Move a chord chart into any key with the accidentals spelled properly and the lyrics left alone, then read every capo position for the key you land in, ranked by how many chords turn into open shapes.
Chords are rewritten, everything else is left alone. A line is only treated as a chord line when every token on it is a chord, a bar line, or a repeat mark, and chords in square brackets are transposed wherever they sit.
2 upor10 down
Every chord moves by a major second, which is what keeps the letters in order rather than the pitches alone.
Paste a chart on the left and the transposed version appears here, with your lyrics, section headings, and column spacing exactly as you wrote them.
A number describes a chord's job in the key rather than its letter, so it does not change when the key does. If the numbers below match the chart you started with, the transposition is right.
Paste a chart above and every distinct chord in it appears here with its degree in the key, its roman numeral, and its Nashville number.
A capo at fret N clamps every string N semitones higher, so the shapes you play sit N semitones below the sounding key. The sounding key here is the target key from the transposer above, and the chords being scored are the chords a song in this key normally uses.
D shapes already sound in D major, so play it open with no capo.
4 of 5 are open shapes
G shapes at fret 2 sound 2 semitones higher. That is the key to give the singer, the piano, or anyone reading the chart.
Open shapes are the whole point of a capo: C, A, G, E, D and their minors ring open strings, and barre keys do not. Select a row to send it to the capo panel above.
Two guitars playing identical shapes at the same fret just sound louder. Put the capos in different places and the same chords come out in different registers, which is an arrangement rather than a doubling.
Guitar one plays D shapes at no capo, guitar two plays G shapes at capo 7. Same chords, 7 frets apart, so the second part sits higher and thinner instead of doubling the first.
Guitar one plays D shapes at no capo, guitar two plays C shapes at capo 2. Same chords, 2 frets apart, so the second part sits higher and thinner instead of doubling the first.
Guitar one plays C shapes at capo 2, guitar two plays G shapes at capo 7. Same chords, 5 frets apart, so the second part sits higher and thinner instead of doubling the first.
Clamping shortens the string, and a shorter string sounds higher. To take a song lower you have to transpose it and play different shapes, or tune the whole guitar down.
A shorter string length is brighter and thinner with less sustain. Capo 2 is barely noticeable, capo 7 sounds like a different guitar, and capo 9 and above is close to a mandolin.
The clamp stretches every string a little, and worse the higher you go. Sit it just behind the fret, use the lightest tension that stops the buzz, and tune after clamping rather than before.
Every string moves by the same number of semitones here. A partial capo covers some strings and leaves others open, which is closer to an alternate tuning than to a transposition, so none of this arithmetic applies to it.
Your chart is parsed and transposed inside this tab. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and the note names come from letter arithmetic rather than a sharp and flat lookup, which is why a move into G♭ major arrives with a C♭ in it.
See where the new key sits, which chords belong to it, and which keys it can move to without a jolt.
Hold a reference tone and retune after the capo is clamped on, which is when a capo'd guitar drifts sharp.
Get the new shapes under your fingers at a tempo you can hold before taking the song back up to speed.
They are the same arithmetic pointed in opposite directions. Transposing moves every chord by a fixed interval and hands you a new chart. A capo moves the whole instrument by that interval instead, so the chart you already know keeps working while the song comes out in a different key. Do one when everybody needs the new names, and the other when only the singer needs the new pitch.
Drop in a chord sheet, a single line of chords, or a ChordPro file with the chords in square brackets. The tool reads the chords it can prove are chords and offers you the key it thinks the song is in, which you can accept or overrule in one click.
Pick the key you want to land in, or shift by a fixed number of semitones and pick the spelling when there are two. Lyrics, section markers, bar lines, repeat marks, and the columns your chords sit in all come back exactly as you wrote them.
Every fret from 0 to 11 is listed with the shape key it gives you, the song's own chords rewritten into those shapes, and how many of them become open chords. Choose the row you like, or use the reverse reader when the capo is already on the neck.
A chord chart is mostly not chords. Lyrics, section headings, bar lines, repeat marks, tab, and blank lines are returned character for character, and a line is only treated as a chord line when every token on it is a chord or chart furniture. That is what keeps the A in “A day in the life” a word rather than a chord.
Chords written above the syllable they land on stay above it. When a chord grows from C to D♭ the rewriter takes the space back out of the gap that follows instead of pushing the rest of the line sideways, so the sheet still reads as a sheet.
Transposing into F♯ major gives you E♯ and transposing into G♭ major gives you C♭, because each note takes the letter its degree requires and whatever accidental lands it on the right pitch. Picking names off a sharp and flat list is the standard way this goes quietly wrong.
D/F♯ moves both halves. m7♭5, maj7, dim7, sus4, add9, aug, and altered extensions keep their quality while the root and bass move, and any token the parser cannot prove is a chord is left exactly as it was rather than mangled into one.
Every chord is shown as a roman numeral and as a Nashville number against the key. Those do not change when you transpose, which is the fastest way to see at a glance that the new chart really is the same song, and they are what a session player would rather be handed anyway.
Each fret is scored on how many of this song's chords become open shapes there, not on a general feeling about easy keys, with a bonus for the open-friendly keys and a cost that climbs as the capo goes higher up the neck.
It changes the sounding key while leaving your hands in the old one. A capo at fret 3 clamps every string three semitones higher, so a G shape sounds as a B♭ chord and a chart in G is heard in B♭. The shapes, the fingering, and the chord names you say out loud stay in G, which is exactly why the capo is useful: you keep the easy shapes and the song arrives in the key the singer needs. Anyone reading from the concert-pitch chart, a pianist or a horn player, needs the transposed names rather than the shape names.
None, and this is the most common misunderstanding about capos. A capo only raises pitch. To sing lower you have to transpose the song down and play different shapes, which is what the transposer at the top of this page is for: set the source key, shift by a negative number of semitones, and take the new chart. If the new key is awkward on guitar, look at its capo table, because a lower key often has a friendly shape set of its own. The other genuine options are tuning the whole guitar down, which needs heavier strings to stay in tune, or asking the singer to take it up an octave less than they think they need.
Not on a standard guitar. Clamping the strings shortens them, and a shorter string sounds higher; there is no position that lengthens them. The nearest thing is a drop tuning, where you slacken the strings and then use a capo to reach the exact key you want, at the cost of retuning and possibly restringing. Some players tune down a semitone or a whole step permanently and treat the capo as their way back up, which is a genuinely good workflow if you sing at the bottom of your range.
Capo 3. Count the semitones from your shape key up to the sounding key: E to F is one, F to F♯ is two, F♯ to G is three. The general rule is that the fret number equals the distance in semitones from the shape key up to the sounding key, and if the answer comes out negative you add twelve and accept a higher capo. The Find your capo panel does exactly that count, and the ranked table shows you what the rest of the frets would give you in case E shapes were not the best choice.
A major. The shape key plus the fret number is the sounding key: G plus two semitones is A. That is the number you give a singer, a horn player, or anyone reading the chart rather than watching your hands. The reverse reader panel on this page answers it directly, and it offers both spellings where the answer is one of the three keys that can be written two ways.
Because a capo is a clamp, and clamping stretches. Too much spring tension pulls every string slightly sharp, and the effect gets worse the higher up the neck you go, where the frets are closer together and a small amount of extra stretch is a larger share of a shorter string. Three habits fix nearly all of it: set the capo just behind the fret rather than on top of it, use the lightest tension that stops the buzzing, and tune after the capo is on, not before. If a capo at fret 7 still sounds sour after that, the guitar's intonation is the real problem and the capo has only made it audible.
They sound the same and cost the same to read: six sharps against six flats. Let the context decide. If the song is already sharp side, or you are writing for string players, F♯ is the natural landing; wind and brass parts and most piano writing lean towards G♭. Where the tool can offer both spellings it does, rather than silently choosing, because the choice changes every accidental on the page. The other two pairs are not so even: B major (five sharps) beats C♭ major (seven flats) and D♭ major (five flats) beats C♯ major (seven sharps) unless the surrounding music says otherwise.
The Nashville number system writes a chord as its degree in the key rather than its letter: in G major, G is 1, C is 4, D is 5, and Em is 6m. Session players use it because one chart then works in every key, so a singer can call for it a tone lower on the day and nobody rewrites anything. On this page the numbers are the proof: they are identical before and after the transposition, so if the numbers match, the new chart is the same song. Roman numerals say the same thing in the language music theory uses, with case carrying major against minor.
Put the capos in different places and play different shapes. If the song is in B♭, one guitar can capo 1 and play A shapes while the other capos 3 and plays G shapes: same chords, different string lengths, so one part sits brighter and thinner than the other instead of doubling it. The Two guitars panel builds those pairings out of this song's own chords and tells you how many frets apart the two parts end up. Voicings spread by two to five frets tend to sound like an arrangement; the same capo on both guitars just sounds louder.
It does not, deliberately. A partial capo covers some strings and leaves others open, which does not transpose the guitar at all: it retunes it into something closer to an open or modal tuning, so the shapes you know produce different chords rather than the same chords higher up. The arithmetic on this page assumes a full capo across all six strings, where every string moves by the same number of semitones. If you use an Esus4 style partial capo at fret 2, treat the result as a new instrument and work the chords out by ear or from a partial-capo chart.
Nothing leaves your browser. The chart is parsed, transposed, and analysed in this tab, with no upload, no account, and no server round trip, so private or unreleased lyrics stay on your machine. The input is capped at 20,000 characters and 600 lines, which is far more than any single song, and the analysis table shows the first 60 distinct chords. If a paste is trimmed the tool says so rather than quietly dropping the end of your song.
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