Guitar chord finder

How to use

• Pick a root (any of the twelve chromatic pitches) and a quality (major, minor, 7, maj7, m7, sus, dim, aug, and more).
• The page shows the chord name, the ordered chord tones with scale degrees, and one or more fretboard diagrams.
• The CAGED label on each diagram tells you which open-string shape the voicing is derived from.
• Press Play on a diagram to strum the voicing and hear what it sounds like before you commit it to muscle memory.

What a chord actually is

A chord is a stack of pitches that you choose to sound together, and the names guitarists use — C, Am, G7, Fmaj7 — are shorthand for a specific recipe of scale degrees built on a root. A plain major triad is the root, major third, and perfect fifth (degrees 1–3–5). Make the third minor and you have a minor triad (1–♭3–5). Add the flattened seventh and you get a dominant seventh (1–3–5–♭7), the sound that pulls so strongly toward resolution in blues and jazz. Keep the seventh major instead and the chord turns lush and unresolved — that is the maj7 color. Once you read chords as degree formulas rather than memorized dots, every new chord name becomes something you can spell on the spot, in any key, without a chart.

The chord finder spells those degrees for you and then shows you where they live on the neck. That second step matters on guitar more than on almost any other instrument, because the same six notes can be fingered in a dozen places, and the shape you pick changes the voicing, the playability, and the feel.

CAGED, and why the same chord has many shapes

The five labelled diagrams come from the CAGED system — the observation that every chord shape on the guitar is a moveable version of one of the five open chords C, A, G, E, and D. Slide the open E-shape up two frets and you have F♯; slide the open A-shape up three frets and you have C. The chord finder transposes each of these five parent shapes to your chosen root, so you see the full set of practical fingerings rather than a single textbook grip.

Learning the shapes as a connected system, instead of as isolated grips, is what lets you play a chord anywhere on the neck and choose the voicing that sits best under your hand or voice-leads smoothly from the previous chord. It is also the bridge between rhythm playing and lead playing: the CAGED boxes that hold your chords are the same boxes that hold the scale you solo with over them.

Worked example: spelling and finding C, Am, and G7

Take C major. Root C, major third E, perfect fifth G — three notes, played across the open C-shape and repeated up the neck through the other CAGED positions. Now A minor: root A, minor third C, perfect fifth E. Notice that C and E appear in both chords — that shared tone is exactly why C and Am sound so closely related and move into each other so naturally. Finally G7: root G, major third B, perfect fifth D, flat seventh F. That added F is the tension note; it wants to fall a half step to E, which is the third of C — which is why G7 resolves to C so satisfyingly. Spell those three chords once and you have just analyzed the most common cadence in Western music.

Common questions

• Why are there two names for some chords? Enharmonic equivalents are everywhere — F♯m7♭5 and Am6/F♯ describe the same four notes from different roots. If a chart's name isn't listed, try the enharmonic spelling.
• Which voicing should I play? The one that voice-leads smoothly from your last chord and keeps the melody note on top. Use the diagrams to compare options rather than defaulting to the lowest shape.
• Does this work for barre chords? Yes — the E-shape and A-shape CAGED voicings are exactly the moveable barre chords, shown here transposed to your chosen root.

Tips

• Learn the degrees, not just the shapes. Knowing that the third of C is E and the third of G is B transfers to every key; shape memory does not.
• Play the chord tones as a melody, low to high, before strumming the chord. Hearing the recipe note by note is how the formula stops being abstract.
• Use the guitar chord finder alongside the guitar scale finder to see which chords are diatonic to a key. If you also play piano, the same lookup is available on the piano chord finder.