In Chord Finder, pick a root and a type. You get the guitar or piano diagram, the notes and the intervals. Press ▶ Play to hear it.
In Song Chart, type lyrics with chords in brackets, like [G]Happy [D]birth[Em]day. A diagram for every chord appears under the chart.
Use Transpose − and + to move every chord, or switch Display to Nashville or Roman numbers.
In Progression Player, type or pick a progression, set the tempo and beats per chord, and press ▶ Play loop.
🖨 Print gives a clean sheet (or a PDF). Copy share link puts the whole chart in a link for your band.
Any of the 12 roots with any type. Guitar shows a common open shape where there is one, otherwise a movable E- or A-shape barre. Types with no standard guitar shape show the piano diagram instead.
Guitar diagrams are drawn right-handed, as in songbooks. Piano diagrams show two octaves with the chord notes lit and named, and the root in its own colour.
Chords sit above the syllable where they change, and the chart updates as you type. Click any chord in the chart or any diagram under it to hear it.
[C]word# Verse[C/G]The chart guesses the major key from the chords you used. Pick a different key under Number against if the guess is off.
Type chords separated by spaces and they loop hands-free. The current chord lights up and its diagram shows below.
Play a shape you found by ear, click the same notes here, and it tells you what the chord is called.
This chord chart generator is a free, browser-based tool for looking up chords and building song charts. The chord finder draws a guitar chord diagram or a piano chord for any root and type, from major and minor through 7th, maj7, m7, 6, sus2, sus4, diminished, augmented, add9 and 9th chords, and plays it so you can check it by ear. The song chart maker turns lyrics with chords into a clean, printable chart with a diagram for every chord in the song. There is also a chord progression player for practising changes and a reverse chord lookup that names a chord from the notes you click. No account, no download and no plugin.
A chord chart is either a single chord diagram (which strings and frets, or which keys) or a whole song sheet with the chords written above the lyrics. This page makes both. Look up any chord to get its guitar and piano diagram and hear it, then switch to the song chart to write lyrics with chords in square brackets, transpose the whole song to another key or capo position, and print it or share it as a link. Teachers use it for handouts, bands for set lists in the singer's key, and beginners to see where each finger goes.
Type your lyrics and put each chord in square brackets at the exact point where the change happens: [C]Twinkle twinkle [F]little [C]star. The chart puts the chord above the syllable it belongs to, which is what makes it readable at speed on a music stand. This is the ChordPro way of writing chords, the plain-text format used for shared song files for decades, so a bracketed chart pasted from elsewhere generally renders straight away. Charts that put the chords on a separate line above the lyrics do not carry exact positions, so those need the brackets adding by hand.
# Verse, # Chorus or # Bridge and it becomes a heading. Clear section labels are what turn a wall of lyrics into something a band can follow mid-song.The six vertical lines are the strings, low E on the left to high E on the right. The horizontal lines are the frets, and the thick line at the top is the nut. A dot shows where to press. Above the grid, a circle means play that string open and an × means do not play it. When a shape sits higher up the neck, a number like 5fr beside the top row tells you which fret the diagram starts on. A rounded bar across several strings is a barre: one finger, almost always the index, pressing all of them at once.
The same chord can be played in many places on the neck, because the same three or four notes appear all over the fretboard. An open C and a barre C at the third fret hold the same notes in a different order and register. When you have a choice, take the shape nearest to your previous chord: play the change, not the chord. The diagrams follow the right-handed songbook convention. Left-handed players mirror them, and the note names and theory stay the same.
If a chord sounds wrong, the shape is usually right and the execution is not. Check that no finger is muting a neighbouring string, press just behind the fret rather than on it, and do not strike the strings marked ×. If it still sounds sour, tune up. If a shape feels impossible for your hand, try a voicing higher or lower on the neck, play only the top four strings or use a partial barre. A simpler chord in time beats a perfect chord played late.
The lit keys are the notes you press, drawn on a two-octave keyboard so you can see the shape of the chord, with the root marked in its own colour. Play them together with any comfortable fingering. On piano the notes matter far more than which finger lands where, at least until you move quickly between chords.
Most people transpose chords for a voice: if the chorus sits just above a singer's range, moving the whole song down two or three semitones fixes it. The other reason is playability, as the same song is far kinder to a guitarist in E than in E♭. Here, the Transpose control moves every chord in the chart one semitone per click, including slash-chord bass notes. Twelve semitones is an octave, so +2 is a whole tone up and −3 a minor third down. The Chord Finder and the Progression Player have their own transpose controls.
The chart writes black-key notes as sharps (C#, F#, G#). A♭ and G♯ are the same pitch spelled two ways: flat keys like E♭ major would write A♭, sharp keys like E major write G♯.
The key shown above the chart is a guess at the major key, made from the chords you used. It is right most of the time for ordinary pop and folk songs. Songs that borrow chords from other keys, change key or end somewhere unexpected can fool it, so treat it as a strong hint and use Number against to set the key yourself.
There is no capo setting because transposing does the same job. A capo at fret n raises everything by n semitones. If a song is in B♭ and you want to play open G shapes, transpose the chart by −3 and put the capo on the third fret: you read G shapes, the audience hears B♭. On guitar the easiest keys are G, C, D, A and E because their chords use open strings. On piano, C is the easiest start, but keys with a few black notes, like F, B♭ and E♭, often sit more comfortably under the hand later on.
The Nashville number system writes a song in numbers instead of letters: each chord is numbered by its position in the key, so I–V–vi–IV is C–G–Am–F in C and G–D–Em–C in G. Session players use it because the chart survives a last-minute key change. Roman numerals are the same idea from classical theory, with the case showing the quality (I, V, vi, IV) where Nashville adds a suffix (1, 5, 6m, 4). Switch Display between Names, Nashville and Roman on the Song Chart tab.
The Progression Player loops a sequence at a tempo you set, which is the quickest way to make a change automatic. Start slower than feels satisfying, at a tempo where every change is clean and on time, and raise it a few BPM only when that feels easy. Practising at a speed where you fumble teaches the fumble. Turn on the metronome for anything you will play with other people: a change that lands half a beat late stands out in a band far more than a slightly wrong voicing.
Four progressions cover a huge amount of music: I–V–vi–IV (C–G–Am–F), the fifties I–vi–IV–V, jazz's ii–V–I (Dm7–G7–Cmaj7) and the 12-bar blues on I, IV and V. All four are presets, and learning them as numbers means they work in any key.
To change chords faster, practise the transition rather than the chords: two chords, four beats each, at a tempo where nothing breaks. Look for a finger that stays put between them and pivot around it; between C and Am two fingers never move. Lift and land the moving fingers together. For barre chords, keep the thumb behind the neck, roll the index finger slightly onto its bony side and press just behind the fret. Buzzing is usually position, not strength, and F is easier as a partial barre on the top four strings while you build up to the full shape.
Found a shape by ear but do not know its name? Click the same frets on the guitar neck or the same keys on the piano and the reverse chord lookup lists the chords those notes make. It is faster than hunting through a chord book, and handy for naming the odd chord in a song you can already play. Click a result to open it in the Chord Finder.
Copy share link packs the chart, its title, the transpose setting and the diagram instrument into the link itself, so anyone who opens it sees the song exactly as you left it, with nothing to sign up for. The page does not save your chart by itself, so for anything you want to keep, copy the share link or print it. Paper also beats passing a phone around at rehearsal: it does not lock its screen mid-song.
Chord lookup, transposing, chart drawing and sound all happen in your browser. Your lyrics and chords are not uploaded, and the share link carries the chart in the URL rather than in a database. Once the page has loaded it keeps working without a connection, so you can open it at home and use it in a rehearsal room with no signal. It works in current browsers on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, and the layout fits small screens.
The sound is a simple synthesised tone made with the Web Audio API, strummed for guitar and played together for piano. It is there to confirm you have the right chord, not to sound like a real instrument. If you hear nothing, click somewhere on the page first (browsers block sound until you interact), check that the tab is not muted, and on an iPhone check the ring/silent switch, because silent mode mutes web audio.
Tune up with the guitar tuner, keep time with the metronome or try chords on the virtual piano. Paste your chart into the chord backing track maker for a full band to play along with, or jam four chords with a beat on the chord pad with drums. Missing an instrument, like ukulele or mandolin, or an alternate tuning? Send a message on X. Browse all music tools or all free browser tools.