Every chord, every way to play it
Chordhalla is a chord library you can play. Look a chord up by its name, its notes, its frets or a famous name, see every shape a hand can reach, and hear each one strummed.
How the shapes are found
The shapes are worked out, not copied from a list. For every chord, on every instrument and in every tuning, Chordhalla works out each shape that a hand can actually hold: which frets, which fingers, and how far the stretch is. The shapes are then put in order, the ones guitarists really play first. For the everyday chords, the first shape shown is the one published chord charts use, so a beginner's G looks like the G in any book.
The famous chords, such as the Hendrix chord, were checked against written sources before they were included.
What you can do here
- The Library: every chord as a card you can strum, pluck, move along the neck and turn to another inversion. Fingers or intervals on the dots, and left-handed diagrams if you play that way.
- The chord chart maker: chord charts for a lesson, a song or a practice routine, laid out for A4 or US Letter. With the full version, a sheet can go live: a short link and a QR code that open it as a page where every chord plays.
Free, and the full version
Everything on Chordhalla is free to use, with no sign-up. The full version is a single payment of US$29 and adds downloading sheets as PDF files (and practice sheets as Guitar Pro and MusicXML files and pictures), live sheets, your sheets, sets and settings kept with your licence key in every browser, six more drum kits and the sound shaping for the metronome, drone changes in time with the click, and seven more looks for the site. It pays for the site.
The sound
The guitars you hear are real recordings, all given to the public domain by the people who made them: a Martin HD-28 steel-string recorded by Jeff Learman for the Discord SFZ GM Bank; a Spanish classical guitar and a Fender electric (clean, jazz, and played direct for the overdrive) recorded for FreePats; a Squier Jazz bass recorded by Karoryfer Samples; and, for the ukulele, a tenor ukulele recorded by Mateusz Dąbrowski for FreePats. The metronome’s drums and percussion are recordings given to the public domain too: the kit, the claves, conga, shaker, tambourine, triangle and woodblock from Virtuosity Drums by Versilian Studios and Karoryfer Samples, the brushes from Karoryfer’s Frankensnare, and the hand claps and the cajón from the Versatile Community Sample Library. Thank you to all of them. The lettering is Barlow and IBM Plex Mono, and each of the site’s looks has its own: Hanken Grotesk, Saira Condensed, JetBrains Mono, Public Sans, Archivo Narrow, Red Hat Mono, Chivo, Chivo Mono, Exo 2, Michroma, Orbitron, Sora, Doto, Source Sans 3, Oswald, Karla, Bricolage Grotesque, DM Mono, Albert Sans and Bungee under the SIL Open Font License, Permanent Marker and Yellowtail under the Apache License 2.0. Chordhalla serves its own copies, with their licences.
Song names
Song titles and artist names are used only to identify the songs whose grooves the metronome’s presets describe. Chordhalla is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any artist, band, estate, record label or publisher named, and all trademarks belong to their owners. The presets contain no recordings, melodies or lyrics: each is a click pattern, a tempo and a meter. If you represent an artist or rights holder and have a concern, write to contact@chordhalla.com and we will respond promptly.
Your privacy
No advertising, no cookies, nothing that follows you around the web. The privacy page lists everything the site keeps and why.
Who makes it
Chordhalla is made by Pyrokinesis Ltd, a small company in New Zealand. Ideas, bugs and chords we got wrong are all welcome: get in touch.