Chord Ear Trainer

A chord plays: major and minor triads first, inversions and sevenths as you move up. Your job: pick out every note it contains. Real piano, guitar, and string sounds, free in your browser, no signup.

Opens on piano with the first chord ready: press PLAY to hear it. Prefer guitar, bass or strings? Pick your instrument first. No account, phone or desktop.

How it works

1. Pick a polyphonic instrument (piano, guitar, bass guitar, violin, viola, cello, or double bass) and a difficulty.
2. Each round plays a triad or seventh chord, voiced in any inversion, anywhere in your chosen range.
3. Enter every note you hear on a staff or piano keyboard. Order doesn't matter; hearing them all does. And you can replay the chord as often as you like.
4. Five rounds per game, and a round only counts once you've found all the notes. A perfect game is 5/5.

Hear inside the chord

You can know a chord is a minor seventh and still have no idea which note sits on top. It happens to everyone. This trainer makes you find every individual pitch, the way a transcriber or arranger has to hear through a block of sound to the voices inside it. Stick with it and inversions stop being trick questions. They become voicings you've heard before.

Learn with training wheels, then take them off

Chords are hard when all the notes land at once. So there's an option, Play notes separately before the chord, that sounds them one at a time, like an arpeggio, while you're getting started, then all together when you're ready for the real challenge. On wind and brass instruments, which can't sound a chord at all, the same questions live under Arpeggios, where the notes always come one at a time: choose Chords on the home page and a single-line instrument's tile says "as arpeggios". Difficulty climbs the same ladder this page teaches: Easy is major and minor triads in root position, inside the C major scale; Medium adds inversions and diminished triads over a chromatic octave; Hard adds seventh chords across the full instrument range; and Custom puts every chord in play inside limits you set yourself.

Tips for chord ear training

• Find the bass note first. It anchors the chord, and the upper voices are just intervals above it, the same ones you already know from interval training.
• Sing the chord bottom-to-top before answering. Arpeggiating with your voice forces you to resolve each pitch.
• Treat Play notes separately before the chord as a step, not a home. Untick it once most rounds come out right.
• Short daily games beat long weekly ones. The app keeps a daily streak to make showing up easy.

A practical order for learning chords by ear

Don't try to hear everything at once. The trainer's levels follow this order, so start on Easy and move up when a stage is boring. Major and minor triads in root position come first: learn to tell that pair apart until it's boring. Then add inversions of the same two qualities: same notes, different bass, surprisingly different color. Diminished triads come next (that stack of minor 3rds has a tension you won't mistake for anything else), and seventh chords come last. Dominant, major, and minor sevenths cover most of the music you'll ever transcribe. And because you find every note here instead of clicking a quality label, each stage builds directly on your interval skills. Think about it this way: a chord is intervals stacked, heard from the bass up.

Brand new to ear training? Start with the beginner's guide, which walks through notes, then intervals, then chords. Once the basics click, let the daily challenge rotate you through all three modes. Hearing single chords well? The next step is naming whole jazz chord progressions as a piano-and-bass duo plays them.

Ear training for every instrument

Chords on piano and strings, Arpeggios on everything else: each instrument's guide says which it gets, what its repertoire asks the ear to hear, and gives a 10-minute routine that opens the trainer with that instrument's real sound.

Frequently asked questions

What chords does the trainer play?

Triads and seventh chords, in any inversion, built anywhere in the range you've chosen. And you don't just name them: you find every note in the chord, in any order.

Why isn't chord mode available on my instrument?

Chord mode needs an instrument that can sound several notes at once, so you'll find it on piano, guitar, bass guitar, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Winds and brass get Arpeggios instead: the same triads and seventh chords played one note at a time, alongside single-note and interval training.

Can I hear the chord notes one at a time?

Yes. On piano and strings, Play notes separately before the chord sounds the notes as an arpeggio while you're learning, then together once you're ready for the harder version. On wind and brass instruments, Arpeggios always plays the chord one note at a time.

Should I learn inversions or seventh chords first?

Inversions. Learn major and minor triads in root position until the pair is boring, then add their inversions: same notes, different bass, surprisingly different color. Diminished triads come next, and seventh chords last. Dominant, major, and minor sevenths cover most of the music you'll transcribe.

Open the chord trainer

Opens on piano, Easy, first chord ready. Or pick your instrument first. Free, no account.

Want the listening method first? Read how to recognize chords by ear, or brush up on intervals. Chords are built from them, after all.