The Tools
Chord Finder & Identifier — Find Any Chord from Notes or Frets
Click the keys you are playing or build the shape you are holding on the fretboard. We name the chord instantly — with every alternate reading, the inversion you are in, audio playback, and links straight to the guitar, piano, ukulele, bass, mandolin and banjo versions of it.
Click the notes you are playing
Click a key to add or remove a note. With the keyboard: ← → move between keys, Enter or Space toggles the key under focus.
Matches
Pick at least two notes on the keyboard and every chord they spell appears here — best match first, with links to the full chord page.
Two ways in: keys or frets
A chord is a set of pitches, so it does not matter how you enter them. Piano players think in keys; guitarists think in shapes. Both tabs feed the same identification engine.
- Piano keys — click any white or black key across two octaves. The octave matters: the lowest key you click is treated as the bass, which is how the tool tells C major from C/E.
- Guitar frets — set each string to muted, open, or a fret up to the 12th. The note each string sounds is drawn on the board as you build, so the fretboard doubles as a note-finder.
What the results tell you
Every match shows the chord symbol, its full name, the chord tones with their scale degrees, and a play button that sounds the chord on the instrument you are working in. The top result also breaks the chord into the intervals that produced it — root, 3rd, 5th, 7th — because that is the part worth learning.
When a match exists in our catalog you get a link to its chord page, plus a direct link to every instrument we have a voicing for. When you land on an inversion — a chord whose bass is not its root — the inversion's own page is linked too.
Good uses for a chord finder
- Naming a shape you invented but cannot identify
- Reverse-engineering a progression from a recording, one chord at a time
- Exploring extensions: build a triad, then add the 7th, 9th or 6th and watch the name change
- Settling the argument: is that Am7 or C6? Both — and now you can hear why
Pair it with these
- Chord Identifier— the same engine, framed around the “what chord is this?” question, with the theory behind the answer
- Scale Explorer — find which scales contain the chord you just identified
- Transposer — move a progression containing this chord into a new key
- Circle of Fifths — see which key this chord most naturally lives in
- Chord directory — browse all 360 chords on chords.lol
FAQ
Common questions.
How does the chord finder work?
Pick your input — piano keys or guitar frets — and select the notes you are playing. The tool reduces your selection to its pitch classes, runs chord detection over them, and matches the result against the 360 chords in the chords.lol catalog. The most likely chord appears first; every other valid reading of the same notes appears beneath it.
Can I find a chord from a guitar shape?
Yes. Switch to the Guitar frets tab and build the shape you are holding, string by string. Muted strings, open strings and fretted notes are all supported, and the sounding note of each string is shown on the fretboard as you go. The lowest sounding string is treated as the bass, so inversions and slash chords are named correctly.
Why does it sometimes show several chord names?
Because the same set of notes can spell more than one chord depending on which note you treat as the root. C-E-G-A is C6, but it is also Am7 with C in the bass. Both are correct; the surrounding progression decides which name is right. We rank the reading that matches a real chord in our catalog and sits in root position first.
What does the bass note change?
The lowest note decides the inversion. C-E-G is C major in root position; E-G-C is C/E, the first inversion; G-C-E is C/G, the second inversion. The chord tones are identical — only the voicing changed — so the tool names the chord and then tells you which inversion you are holding.
What if nothing matches?
Either the notes do not form a recognised chord — a cluster of half-steps, for example — or a chord tone is missing. Try removing the most dissonant note, or add the perfect 5th above your lowest note. Two notes alone are usually ambiguous: a root and a 5th is a power chord, but a root and a 3rd could belong to several chords.
Is the chord finder free?
Yes. Every tool on chords.lol runs in your browser, needs no account, and is free to use. Nothing you select is uploaded anywhere.