deal forces the ones we avoid. Play each dealt chord for two bars, then one bar each, then swap the order. Tap any chord to hear it, or follow the link to its full page for the fingering.

What the changes drill does and does not do

The changes drill is a pacer. It gives you a click, tells you which of two chords to be on, alternates on every downbeat and counts down a minute. It does not listen to your instrument — there is no microphone in this version — so it cannot tell you whether the chord rang cleanly or whether your third finger buzzed. Any tool that claims to score your changes without hearing them is scoring your button presses.

So keep the honest measure yourself: count your changes out loud during the minute, or tap the counter if a hand is free, and write the number down. The value is in the trend across a fortnight, not in any single minute.

How to practise a change so it sticks

• Look for the finger that doesn’t move. Am to C keeps the index on the 1st fret of the B string; G to Cadd9 keeps two fingers at the 3rd fret. Pivot on what stays and the change halves in difficulty.
• Move all the other fingers together. Arriving one finger at a time is the single biggest cause of a slow change. Lift as a unit, land as a unit.
• Practise the change, not the chords. Two beats on each, no strumming, eyes on the fretboard, for one minute. Strumming can come back once the hand knows where it is going.
• Slow enough to be clean. If the chord buzzes, the tempo is wrong, not your hand. Drop 10 BPM.

Frequently asked questions