Fretboard
Chord Identifier & Player

About Fretboard

Fretboard is a free chord identifier and player for guitar. Put your fingers on the neck, and it tells you what you're playing.

Who makes it

Nik Donovic

I'm Nik Donovic, and I've been playing guitar for over twenty years. I started on an off-brand Strat, went through a few guitars after that, and these days I play three: an acoustic, a Strat and a Tele.

Fretboard grew out of years of writing songs and stumbling onto chord shapes I couldn't name. I wanted something I could pull up anywhere to figure out what I was actually playing, hear it back, and run it through some pedals. So I built it.

What's here

  • The fretboard: tap notes on the neck and it names the chord, including slash chords, inversions and the less obvious readings of the same notes. It plays the shape back through a synth and pedalboard, and works in drop D, open G, DADGAD and other tunings.
  • The chord library: 144 chords, each with shapes from open position up the neck, capo options, the notes and intervals, the keys it belongs to, and progressions to try.
  • Guides: 6 articles on the things the tool assumes you know, from reading a chord diagram to alternate tunings.
  • The changelog: everything that has changed, with dates.

How the chord names are worked out

The identifier reads the notes you've fretted, tries each one as the root, and scores every chord type it knows against them: forty types, from triads to 13ths and altered dominants. It allows for the notes guitarists usually leave out, like the 5th, and always shows the bass note, so E–G–C reads C/E rather than plain C. The best match is shown first and the other readings sit underneath.

Every shape in the chord library is generated by searching the neck for playable fingerings, and each one is run back through the identifier, so the name on the page is the name the tool gives it. If you find one that's wrong, or a shape a player would never use, please tell me.

Who runs the site

Fretboard is published by Skadar Studio. It's free to use with no account, and it's paid for by ads. The privacy policy explains what that means for your data, and the terms cover the rest.