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Piano chord player & dictionary

Build any chord and hear it right in your browser. Pick a root, a quality, an extension, and an optional slash bass — see the notes light up on the keyboard, then press play. Every chord has a link you can share. No download.

Piano AuraDownload on the App StoreDownload

Now hear that chord in your own music

You just built one chord. Piano Aura lets you play it across a full piano, change the instrument behind it, put chords together into a progression, and record what you play before the idea slips away — all on your iPhone.

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You built a chord. What now?

Knowing a chord and being able to use one are different problems, and the second is the one that stalls people. Here are three moves you can make with any chord you just built, using C major as the worked example.

  1. 1Find the two chords that want to follow it. From C major, the two most likely next chords are G major and F major. G to C is the strongest resolution in popular music, and three things cause it at once: the note a semitone below C rises up onto it, the restless interval inside G7 closes inward, and the root drops a fifth. Dominic Pedler calls this the power of V. F to C is the gentler version of the same idea, the one that sounds like the end of a hymn.
  2. 2Put a minor chord where the ear expects the home chord. Play C, then G, then A minor instead of returning to C. That swerve is the interrupted cadence, and it is why a four-bar loop keeps turning instead of stopping. Add F after it and you have C, G, A minor, F, which carries a startling number of the songs you already know.
  3. 3Give it a left hand. Play the chord in your right hand and only its root in your left, low down. Once that feels steady, alternate the root and the fifth of the chord in the left hand on separate beats. When you change chord, move each finger to the nearest note of the new one rather than jumping the whole shape, and the change stops sounding like two unrelated chords.

The harmony above follows Dominic Pedler's analysis in The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles.

How do you play a chord on the piano?

A chord is three or more notes played together. Start from the root note, then add the notes of the quality — a major chord is the root, the note four semitones up, and the note seven semitones up (C major is C, E, G). Pick a root and quality above to see and hear any chord.

Chord dictionary

Browse common chords and open any one in the player to see its notes and hear it.

major

minor

seventh

minor seventh

major seventh

suspended fourth

diminished

How to use the chord player

  1. 1Pick a root. Choose the root note of your chord — the note the chord is named after, like C, F♯, or A.
  2. 2Choose a quality. Pick major, minor, sus2, sus4, augmented, diminished, or power. The keyboard updates to show the notes.
  3. 3Add an extension or slash bass. Layer on a variation like 7, maj7, add9, or 13, and set a slash bass note to put a different note underneath, exactly like the chord builder in the app.
  4. 4Play and share. Press play to hear the chord, tap any key to hear a single note, and copy the link to share the exact chord or come back to it later.

What are piano chords?

A chord is a group of notes played at the same time, and chords are the harmony behind almost every song. The root gives the chord its name; the quality — major, minor, and the rest — sets its mood; and extensions like sevenths and ninths add colour. Learning to see chords as shapes on the keyboard, rather than memorising each one, is one of the fastest ways to start playing real music.

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