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Chords
Build a chord and see it written, or hold notes on the keyboard and find out what you are playing.
C
C · E · G
C
In C major, this is I.
About this tool
This works in both directions. Choose a root and a quality to see the chord written out and hear it, or press notes on the keyboard and have the chord named back to you — useful when your hands found something your ears liked and you have no idea what it was.
Naming is not always a single answer. The same three notes can be a first-inversion chord or a different chord entirely, depending on what the bass is doing, and where that happens you are told so rather than given a confident guess.
How to use it
- Pick a root and a quality to build a chord.
- Or press notes on the keyboard to have one identified.
- Read it on the staff and play it back.
Questions
- Can it identify a chord from notes I play?
- Yes. Hold the notes on the on-screen keyboard, or play them on a connected MIDI instrument, and the name appears.
- Which chord types are covered?
- Triads and sevenths — major, minor, diminished, augmented, dominant, half-diminished — with their inversions.
- Why is my chord given two possible names?
- Because it genuinely has two. A diminished seventh chord, for instance, sounds the same from any of its four notes, and only the surrounding music decides which one is the root.