Music Tools
Chord finders, tuners, and a metronome.
Look up how to play any guitar chord with clear fingering diagrams and alternate voicings, plus what the chord symbol is actually telling you.
Ukulele Chord FinderLook up how to play any ukulele chord with clear fingering diagrams and alternate voicings, for standard GCEA tuning.
Guitar TunerTune your guitar by microphone or by ear for standard EADGBE, with the reasons a guitar never quite plays in tune everywhere.
Bass TunerTune your bass by microphone or by ear for standard EADG, with the low-frequency detection that catches out ordinary guitar tuners.
Ukulele TunerTune your ukulele by microphone or by ear for standard GCEA, including the reentrant high-G that gives the instrument its sound.
MetronomeA metronome with adjustable tempo, time signature, subdivisions and tap tempo — plus how to practise with one so it actually helps.
Virtual PianoPlay a piano keyboard in your browser with your mouse or computer keys, with note names and the layout explained.
Drum MachineMake beats with a step sequencer — program kick, snare, hats and more, entirely in your browser with nothing to install.
Tap Tempo (BPM Counter)Tap along to any song to find its tempo in beats per minute, with a rolling average so a single mistimed tap does not throw the figure.
About these music tools
Every note you have ever heard on a piano is out of tune, and it has to be. Stack twelve pure fifths and you should arrive back where you started, seven octaves up. You do not. Twelve pure fifths come to 8,423.46 cents while seven octaves come to exactly 8,400, so the circle of fifths overshoots by 23.46 cents — the Pythagorean comma, about a quarter of a semitone and plainly audible. No tuning makes every interval pure, because the arithmetic forbids it. Equal temperament resolves this by spreading the error evenly: every semitone becomes exactly the twelfth root of two, so every key is equally usable and every interval except the octave is slightly wrong. A tempered fifth is 700 cents against a pure 701.955, close enough to pass. The major third is the real casualty — 400 cents against a pure 386.31, nearly fourteen cents sharp, which is why a piano chord has a faint beating that a barbershop quartet singing the same chord does not. Singers and string players drift away from the tempered pitches without being taught to, which is also why a choir accompanied by piano sounds subtly different from one singing unaccompanied. The other thing worth carrying is that pitch is logarithmic while frequency is not. A4 is 440 Hz and A5 is 880, so that octave adds 440 Hz; the next adds 880. Equal steps in pitch are equal RATIOS in frequency, never equal differences. It is why guitar frets crowd together up the neck, why tuners report cents rather than hertz, and why being ten hertz flat is serious on a low string and inaudible on a high one.