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Virtual guitar
Tap a fret to hold a note, drag across the strum area or press Space to strum, and press 1 to 0 for ten common chords.
x32010Sounding notes, low to high: C3 · E3 · G3 · C4 · E4
Keyboard: 1–0 strum the quick chords · Space or ↓ strum down · ↑ strum up · A S D F G H pluck strings 6 to 1 · M mute
Works in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
How is the guitar sound made?
It is synthesised in your browser with the Karplus–Strong plucked-string method rather than played from recordings. Each note starts as a short burst of noise, shaped for the picking position, that circulates in a delay line exactly one vibration long; a gentle filter in the loop makes the high harmonics die away first, as on a real string. A fine-tuning filter keeps every note in tune to well under a cent. The result then passes through a body filter: air and top resonances for the acoustic, a pickup peak and light saturation for the electric, and a darker, softer voicing for nylon.
Why is the lowest string at the top?
The neck is drawn the way you see your own guitar when you look down at it while playing, so the thick low E string is nearest the top and dragging downwards across the strum area is a down-strum, just like strumming towards the floor. Tablature and chord charts use the opposite order (high E at the top of tab, low E on the left of a chord box), which is why they can look flipped at first. Left-handed mode mirrors the neck so the nut is on the right.
How does the capo work?
Like a real capo, it raises every open string by the number of frets you choose, from 1 to 9, and chord shapes are then played relative to it. A C-shape chord with the capo on fret 2 sounds as D, and the panel under the neck shows both: the chord you hear and the shape you are holding. Frets below the capo are greyed out.
Can I play chords in Drop D, DADGAD or Open G?
Yes. Chord shapes are worked out for whichever tuning is selected, so the chord menus and the number keys always give a playable shape. The shape finder searches every combination of open, muted and fretted strings within a four-fret hand span, keeps those that use only the chord's notes with the root as the lowest note and can be held with four fingers, and ranks them by how easy they are. In standard tuning the familiar open and barre shapes come first.
Why is there no sound, or a delay?
Browsers do not allow a page to make sound until you interact with it, so the first tap or key press starts the audio engine; if nothing plays, tap again and check the volume slider and your device volume. Bluetooth headphones add their own delay of a tenth of a second or more, which makes quick strums feel late — wired headphones or speakers are best. On iPhone the page asks to play as media, so the silent switch should not mute it on recent versions of iOS.
Does it work on a phone or tablet?
Yes. Tap frets with a finger and drag up or down in the strum area — scrolling is disabled inside that area so a strum does not move the page. The neck scrolls sideways to reach the higher frets. Keyboard shortcuts need a physical keyboard; on a touch screen the quick-chord buttons do the same job.
About this tool
This virtual guitar has six strings and fifteen frets, spaced like a real neck so the frets get closer together as you move up. Tapping a fret presses that string at that fret and plucks it; the note stays held, so you can build a chord one finger at a time and then strum it. Every held note is labelled with its name, the root of the chord is ringed, and the panel underneath names the chord you are holding — C, Am7 or D/F♯ — together with the notes sounding from low to high.
The chord menus cover every root and the common chord types: major, minor, 7, maj7, m7, sus2, sus4, diminished, augmented, add9, 6, 9, m7♭5 and a few more. Each chord comes with several shapes, easiest first, so you can move from open chords to barre chords and higher-up voicings with the ‹ and › buttons. The ten quick chords on the number keys are the ones most pop, folk and rock songs are built from, which makes it easy to play along with a song: press 1, 2, 6 and 9 for C, G, Am and F, or 2, 3, 7 and 1 for G, D, Em and C.
The five tunings match the guitar tuner on this site: standard E A D G B E, Drop D, half a step down (E♭), DADGAD and Open G. Changing tuning re-voices the chord you had selected so it still sounds right. Strums are played with a short delay between strings — about 14 milliseconds — in the order a pick would hit them, and a new note on a string cuts off the one it was playing, as on a real guitar.
No sound files are downloaded: each note is calculated the first time you play it and then reused, which takes a few milliseconds. Your tuning, tone, capo, left-handed setting and volume are remembered in this browser, and nothing you play is recorded or sent anywhere.