A chord is any group of notes that can be played together on the fretboard. Chords come in all sorts of shapes and fingering arrangements to fit every musical situation.
Root notes are key when playing chords; knowing them provides an essential base from which to build your vocabulary and understanding of the fretboard.
Root Note
Each structure, including chords, requires a secure foundation. That is why we refer to the first note used in a chord as its root note – this serves as the title and starting point from which subsequent pitches follow in sequence.
Without knowing the concept of root note, guitar chords may sound off or flat when played without their root notes, and this applies equally for inversions and chord voicings. Understanding root notes allows us to create more advanced chords and scales.
Our chord finder displays the root notes and quality of any chord when you select one from the fretboard, as well as showing its circular or X shape representation to indicate when to play or mutes it.
Scale
While chords are of course essential for any guitarist, understanding scales will enable you to create more original and distinctive riffs, songs and solos. Our guitar chords finder allows users to click notes on the fretboard to select which scale they belong to; encouraging experimentation while helping better familiarize yourself with your fretboard.
The tool shows the name of your chosen scale, while also offering options to select various colors for fretboard visualization to help visualize notes more clearly.
Our Guitar Chord Finder searches for chords that contain all the notes found within your selected scale, showing exact matches in an “Exact Match Chords” list, while partial matches appear as partial Match Chords in another line. Our guitar chord Finder recognizes all types of chords including major, minor, augmented and diminished 7th chords (maj7, m7 dim7 m(maj7)m(7)b5) and 9th, eleventh and sixth chords – our tool identifies these types as well.
Inversion
Chord inversions refer to the arrangement of notes within a chord, generally switching up its roots – for instance if playing a C major chord and its lowest note is now E, it still constitutes the original order (C-E-G).
An inversion can serve several purposes. One is to clean up bass sounds so that when chords are held for extended periods of time they don’t sound “muddy”. Another benefit is to add variety by shifting root notes relative to each other in an arrangement.
Sometimes when improvising, you may come across an unexpected chord shape but are unaware of its name. With this tool you’ll be able to discover both their names and contents; your knowledge of intervals will allow you to remember these shapes more quickly as your musical knowledge expands, helping you understand better which chords you’re playing.
Voicing
A voicing is the secondary version of a chord, each one producing its own distinct sound and fretboard presence. A 2nd inversion of Dmaj7 chord for instance will have an entirely different feel to it than its initial form.
Clicking a fret number button brings up all possible chord voicings for that fret position, while using the lookup button you can identify what name a certain chord goes by and how to play it on your fretboard.
Playing and experimenting with chords is the best way to gain knowledge about them, gaining a feel for how they sound in various contexts and developing an understanding of how they work, what makes them feel good or bad and how you can personalise them to suit yourself and your songs. Over time you’ll gain a greater sense of how fingerings of a chord affect guitar songs as you learn more of them.