Saying that there are a lot of guitar chords is an understatement. When first learning to play guitar we generally start to learn the most basic chord patterns. 

These will tend to be the chords found in the open position. Open chords are fairly easy to finger, there are only around 18 - 20 of them and within a short period of time, you'll start having success. But, what about after that?

As time goes on you'll need to build a larger and larger vocabulary of many different chord types. And, there will eventually be those times when you come across a chord in a song where you might say… “What the heck is that”?

It will be at this point where you'll eventually need help.

By now, you probably already realize that there are a ton of different chord apps, chord books and online chord finders. But, which ones are going to work the best for you to choose and to start learning chord patterns from?



When searching for that "holy grail" of chord finder, my suggestion is to be sure that whatever you go with has options. What I mean by this is that the chord finder you pick needs to offer you more than one choice. So, if you're searching for an "Fmaj7" chord, your chosen chord finder does not just display only one fingering pattern. Three would be minimum. Four would be even better. A choice to see patterns of various inversions on the neck would be even better still.

One of the best free online resources I've ever come across, for either generating or for chord look ups, is called "Chorderator."

Chorderator, is a free online chord generator and look up tool that works great, it is easy to use and it offers several options when you ask it to look up a chord through its interface.

Chorderator:


 Just enter the chord type that you'd like to discover on the neck and hit the "Chordernate" button to launch the finder system. It's just that easy. I did a look-up for an "Fmaj7" chord and received the results below.



Results for "Fmaj7"


I now have a group of 11 different root position versions for the "Fmaj7." There's more than enough in my list to make a good choice based on fingering, sound, and which guitar string to build the root off of. The look up was a great success in terms of selection and the only thing remaining is the act of selecting a chord to use in my song.



Try the interface yourself to find out what chords will work well for you. The Chorderator is available for use on home PC, (laptops /tower computers) as well as, it having apps for both Android and Apple products.

The Chorderator works great and just for the sake of full disclosure, I have no affiliation to this company nor to the software designers who created it. In fact, I've never even spoken to them before. I just feel that their Chorderator software is excellent and will perform flawlessly for you just as it has for me.

- Andrew Wasson