Guitar Encyclopaedia Chord Finder

[ 1 ] Chord Library

More than 13,500 chords, and every single one of them recorded on a real guitar! Not synthesised, not generated — played, one at a time, and stored as its own audio file. Click a diagram anywhere on this site and that's the actual chord you'll hear.

This huge collection is called the Chord Finder. It's organised into 49 chord families, each shown on its own page, and each of those pages exists for all 17 root names — an incredible 833 pages of chord diagrams!

This chapter will help you find your way around this vast database of chords. If you want quick results, we recommend our Chord Search Engine, which will help you track down exactly the right chords for your progression.

A page of chords

Every page shows one chord family with one root: all the ways of playing, say, E♭dom7 on a guitar, from the nut right up to the top of the neck. A page holds up to 36 diagrams; smaller families show fewer, and an incomplete last row is filled out with empty chord diagrams.

The Root selector lets you jump to another root without leaving the family. The left sidebar (on smaller displays activated by the hamburger icon in the upper left) takes you in the other direction: through the 49 families, grouped as power chords, major, minor, dominant, suspended, diminished and augmented, with the Chord Search Engine right at the top of the list.

F#maj

Root A Ab G# G Gb F# F E Eb D# D Db C# C B Bb A#

Click a diagram to hear the chord or the big O to open the chord Options menu.

The 49 chord families

Every family has its own page for each root. Some are large — 36 ways of playing a plain major chord — and some are small, because there simply aren't many ways to fit a maj13♯11 onto six strings.

That is a total of 1126 chords per root. Multiplied by the twelve pitches of the octave, this results in the 1126 × 12 = 13,512 chords of the Chord Finder library.

The 49 families are shown on 49 × 17 = 833 pages rather than 49 × 12 = 588, because five of the 17 root names are second spellings: A♯ and B♭ are the same pitch, but they appear on different pages because some pitches — the black keys on a piano — can have two names. Identical pitches that are notated differently are said to be enharmonically interchangeable.

Reading a diagram

Every diagram on a page is the same chord, but in a different position or fingering, so the chord name stands once at the top as the page title. Around each grid there are four pieces of information, and they're worth knowing before you start collecting chords.

At fret zero — what happens at the nut: x for a string you don't play, 0 for one you play open.

Inside the grid — the fingers of your fretting hand, numbered 1 to 4 from the index finger, each on the fret and string where it goes.

To the left — the position on the neck, in roman numerals: I = 1st fret, II = 2nd fret, III = 3rd fret, and so on.

Below the grid — the interval each sounding string contributes to the chord: 1 for the root, 3 for the third, 5 for the fifth, and so on. This is the row that turns a shape into a piece of theory you can use — you can see at a glance which interval is in the bass and which is on top.

Marking chords

A marked chord becomes highlighted with a light yellow background, if you click or tap the area right above the diagram. On mouseover, this white zone turns yellow and says highlight. Click it and marking is done. Click it again, and marking is undone.

Which chords you marked will be stored internally in the browser. Whenever you come back to a page with chords you previously marked, the highlights will still be visible.

Marking is essential for applying actions to these chords, e.g. showing only marked chords and excluding others, sending them to your favorites list, or for anything else in the Options menu described next.

Marked diagrams highlighted with a light yellow background. To remove or toggle the background, click the area above the grid.

The bass drone

At the bottom of every chord page, in the gray section, sits a small audio player. It holds a recorded bass note — the root of the chords on that page — that loops continuously for as long as you want it.

A drone underneath gives your ear something to measure against. Play a chord over it and you hear what that chord actually does against its root, instead of hearing it float free. Two kinds of chord benefit most: complex ones, where a stack of extensions can obscure where the harmony is anchored, and chords whose lowest note isn't the root at all — an inversion sounds quite different once the real root is sounding underneath it.

Press Enter and the drone loads and starts playing, wherever you happen to be on the page — you don't have to scroll down to reach the player. Or press Audio in the player itself; either way it's only fetched when you ask for it.

Once it's running:

• Play starts it, and it keeps looping
• Loop switches looping off and on
• Stop ends it
• VOL sets how loud it sits in comparison to the sound of the chord diagrams, and your setting is remembered for next time.

From the keyboard: Enter to load Audio, P to play, S to stop, L to loop.

The Options menu

Click the big O at the upper right of the page to open the Options menu. It can be dragged wherever it's convenient, and on a small screen its sections fold away — tap a heading to open one.

Chord Options

Decides which diagrams you see, and how:

• show all diagrams — the whole page
• show marked ones only — just the ones you've marked
• hide marked ones — the opposite
• display diagrams at first position — redraws every shape at the lowest position it can be played without open strings, so you can compare the fingerings themselves rather than where they sit
• toggle highlight — switches the yellow marking on or off without changing which chords are marked

Once you've marked a chord or changed the sorting, a new set of links appears:

• share link opens the browser's inbuilt sharing mechanism. You can share a chord page by e-mail, on social media platforms or in your note pad — the entire marking, sorting and display choices will be included in the shared link
• copy link appears only if a browser has no inbuilt sharing mechanism. In this case, the link will be copied to your clipboard and you can paste it wherever you like
• reset puts the page back to its standard layout: nothing marked, default order, all diagrams shown. Only the current page is affected; chords you've marked elsewhere stay as they are

Chord Sorting

These options define in which order the diagrams will be displayed on the page.

• sort by default — the order the page starts in
• sort by roman numeral — up the neck, from the nut
• sort by bass string — by the lowest string used
• sort by treble string — by the highest

Chord Marking

For marking a group of chords rather than one at a time, consider these options:

• mark chords with a certain interval in the treble string
• mark chords with a certain interval in the bass string
• mark chords within a certain position on the neck, ranges such as 4-7, 9 are also possible
• select all, deselect and invert the selection

If you use one of these commands with nothing marked, the page says so: Error: no diagrams marked. Click above the diagram to highlight it.

Favorites List

This section shows you the shortcuts if you like to add marked chords to your favorites list.

• Add marked chords to favorites [ F ] — sends the marked chords to your active list, and confirms with Marked chords added to favorites. Can be used repeatedly on several pages before you move on to the following command…
• View favorites [ V ] — opens the favorites list showing the chords you marked and added to the list

For more on the favorites list, see Chord Favorites.

[ 2 ] Chord Search Engine

More than 13,500 chords are waiting in our huge library, divided into 49 chord families, each one ready to be displayed on an individual page showing them with 17 different root names. Hmmm, wait a minute — that makes 49 × 17 = 833 pages of chords in the library!

To overcome the next-to-impossible task of finding the right chord among that many pages, the Chord Search Engine (⌘2 / Ctrl+2 within a favorites list) helps you find the few that fit exactly what you're looking for.

You describe the chord you're imagining — a root, a family, a place on the neck, a note you want on top or in the bass — and the search engine builds a page of every chord fingering (aka voicing) that matches, ready to play. Roots and chord families that live on entirely different pages of the dictionary appear side by side, so you can listen through them and mark the ones you want as favorites.

Despite everything the Chord Search Engine can do, it stays a playful thing. Set a filter, watch the counter narrow down to your essential set, and refine your settings just by clicking a tick box. Exploring the library finally becomes something you'll enjoy to the fullest.

The Chord Search Engine lives on its own page. It's the first link in the Chord Finder sidebar, above the list of all 49 chord families, so it's one click away from any chord page. You can also load it from the Tools menu (T-key) while you're working on your favorites.

The counter

Everything here revolves around one number, it's the counter at the top of the dialog:

Chord Search Engine — Found: 13,512 chords

That's the whole library, before you've narrowed anything. Every filter you touch updates it immediately, so you always know how close you are before asking to see any chord diagrams.

The filters

The filters run from the broad to the very specific. Root Note and Chord Category are already open when the dialog appears; the remaining filters are folded until you click a filter name to open it. You can use as few or as many as you like — each one simply narrows what's left.

Root Note

Defines the roots of the chords to be shown, in three rows: naturals, sharps, flats. Click a row's name to take that whole row at once, or All / None to select all or nothing.

Choosing several roots is what makes this more than a dictionary lookup: pick A, D and E and you get every chord fingering of all three, on one page, in one go.

Chord Category

Defines which chord families to include, grouped into sixteen combined categories, from Power and Major through Extended Minor, Altered Dominant, Suspended, Diminished and Augmented. The figure in brackets after each one is how many chord families it covers — Altered Dominant holds nine.

When you mouse over any of these categories, you'll see exactly which families it contains. For further refinement, you can select single families later on the display page — see Refining the search below.

Like the roots, the categories combine freely. Major and Minor together, or every altered category at once — whatever you want to hear side by side.

Position

Defines the position on the guitar neck in which chords should be shown: Open, or 1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16, or All. In the last text input field you can specify your own range using position numbers like 0,3,7-9,10-13,16.

Open can be combined with 1-4, since open chords live down there too; choose a higher band and it clears itself.

Absolute Top Note and Absolute Bass Note

Sets a note from the chromatic scale of 17 note names, for when you need the chord fingering to include a particular pitch on the top or bass string. Useful for a melody line sitting on top of a progression, or a bass line walking underneath it.

Fun fact: define a top note and even the most outrageous combinations of families, roots and positions sound connected, because the top note is the same in every chord.

Top Note Interval and Bass Note Interval

The same idea in relative terms: not the top note is E but the top note is the third. This is the filter that finds the shapes a player thinks in — all the chord fingerings with the ninth on top, every chord with the fifth in the bass.

The intervals on offer follow the families you've chosen. Pick only Major and you won't be offered a ♭7, because no major chord has one.

String Used

Defines the strings the chords are played on, only on strings or not on strings, numbered 6 to 1 from low to high. This is how you find the chords that leave your bass strings free, or the four-string shapes that sit in the middle of the neck.

Displaying the results

Three buttons sit at the bottom of the dialog. Click Display and the chord diagrams you've found will be shown. But it will only work if the count is less than 500 chords. Above that the button greys out, and Too many search results. Please add more filters. appears below the filters. If nothing matches at all, the button disappears and the message reads 0 chords found with your settings. Try changing filters.

Reset clears every filter and puts the counter back to the full library.

Close closes the Chord Search Engine.

Refining the search

Press Display and the filters collapse into a summary line with a light blue background showing the criteria you used incl. the command Edit to go back to them.

The chord families in the summary line are clickable. If your search returned chord fingerings from a category containing several families, clicking one shows only that family's chords, and all brings the rest back. It's a fast way to work through a wide search without running it again.

In the following example, we searched for chords with the roots A, D, or E from the major and minor families in the open postion up to fret IV selecting only chords with an A in the bass and top note. Here are the results:

Keeping what you find

Click a chord's name to mark it — Click chord names to highlight is the reminder to the right of the results. Marked chords are shown highlighted, the same as on the favorites page.

Once anything is marked, Add to Favorites appears. The button has an arrow beside it with three choices:

• Add to current list — the list you're working in
• Add to other list — pick from your existing lists; the page switches to it
• Create new list — name it, and the marked chords start it off

Chords you add are merged into the list, so nothing already there is disturbed.

Shortcuts available

Key	Function
F	Add the marked chords to the current list
Enter	Show the results, or — once chords are marked — add them and close
V or Esc	Close the Chord Search Engine and view your current list

The full list is in Keyboard Shortcuts.

Where your filters go

Your filter settings are remembered between sessions, so the search you were refining last week is still set up when you come back. Reset clears them.

Marked chords aren't kept: each new search starts with nothing marked, because the results are different chords.

[ 3 ] Chord Favorites

Your favorites list is the workspace for playing, arranging and experimenting with the chords you've collected in the Chord Finder. Click a diagram to hear the chord; click its name above the diagram to mark it.

The list selector above the looper switches between List from Link, Personal List and further lists of your own. Each list keeps its own chords, takes and songs. For creating, copying and organizing further lists, see the List Manager.

Getting chords into a list

There are two ways to fill a list: mark chords on a page of the Chord Finder, or search for them in the Chord Search Engine.

From a chord page

Mark the diagrams you want — the marked ones are shown highlighted — then add them with either of these, which do the same thing:

• Press the F-key (F for Favorites).
• Open the Options menu and click Add marked chords to favorites [ F ] under Favorites. To make the menu visible, click the big O at the upper right of the page. The menu can be dragged wherever you want it, and on a small screen its sections fold away — tap a heading to open one.

Either way, the marked chords are added to your currently active list straight away, and Marked chords added to favorites confirms it. You don't have to be looking at the list — you can carry on browsing and collect chords from as many pages as you like before you ever open it.

When you want to see what you've gathered, press the V-key (V for View), or click View favorites [ V ] under Favorites in the Options menu. Your active list opens with everything in it: the chords that were already there and the ones you've just added.

From the Chord Search Engine

The Chord Search Engine looks through the whole library for chords matching what you describe, and adds the ones you pick straight to your active list. It has its own page, and it's also in the Tools (T-key) menu of the favorites page. See Chord Search Engine.

From a shared link

List from Link fills whenever you open a list somebody sent you, so a shared list never touches the chords you collected yourself.

Playing and marking chords

Click or tap a chord diagram to hear it. To mark a chord instead, click or tap its name above the diagram. A marked chord is shown highlighted in light yellow, and another click on the name removes the marking.

Marking is useful whenever you want to work with a group of chords: you can show only the marked ones, hide or delete them, or select whole groups by position or interval.

Click the big O at the upper right of the page to open the Options menu, where these controls live. It can be dragged wherever it's convenient, and on a small screen its sections fold away — tap a heading to open one.

Showing and hiding chords

Under Chord Options you decide which diagrams are visible:

• show all diagrams — displays the complete list
• show marked ones only — leaves only your marked chords on screen
• hide marked ones — does the opposite
• delete marked ones (Backspace) — removes the marked chords from the list
• toggle highlight — switches the yellow marking on or off without changing which chords are marked

Deleting doesn't have to be final. Use undo delete (Z-key) to bring deleted chords back.

This makes marking handy for more than deleting. Mark a few chords, show only those, and you have a temporary mini-list to play with without changing the actual contents of your favorites.

Putting the chords in order

Open Chord Sorting to arrange the diagrams in different ways:

• sort by root — the default order, grouped by the root of each chord
• sort by roman numeral — groups the diagrams by their position on the neck
• sort by bass string — orders them by the lowest string used
• sort by treble string — orders them by the highest string used
• drag manually to new position — puts the order in your hands

For manual sorting, simply drag a diagram to where you want it. The other diagrams move out of the way and the new order is kept with the list. You don't have to select manual sorting first: as soon as you move a chord to another position, the page switches to it for you.

Marking groups of chords

One chord at a time is fine for a small selection. Chord Marking gives you faster ways to work with a whole list.

select all marks every chord, deselect removes all markings, and invert swaps the selection: marked chords become unmarked and unmarked chords become marked.

For a particular area of the fretboard, use position on the neck. Enter a position or a range — such as 4-7, 9 — and the matching diagrams are marked together. This is useful when you want only the chord fingerings around one part of the neck rather than the same chord scattered from open position to the upper frets. The range can cover positions I to XVI.

Below that you'll find the intervals that actually occur in your current list. Choose one in treble to mark every chord with that interval as its highest note, or one in bass for the lowest note. Choose the same interval again to clear the selection.

This can reveal combinations that are hard to spot by eye: all chord fingerings with the 3rd on top, for example, or every chord with the root in the bass.

Giving your list a title

A favorites list can have its own title and subtitle. In the Options menu, under Favorites, choose Edit the title of this list. Type the title and subtitle you want, and press Enter when you're finished.

The title appears above the list with the subtitle directly underneath. Both stay with the list and travel with it when you share.

A title like Campfire Classics and a subtitle like arranged by Tina & Thomas makes a shared list a little more personal than a row of anonymous chord diagrams.

Starting over

Individual chord deletions can be reversed with undo delete (Z-key).

To empty the whole list, go to Favorites List in the Options menu and choose Delete this favorites list?. You'll be asked to confirm first. Everything in that list goes — chords, takes, songs, title and subtitle.

What happens next depends on the list. Personal List and List from Link stay where they are, empty and ready to use again. One of your own lists is removed altogether, and you're switched to Personal List.

For creating, copying, renaming and deleting lists in one place, use the List Manager (⌘3 / Ctrl+3).

Sharing what you've made

The favorites page remembers much more than the chords themselves. Your selection, display and sorting choices, manual chord order, title and subtitle all travel with the page.

Use the link share list or click the share icon to the right of the page title to create a link to your current list. Someone opening that link receives the arrangement in their List from Link, leaving their own Personal List untouched.

That separation is deliberate: a progression sent by a friend can be explored, played and edited without replacing the chords they've collected themselves. Shortlinks Generator covers sharing in full.

For moving your own work between browsers or devices, use Backup & Restore instead.

Where to go next

A collection of chords becomes far more useful once you can play it as a progression. The Chord Looper lets you click the diagrams in your own rhythm, capture the performance as a take and loop it immediately.

That's the Chord Looper.

[ 4 ] Chord Looper

The Chord Looper records you playing chords from your list in your own timing and plays them back as often as you like. Press record, click your chords, press play, and the progression will play as a loop that you can slow down, save and share.

Everything below assumes you have a list of favorite chords on screen. If you don't yet, start with Chord Favorites.

Recording a progression

Press Rec (R-key). A reddish border around the interface appears and the app starts listening.

Now click your chords in the rhythm you want them. Each click sounds the chord and records the moment you clicked it — so the timing is yours, not a fixed grid.

Press Play (P-key) or Stop (S-key) when you're done recording.

Your clicks appear as chord names in the timeline, the strip that runs under the buttons, each separated from the next by a small vertical line. You can leave the timing exactly as you played it, or adjust it later.

The keyboard shortcuts (press i-key for a complete list) also work when the recorder interface is out of sight — useful when a long list of chords has scrolled it off the screen.

Playing it back

Press Play (P-key). When the timeline runs, all chords contained in the recording are marked with a light red background, while the chord currently playing gets a drop shadow — so you can easily see the current playing position.

Two controls sit next to the buttons:

Speed slows the whole progression down or speeds it up, from half speed to double. A song is the exception: there the control belongs to the part that's playing, and each part keeps its own speed (see Song Creation). Drag the slider for fine control, or use the dropdown next to it for the common steps. Slowing a chord change down is a good way to learn a difficult passage.

Loop repeats the progression until you press Stop (S-key). It's on by default — that's what makes this a looper rather than a player. Turn it off if you want a single pass.

The ⓘ symbol at the upper right of the timeline shows the name of what's currently loaded on mouseover. Click the symbol (i-key) to open the full list of keyboard shortcuts.

Adjusting the timing

Recording by hand means human timing, and human timing is sometimes slightly off. You don't have to record it again.

Click any chord name in the timeline. The Edit Timing window opens, showing that chord and the time it starts, in milliseconds. Change the value and the timing updates immediately — even while the take is looping, so you can hear the correction as you make it. The first chord starts at 0 and can't be edited.

The small double line at the end of the timeline can be clicked and edited too. It marks where the progression finishes — useful when you stopped a moment late and the loop feels like it hangs.

A chord can't be moved earlier than the chord before it, or later than the chord after it. The range shown in the editor tells you how much room you have.

Saving and loading takes

A recorded progression is called a take. Until you save it, it exists only in memory and isn't stored in the takes library yet.

Press Save (⌘S / Ctrl+S). The Save chord progression dialog proposes a name that includes the chords you played, written between the first and last | marks. That part is locked — it's what lets you recognize a take by its chords later. Add your own words before it, after it, or both. Here we added a number before and a description after the locked chords area.

1. | A | E | F#m | D | Verse, slow

Something you'll recognize a month from now beats Take 3. If you use a name that already exists, the app asks whether you want to replace the earlier one.

Press Load (L-key) to open the Takes Manager. The title bar displays Stored Takes and a number of sorting options. Then a list of your takes for the current list, with the date each was recorded and how many chords it contains shows up. From here you can:

• Load a take back into the looper
• Rename it
• Delete it

You can also change the order of the list — newest first, oldest first, or alphabetically — using the sort control at the top. Handy once you have a few of them.

Takes belong to the list they were recorded in. Switch to another list and you'll see that list's takes, not the previous ones. This keeps a jazz project and a campfire project from mixing.

Saved takes are the raw material for a song: the Song Creation tool (⌘2 / Ctrl+2) arranges several of them into a full arrangement with verses, choruses and repeats. That's covered in Song Creation.

[ 5 ] Shortlinks Generator

You've built a list, recorded a progression, arranged it into a song. Now you want to send it to someone.

The URL address of a favorites page carries a lot of parameters in it, which makes it far too long to paste into a message. The Shortlinks Generator turns it into something you can send: a handful of words, pointing at exactly what you made.

A typical shortlink looks like this:

https://www.guitar.ch/en-us/chord-favorites-composition/26y07m17d0/chord-progression-i-vim-iim-v

Your friend clicks it and gets your chords, your order, your title, your takes and your songs — without installing anything, and without an account. They can even edit it and send it back to you with new ideas, which turns working with songwriting partners elsewhere into an easy sharing experience.

Making a link

Every favorites page carries a Share icon, the blue arrow just to the right of the page title. Click it to start. The same functionality is available by means of a text link in the Options menu as share list under Favorites List, and as Share this page in the gray comments section at the bottom of the page.

Always use one of those. Your browser's own share button — the one in the toolbar, or the share sheet on a phone — is not able to include all the necessary data for sharing lists including chords, takes and songs. Only our own Shortlinks Generator builds a link that transports the full list content without loss.

After clicking the share icon or one of the links mentioned above, the Create Share Link dialog appears showing the name of the list to be shared. It asks for the following things to personalize your link:

Enter the name of your link (will appear in URL): — the words that end up at the end of the URL. The tool suggests a text composed from your page title, but you can change it to your liking using up to 50 characters. Below the field, Preview shows what it will look like as you type.

Your email (if not provided, the link will expire after one month): — optional, but if you don't supply your e-mail address, the link will expire soon without notice. See How long a link lives below.

Press Create Link. A moment later, Your link is ready! appears with three buttons:

• Share Now — hands the link to your device's usual sharing: mail, messages, whatever you use
• Copy Link — puts it on the clipboard, to paste wherever you like
• Close — leaves the dialog; the link stays valid either way

If your browser can't share directly, Share Now copies the link to the clipboard instead.

Sharing always covers the whole list, whatever is in it — a single take, or nothing but chords. The one thing that can't be shared is an empty list: you'll get Sharing not possible — There are no chords stored in this list.

What travels inside a shortlink

Everything the page needs to rebuild what you made:

• the chords in the list, in your order
• the title and subtitle you gave it
• your takes, with their timing and speed
• your songs, with their parts and repeats

The recipient doesn't need an account, and nothing of theirs is touched: your list arrives in their List from Link, leaving their own Personal List exactly as it was. They can play it, record over it, take chords from it into their own lists, or share it onward.

How long a link lives

A new link lasts one month.

Every time somebody opens it, the month starts again. So a link that people keep using never expires; only one that nobody has opened for a month disappears.

If you leave your email address, two things arrive from us and nothing else.

When the link is made — Thank you for sharing your chord composition, with your title, the link itself, and a note that every click extends its life by another month.

Before it expires — Reminder: Your chord link expires soon, with the date it would go, and the link. One a week before, one two days before. Clicking your own link is enough to keep it alive.

Your address is used for those two mails only. It's also remembered in your browser, so the field is already filled in next time you share from the same device.

When a link has expired, it doesn't lead to an error page. It takes the visitor to the favorites page of the site it came from, in that language.

[ 6 ] Additional Tools

The recorder bar holds the things you need while playing: record, stop, play, speed, loop. Everything else lives in the Tools menu, one click away and out of the way until you want it.

Open it with the Tools button on the recorder bar, or press T. Each entry shows what the tool does, and clicking one opens it.

What's in the menu

	Tool	What it does	Shortcut
1.	Transposition	Transpose chords and takes up or down	⌘1 / Ctrl+1
2.	Song Creation	Combine takes into a song	⌘2 / Ctrl+2
3.	List Manager	Create and manage favorites lists	⌘3 / Ctrl+3
4.	Chord Search Engine	Search the library of over 13,500 chords	⌘4 / Ctrl+4
5.	Backup & Restore	Export or import playlists, songs, progressions or full backups on your device	⌘5 / Ctrl+5

Each of these loads additional functionality into a favorites list page and its integrated looper. The shortcut opens the tool directly, from anywhere on the page, and pressing it again closes the tool.

Only one tool is open at a time: opening a second one closes the first.

Still to come

Three more entries sit in the menu, grayed out and marked coming soon:

• Generate chord list — build a list from degrees, such as I-IV-V, rather than picking each chord yourself
• Bass Track — record a bass line under your progression
• Melody Track — record a melody over it

They're listed so you can see what's up for the future. Until they're ready, they can't be opened.

Chord Search Engine is also a page

Four of the five tools can only be loaded from this menu or by their shortcut. The Chord Search Engine is the exception: it also has its own page, linked from the sidebar of every chord page.

Opening it from the Tools menu and opening it from its own address give you the same tool. The difference is only where you start from.

[ 7 ] Transposition

You've found a great progression — but it's in the wrong key. Instead of looking for every chord again and rebuilding your recordings, move the whole list at once.

Open the Tools menu (T-key) and choose Transpose entire list (⌘1 / Ctrl+1). The chord diagrams change with it, and so do your takes and songs.

Moving to another key

The number in the text field shows how many semitones you're moving from the original list.

Click + to move everything one semitone higher, − to move it one semitone lower. Each click updates the chord diagrams straight away, so you can play them and hear the result before deciding whether to keep it. On a computer keyboard you can also type the number into the field and press Enter.

So a list containing

| A | F♯m | Bm | E |

moved up two semitones becomes

| B | G♯m | C♯m | F♯ |

or one semitone down

| A♭ | Fm | B♭m | E♭ |

The Range is one octave in either direction: −12 to +12 semitones.

When a chord reaches the end of the neck

A chord can't be moved endlessly up or down the neck. When a transposing value makes a chord fingering unplayable on the guitar neck, the same fingering will be transposed to the next available octave.

A chord at position VII moved seven semitones up would land at position XIV. Since that isn't practical, it's recalculated at position II instead — the same shape, but an octave lower.

The same happens downwards. A chord at position II moved five semitones down reappears higher on the neck, at position IX.

The whole list moves together

Transposition affects the entirety of your current list. It changes:

• roots of the chord names
• sounds playing in the looper
• roots within the safe zone | ... | of a take name
• all takes and songs (not only the active one)

Timing, playback speed and song structure stay exactly as they were. Only the pitches move — so a song you've already assembled doesn't have to be rebuilt in another key.

Your other lists are left untouched.

Trying different keys

You don't have to commit while you're looking for the right key. Move up or down, play some chords, listen to your progression, then try another value.

Every number refers to the key you started from. Choose +3, then change it to +5, and you're five semitones above the original. Set the value back to 0 to hear the original list again.

Keeping the new key

When you've found the key you want, press Save and the window closes. The transposed version becomes the current state of the list, along with its takes and songs.

If you open the transposition dialog again, the transposition value will now show 0, as the previously saved transposition is now the new starting point.

Press Cancel — or Esc — before you Save and everything returns to exactly how it was when you opened the tool.

[ 8 ] Song Creation

A take is one idea: a verse, a turnaround, four bars of a chorus. Song Creation puts several of them in order and makes a whole piece out of them — verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus — without having to record anything again.

You need at least one saved take before you start. If you have none, the Chord Looper shows you how to make one.

Opening the tool

Open Song Creation (⌘2 / Ctrl+2). Every take you've saved for the current list appears with a letter in front of it. They run from A, B, C … to Z in alphabetical order of the take names. Songs you've already built get a letter with a star — A*, B* — so you can tell at a glance which entries are single takes and which are complete progressions.

The figure at the right of each take row is that take's speed. If you click the figure, the speed control shows.

Building the composition

The Composition field is where the song is written down. Click Add next to a take and its letter is inserted at the cursor. Click through your takes in the order you want them and you get something like:

A, A, B, A, C, A, B

You can also type directly into the field when using a keyboard (not available on touch devices). Only letters that exist in the list are accepted — anything else is removed as you type, so a typo can't produce a song that won't play.

Clear empties the field and starts over. It doesn't touch your takes.

Repeats

Writing A, A, A, A is fine, but a repeat is shorter and easier to read:

You type	You get
A x3	A, A, A
(A B) x2	A, B, A, B
A B x2	A, B, A, B

The field tidies up what you type: spaces become commas, groups get their brackets, and a run of identical parts is folded back into a repeat automatically. So if you add the same take four times with Add, the field will show the compact form rather than four separate letters.

Setting the speed of a part

Click the speed figure to open the slider for that row. Clicking the take's name does the same thing and plays the take as well, so you can hear what you're adjusting.

Set the speed you want. It has two effects, and both are useful:

• The take keeps it. From now on the take also plays at that speed in the takes library. If you reload it in Takes Manager, you'll notice that the take now plays at the same speed you set in Song Creation.
• A song keeps its own copy. When you save a song, each part is stored with the speed it had at that moment. From then on the song is independent of the takes it was built from: change a take's speed later and the saved song plays exactly as before. The same take can therefore appear in two songs at two different speeds.

Setting the speeds of your takes here is also the quickest way to get everything in a list moving at the same pace, which makes them far easier to join into a song.

The slider closes again when you open another one, and the figure returns showing the new value.

Hearing it before you save

Pre-listen plays what's currently in the Composition field. Where it starts depends on your cursor:

• Cursor anywhere in the field — playback starts at that part and runs to the end
• Part or parts selected — only the selection, marked by a light blue background, plays and loops
• Cursor at the very end — playback starts from the beginning

The part currently sounding is marked in the field as it plays, so you can follow along. Stop ends playback.

Selecting two parts and looping them is the quickest way to check a transition that doesn't feel right yet.

Saving the song

Press Save. The Save Song dialog asks for a Song name. Use any text you like. If you prefer, you can also include the song form in the title:

ABACAB My new Song

If the name is already used by a take or another song, you're asked whether you want to replace it. If not, come up with a name that is not used yet.

Once saved, the song loads into the timeline and starts playing, and it appears in the list with a * next to its letter — ready to be used as a building block in a longer piece.

Songs sit alongside takes in the Takes Manager and can be shared exactly like a take, see Shortlinks Generator.

Playing the song

Load a song from the Takes Manager and it plays part by part. The timeline shows the part currently sounding and moves on to the next one as the song runs, so you always see where you are.

The speed control follows the part that's playing, and the speed you set stays with that part. New speed settings are automatically saved within the song.

That makes tuning a song a listening job rather than a numbers job: play it through, adjust each part as it comes past, and let the arrangement settle by ear. The change lands on the part that was playing when you moved the control, and the next part carries on at its own speed.

Editing a song you've already saved

Songs in the list have an Edit button. It loads the song's composition back into the Composition field, starts a pre-listen, and splits the list into two sections:

• Parts of this song — the song's own parts, under the letters the song uses
• Your takes — everything in your current list, under the remaining letters

The two are independent. A part keeps the recording and the speed the song stored for it, whatever has happened to the take it came from since. So the same recording can appear in both sections at once, under two different letters — the song's frozen version and today's take. That's the point: you can rearrange and erase the song's existing parts, and add takes to it, without one affecting the other.

Adjusting a part's speed here changes it inside this song only. Your takes are left alone.

Save under the same name to update the song — you'll be asked to confirm — or under a new name to keep both.

Songs inside songs

Because a saved song gets its own starred letter, you can add it to a new composition like any other part. Build a verse-chorus pair once, save it, then write A*, A*, B to repeat the whole pair twice and finish with something else.

[ 9 ] List Manager

Two lists are built in and always there: Personal List, which acts as your default workspace to collect your favorite chords, takes and songs, and List from Link, which fills whenever you open a shared link.

Everything beyond those two is made in the List Manager (⌘3 / Ctrl+3): up to ten lists of your own, named however you like, each with its own chords, takes and songs.

Your lists

Twelve in total: the two built-in ones and ten of your own.

Personal List and List from Link can't be deleted, only emptied. Your own ten can be renamed and deleted freely.

The list you're currently in is marked with a dot. Click any other list to switch to it.

Making a new list

The first menu item is 1. Create empty list. Here you type a name for a new list and press Create. Names can be up to 40 characters and each must be different from existing ones.

The new list is empty and becomes your current list, so you can start working in it right away.

Copy makes a duplicate of an existing list — chords, takes and songs — under a new name. Useful before you rework an arrangement: copy first, then experiment on the copy.

Renaming, clearing, deleting

The second menu item is 2. Manage existing lists, where several actions are available:

• Copy — on every list
• Clear — on Personal List and List from Link: deletes chords, takes and songs from the inbuilt lists
• Rename and Delete — on your own lists

If you decide to clear or delete a list, a confirmation dialog will be shown first. Clear removes all chords, takes and songs but keeps the inbuilt list. Delete removes the list completely. If you delete the list you're currently in, Personal List will be shown afterwards.

How much fits

At the bottom of the dialog, Storage shows how much space the chords in your lists are using — something like 18 KB / 40 KB. It turns amber as you approach the ceiling.

Two limits can stop you:

• Ten of your own lists. The Create button goes gray and the input field shows Max. number of lists reached. Delete a list to make room. Copy is unavailable too, since a copy would need a slot of its own.
• The total space. The chords in all your lists share about 40 KB between them. If you reach it (happens very rarely), new chords can't be added.

In the rare case of running out of room: clear a list you no longer need, or export a project to a file with Backup & Restore and load it back when you need it again.

[ 10 ] Data Import and Export

Everything you build — your lists, chords, takes and songs — lives in the browser you built it in. But what if you'd like to work in another browser or device?

Backup & Restore (⌘5 / Ctrl+5) puts it all into files readable by any device or browser.

Saving to a file

Save to file offers three different ways of exporting your data:

All recorder data writes one file containing every list, including all chords, takes and songs. Use this function for regular backups.

Current playlist exports just the currently selected list including its chords, takes and songs.

Export a take (.gtrtake) or song (.gtrsong) shows an overview of recordings available within the selected list. On export, only the essential data including the chords will written into the file, ready to import it later from your Downloads folder into any other list.

Loading a file back

Load from file accepts only recorder files like backup (.gtrdata), list (.gtrlist), song (.gtrsong) or take (.gtrtake). Load a list and an overview of its content will be shown:

Playlist recognised: My Jazz List — 4 progression(s), 2 song(s).

If you load a list, it will be imported into its own storage space, so none of your existing lists will be touched.

Songs and takes are added to the list you're currently in, so select the destination list before you load the file. Chords not already in that list are added to it and the recording is loaded into the timeline ready to play.

Existing names are never overwritten. An incoming duplicate gets a number instead — Verse, slow (2).

Taking one thing out of a backup

A full backup usually holds more than you need. Import individual lists, songs or takes from recorder backup (.gtrdata) opens a backup and shows you what's inside, grouped under Lists, Songs and Takes.

Select what you want and press Import. The rest of the backup is ignored, and everything you already have stays as it is.

View another backup opens a different file without leaving the dialog.

Restoring everything

Restoring a full backup is the one operation that replaces rather than adds. Before it runs, you're shown what's at stake:

Restoring will replace ALL your recorder data with the backup.
Backup contains:
3 list(s), 18 take(s), 2 song(s) saved 12 March 2026
Current data contains:
5 list(s), 42 take(s), 6 song(s)

Cancel is the default, so nothing happens if you press Enter by reflex. Three ways out:

• Restore backup — replaces everything and reloads on the list that was open when the backup was made
• Backup current data first — writes a fresh backup of what you have right now and leaves this window open
• Cancel — nothing changes

To take a single item out of a backup rather than the whole thing, use Import individual lists, songs or takes instead.

The four file types

Extension	Holds
.gtrdata	Everything: all lists with their chords, takes, songs and settings
.gtrlist	One list: its chords, takes and songs
.gtrsong	One song, with the chord diagrams it uses
.gtrtake	One take, with the chord diagrams it uses

The extension tells them apart at a glance. The app checks what's actually inside the file, so renaming one won't make it something else.

Across our sites

A data backup using our file formats .gtrdata, .gtrlist, .gtrsong or .gtrtake is easily reloaded into any of our sites: guitar.ch, gitarre6.de, guitare6.fr, guitarra6.es, guitarra6.com or chitarra6.it. The chords play exactly as recorded — only the chord names on screen follow the local naming.

This way, international song writing teams can use their native languages — English, German, French, Spanish or Italian — when exchanging new material.

When something doesn't work

Four messages you may see, and what they mean:

• This doesn't look like a recorder file, or it's damaged — the file isn't one of ours, or it was altered after export
• This file was made with a newer version of the recorder — reload the page to pick up the current version
• All list slots are full — clear or delete a list before importing another one
• There are too many chords to store in one list — a single list can hold about 4 KB of data, and that limit was reached. Nothing was imported. For a song or take, switch to a list with more room and try again. For a whole list, the file itself is too large.

[ 11 ] Keyboard Shortcuts

Everything on these pages can be done with the mouse or by tapping. The shortcuts below are for when your hands are already on the computer keyboard.

Which keys work depends on where you are: most of them belong to the favorites page, a couple to the chord pages of the Chord Finder.

On the favorites page

The recorder's own list is always at hand: press i or F1, or click the ⓘ at the upper right of the timeline. In the title of the dialog, the name of the take or song currently loaded gets displayed. If no recording is loaded, the default title Keyboard Shortcuts is shown.

Playing and recording

Key	Function
Space	Play / Pause
P	Play
S	Stop
R	Record
→	Go to next chord
←	Go to previous chord

These work wherever you are on the page, including when the recorder has scrolled out of sight.

Working with the list

Key	Function
Backspace	Delete marked chords
Z	Undo delete

Takes and tools

Key	Function
Ctrl/⌘ + S	Save current take
L	Load a stored take — opens the Takes Manager
T	Open the Tools menu
i or F1	Show the list of shortcuts
H	Open the help page

Each tool also has its own number, which opens it directly and closes it again:

Key	Tool
Ctrl/⌘ + 1	Transposition
Ctrl/⌘ + 2	Song Creation
Ctrl/⌘ + 3	List Manager
Ctrl/⌘ + 4	Chord Search Engine
Ctrl/⌘ + 5	Backup & Restore

While the Chord Search Engine is open

Key	Function
F	Add the chords you've marked in the results to your list
Enter	Show the results, or — if chords are already marked — add them and close
V or Esc	Close the Chord Search Engine and go back to your list

On a chord page

Key	Function
F	Add marked chords to favorites
V	View favorites — opens your active list
H	Open the help page
Enter	Load the bass drone and start it
P	Play the bass drone
S	Stop the bass drone
L	Loop the bass drone on or off

F for Favorites, V for View, H for Help. Enter loads the bass drone and starts it wherever you are on the page — no need to scroll down for it. P, S and L take over once it's playing. See Chord Favorites.

On every page

Engage Caps Lock to navigate through the site with the arrow keys on your computer keyboard. A short notice confirms that page navigation is on; press Caps Lock again to turn it off.

Key	Function
←	Previous page of the chapter
→	Next page of the chapter
↑	Previous chapter
↓	Next chapter

On the favourites page, Caps Lock also decides what the arrow keys do: with it off, ← and → step through the chords of a take; with it on, they change the page. The other letter shortcuts work either way.

While you're typing in a field or a dialog is open, navigation with the arrow keys is ignored. This way, you're never taken away from something you're in the middle of.

Good to know

Esc closes whatever dialog is open, one at a time — so a dialog opened on top of another leaves the first one still there.

Shortcuts are ignored while you're typing in a text field — in a take name, a list title or a search box — so a chord name containing a p won't start playback.

[ 12 ] Troubleshooting

Most problems here have one of three causes: an old copy of the page still sitting in your browser, sound that hasn't been switched on yet, or data that lives in a browser you're no longer using. This chapter goes through them in that order.

Something on the page looks wrong

Start here. We improve these pages constantly, and your browser may still be holding onto outdated files — which shows up as buttons that don't respond, diagrams that don't draw, or a tool that won't open.

A hard refresh fetches everything again:

Windows / Linux	Ctrl + Shift + R
Mac	⌘ + Shift + R
Safari	⌘ + ⌥ + R
iPhone, iPad, Android	clear the browser cache in your settings

To find out more, search the web for clear browser cache.

If the trouble survives a hard refresh, it isn't the cache — read on.

No sound

• Check the obvious first: your device's volume, and the silent switch on a phone or tablet.
• Click a chord diagram once. Browsers don't allow sound until you've interacted with the page, so the first click may be the one that wakes the audio up.
• Still nothing? If the sound doesn't return after turning the volume on and clicking a chord diagram or pressing Play, clear the browser cache — see Something on the page looks wrong above.

I hear a chord but see no diagram

You play a take or song, the sound is there, but one of the chord diagrams isn't shown. This happens when a diagram has been accidentally deleted from the list. The sound within a take or song will always play — the recording doesn't depend on the diagram still being in the list.

To get the diagram back, add that chord to the list again from the Chord Finder or the Chord Search Engine.

My chords or takes have disappeared

Everything you build lives in the browser you built it in. It isn't on our server, and it doesn't follow you to another browser or another device.

• After clearing your browsing data — it's gone, and there's no undo. Backup & Restore is the insurance.
• In a private or incognito window — everything disappears when you close it.
• On another device or browser — it was never there. Export a backup first and load afterwards using our tool Backup & Restore.
• After switching lists — takes belong to the list they were recorded in. Switch back and they're there.

A message I don't understand

• All list slots are full — you reached the maximum of ten lists. Clear or delete one, see List Manager
• There are too many chords to store in one list — a single list can hold about 4 KB of data, and that limit was reached. Nothing was imported. For a song or take, switch to a list with more room and try again. For a whole list, the file itself is too large
• This doesn't look like a recorder file, or it's damaged — the file isn't one of ours, or it was altered after export
• This file was made with a newer version of the recorder — reload the page to pick up the current version, see hard refresh
• Too many search results. Please add more filters. — the Chord Search Engine shows up to 500 chords at once. Narrow the search
• 0 chords found with your settings. Try changing filters. — nothing matches. Remove a filter, or press Reset
• Sharing not possible — the list is empty. Add some chords first

A shared link doesn't work

• It opens a generic favorites page instead of the composition. The link has expired. Links last a month, and every visit extends them by another month — so one nobody has opened for a month disappears. See Shortlinks Generator.
• Someone received a broken list. The link was probably passed on with the browser's own share button, which can't carry the contents. Always share with our Share icon or share list.
• A link vanished without warning. Leave your email address when you create one, and you'll be told a week and two days before it goes.

The keyboard does nothing

• You're typing in a field. Shortcuts are ignored inside a take name, a list title or a search box, so a chord name containing an S won't stop playback.
• You're on the wrong page. F and V work on chord pages; the transport and tool keys belong to the favorites page. See Keyboard Shortcuts.
• A dialog is open. Esc closes them one at a time.

Chords are still highlighted from last time

That's intended: marked chords are remembered per page, so you can come back to a page and pick up where you left off. reset in the Options menu clears the marking on that page. Other pages keep theirs — see Chord Finder.