I’ve added a very handy tool to the site, a guitar chord finder.  You’ll find it in the bottom of the right sidebar.

Eventually you’ll want to understand how to find chord voicings by knowing what notes are in the chord and how to find them on the fretboard.

But as a beginner, it’s really handy to have a chord finder to get a quick fingering for that weird chord you’ve run across. Here’s how to use it.
To use the chord finder, enter the parts of the chord in the dropdown menus.  The first is for the root of the chord, which is just the letter name, A-G. 

The next box is for the quality of the chord. The qualities are listed in alpha-numeric order, so if you need a regular major, it’s a ways down the list under the “M’s”.

The last box gives you a choice of different voicings, up to 6 for each chord.  When you’re designing a chord progression on the neck, you want to stay as close as possible to where you already are.  Two reasons for this:

– It’s easier to get from one chord to the next if they’re close together.
– Closely voiced chords have better voice leading, ie. How each individual note in the chord resolves itself into the next chord.  There are a bunch of traditional voice leading rules that you don’t have to think about if you just keep your voicings close together.

One important note: The chord finder not only shows you a neck chart of the chord fingering, but also tells you exactly which notes you’re playing.  Be sure to pay attention to that and you’ll start to absorb how to put chords on the fretboard yourself.

If you need any help with this guitar chord finder, leave me a comment below and I’ll be happy to help.

Click here to learn how to read extended chord symbols.

Get my guide to the “12 Parts of Playing Guitar You Need To Know” plus “The Perfect Practice Session” by sending out a quick tweet with the Tweet2Download button below.
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