6. Getting the Most Out of the Chord Finder
The Chord Dictionary answers "how do I play this chord?" The Chord Finder answers the opposite question: "what is this thing I am holding?" You mark the notes on the fretboard and it names the chord.
Using it
- Tap a fret to place a note on that string. Tap it again to remove it.
- Tap the O or X above a string to switch that string between ringing open and being muted.
- Play sounds back exactly what you have marked, which is the fastest way to check you entered the shape you meant.
- Show Notes names every note on the whole neck, so you can see what else you could have reached.
- Example loads a familiar chord, and Reset Frets clears the board.
On a phone held upright the board runs vertically and you drag it to move up the neck, with the open-string row pinned at the top so it stays reachable wherever you are. Turn the phone sideways and you get the whole neck at once. Either way, the answer appears on its own screen so the fretboard gets the full height of the display.
How it decides
The tool collects the notes you marked, works out which one is lowest in pitch, and compares the set against every chord formula it knows. Two things then break ties.
The bass note matters. A match where your lowest note is also the chord's root scores higher, because that is how chords are voiced most of the time. When the lowest note is not the root, the answer comes back as a slash chord ā you will see C/E rather than just C.
Duplicates do not. Three C's and one E is still a C-and-E chord. What the tool weighs is which note names are present, not how many times each appears.
If nothing matches cleanly it says so rather than forcing a guess, which is what you want from a lookup tool. A set of notes that is genuinely ambiguous should look ambiguous.
Why one shape can have several names
This is not the tool being indecisive ā it is how harmony works.
Diminished 7ths and augmented triads are symmetrical. Every note in Cdim7 sits three frets from the next, so the same four notes spell Cdim7, Ebdim7, Gbdim7, and Adim7. Augmented chords do the same with three names. Whichever one the tool shows is correct; which is right depends on the key you are in.
Adding a bass note renames the chord. CāEāGāA is C6. Play the same notes with A on the bottom and it is Am7. Identical notes, different chord, decided entirely by what is underneath.
This is why the finder shows the notes it detected alongside the name. The name is an interpretation; the notes are the fact.
What it is good for
- Naming something you found by ear. You stumbled onto a shape you like ā now you can look up how it fits with what you are playing.
- Checking a tab. Online tabs contain typos constantly. Enter the shape and see whether the name matches what the chart claims.
- Understanding a voicing. Enter a chord you already play and see how it is spelled. Finding out your usual "G" is really G6 explains a lot about why it sits well in some songs and badly in others.
One limitation
The finder assumes standard EADGBE tuning, because it has no way to know otherwise. In Drop D, DADGAD, or half a step down, the notes it reports will be wrong by whatever your tuning changed. Tune to standard before using it, or mentally transpose the answer.