Free guitar chord identifier in five tunings
A guitar chord identifier names the chord you hold from its frets. Mark the strings you know and you get the chords that shape can be, the likeliest first. X 3 2 0 1 0, low E first with X for a muted string, is C; with the low E open it is C/E, C with E in the bass.
Click the frets you hold. TabTunix names the chord.
Chord
Why one chord shape has several names
A guitar chord namer, or reverse chord finder, goes from a shape to its name. A shape is named by its notes, not by your fingers, and the same notes can be more than one chord. So “what chord is this?” can have more than one right answer: X 0 2 0 1 0 is Am7, C6/A and C/A.
All of them are right. The song decides which one you write: the note in the bass and the chords around it. 3 0 2 2 1 0 is Am/G when the bass steps down from Am, though the list starts with C6/G. The list can't know your song, so it goes by the shape: first a chord with its root lowest, then a chord over one of its own notes, then one over another bass note, the simpler chord first within each.
How to identify a guitar chord by hand
To figure out what chord you're playing, find its notes, then the root they stack on. Take X 3 2 0 1 0:
- Name the note of each string that sounds, the open note plus the fret: the A string at fret 3 is C. Here that gives C E G C E; a chart of the guitar fretboard notes has every fret.
- Write each note once: C, E and G.
- Find the root, the note the others stack on in thirds. It is usually the lowest note, but not always: if the notes don't stack from there, try the next one.
- Read the type from the intervals over the root. A major third and a fifth make a major chord; the chord types list the rest.
- If the lowest note is not the root, add it after a slash. With the low E open too, this shape is C/E, said “C over E”: an inversion of C, written as a slash chord.
| String | Fret | Note |
|---|---|---|
| A | 3 | C |
| D | 2 | E |
| G | Open | G |
| B | 1 | C |
| E | Open | E |
When no chord fits
The identifier knows the 504 chords of TabTunix's library: 42 types on each of the 12 roots, from power chords to 13ths. If your notes match none of them, you get the nearest: a chord one note short, or one string off, which often means a fret held one too far. Some shapes get no name at all.
X 3 2 X 1 X sounds only C and E, so you get C under “Close” with “add G”, the note it lacks. The fifth is the note a chord loses most easily, so you can still call it C.
Chords in Drop D, Drop C, Drop B and DADGAD
The same frets are other notes in another tuning, so the name changes with it. 5 5 5 X X X, one finger across the three low strings, is G5 in Drop D; in Standard A7sus4 is among its names. Drop C and Drop B are Drop D tuned lower, so there the same frets are F5 and E5. Choose from five guitar tunings before you mark a shape, or switch afterward to compare it across them.
Other ways to play the chord you found
Under guitar chords you find the chord's other shapes up the neck, in your tuning, and the chords of its key show what goes with it. In TabTunix, put it into a progression and jam over it on a loop.
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