Guitar Chord Finder

Identifying a chord from what you are fretting

Standard guitar tuning, from the thickest (lowest-pitched) string to the thinnest, is E, A, D, G, B, E. For each string, choose Open if you are playing it without fretting anything, Muted if you are not playing that string at all, or the specific fret number your finger is on. The tool works out the actual note each fretted string produces (each fret raises the open string's note by one semitone) and checks the resulting set of notes against the same chord dictionary used on every other page of this site.

This is a genuinely useful way to work out a shape you found by trial and error: guitarists often stumble onto a chord voicing that sounds good without knowing its formal name, especially when experimenting with open strings ringing alongside fretted ones. Enter the exact fretting you played, string by string, and let the tool do the interval math instead of guessing from a chord book.

• Strings are listed low to high: E (low), A, D, G, B, E (high)
• Open strings and muted strings are both handled correctly
• The result updates as soon as you change any string
• Play lets you hear the exact notes your fretting produces
• Mute the low E and A strings and leave the top four (D, G, B, E) open for an instant Em7, no fretting needed

Looking up a chord diagram by name

Pick a root note and a chord quality from the two dropdown menus. For chords with a well-known open-position fingering, like C, G, D, E, A and their common minor and seventh variants, the diagram shows exactly that familiar shape. For every other root and quality among the five supported here, Major, Minor, Dominant 7th, Major 7th and Minor 7th, the tool draws a movable barre chord shape instead: the same finger pattern as an open E or A chord, shifted up the neck by however many frets are needed to land on the root you picked. This is standard guitar technique, not a shortcut: barre chords built this way are exactly how guitarists play the same chord quality in every key using only two memorized hand shapes.

Below the diagram, the tool also lists the exact notes that shape produces and gives you a Play button to hear them, useful for confirming a diagram sounds like the chord you had in mind before you commit it to memory.

Reading a fretboard diagram

The six vertical lines represent the six strings, in the same low-to-high order as the string selector above. Horizontal lines represent frets, with a thicker top line marking the guitar's nut (the very top of the neck) when a diagram starts at an open position. A filled dot on a string shows exactly which fret to press for that string, with a small number inside it when a specific finger is recommended (1 for index finger, up through 4 for pinky). A letter O above a string means play it open, with no finger pressing anything; a letter X means do not play that string at all, either by avoiding it with your picking hand or muting it lightly with a spare finger.

When a diagram does not start at the very top of the neck, a small label like "3fr" appears to the left of the top fret line, telling you which actual fret that top line represents, since barre chord shapes are frequently played several frets up the neck rather than at the open position.

Guitar chords and piano chords: the same notes, different fingerings

A C major chord is C, E and G whether it is played on a guitar, a piano, or any other instrument entirely: a chord's name and identity come from which notes are present, not from how those notes happen to be arranged under your fingers on a particular instrument. What differs between instruments is purely the fingering, the guitar's fretboard layout naturally groups notes differently than a piano's keyboard does, which is why the same C major chord looks like a completely different shape on each.

This means the piano to guitar conversion question really has a simple answer: work out the notes of the chord (using this site's piano chord finder or plain chord finder, whichever you already have handy), then look up that same root and quality here to get a playable guitar shape for it. The reverse works identically: figure out a guitar shape's notes with the identify-a-chord tool above, then those same notes will identify correctly on the piano chord finder too, since underneath, both tools are checking the same set of notes against the same dictionary.

Work out the notes on the piano chord finder first if that is the instrument you have handy, or start from a chord name on the reverse chord finder and bring the result back here.