Guitar & Ukulele Basic Chord Dictionary

Chords By Root Note
Chords By Family
Create A Chord Progression

Create A Chord Progression

Please note:

This dictionary is only for basic chords and is therefore not comprehensive. The chord variations included are: Major, Minor, Seven, Sus2, Sus4 and diminished. For a more comprehensive guitar chord finder click here.

About our free guitar & ukulele basic chord dictionary

Our basic chord dictionary is a great place for beginners to start. All the basic chords are included in an organised and easy to navigate format. It will work just as well on a mobile as a desktop and it even works for those of you who are playing left-handed.

You can group the chords as per their root note, or by family, alternatively you can create your own chord progression and you will be shown the matching chord charts in the correct order.

Since this is for beginners, we’re going to give you some basic tips to get you started with this dictionary:

1. Understanding the charts: Hold your instrument out in front of you by the neck with the strings facing you. Your instrument is now in the same position as the chord charts. The vertical lines are the strings and the horizontal lines are the frets. The notes written above each string simply show you what note will be played by that string and fret. A cross instead of a note tells you not to play that string at all. The dots show you where to put your fingers for each chord and, to reinforce this, the numbers underneath the chord show the fret number that you will be holding down.

2. If you’re an absolute beginner then the best place to start with chords is to go to the ‘Chords by family‘ version of the dictionary and then go through each of the open chords for the major and minor families. You can distinguish the open chords from the (more difficult) barre chords because they do not have a line connecting two dots together (that line denotes a finger holding down an entire fret… tricky).

3. Perhaps you’ve bought a book of lyrics and chords or you’ve found a song written up on the web in that way, but you don’t know what a few of the chords are. All you need to do is go to the ‘Chords by root note‘ version of the dictionary and pull up all the chords for the root note you want (the root note is just the letter contained in the chord name). If you don’t find the desired chord, then it’s probably not included in our basic dictionary. In that case, look for the chord using this tool instead.

4. Let’s say that you have a song that you’d love to be able to play but you don’t know what shapes (chords) to make on the guitar or ukulele. Simply input the chord sequence into the ‘Create a chord progression‘ version of the dictionary and you will be shown the chord charts for the song in the right sequence. Easy.

Watch the video for an overview on how to use this tool’s features.

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