Transpose chords

How to use the chord transposer

Paste the chords, with the lyrics if you like. The key is read from the first chord (Am means A minor); if the song starts on another chord, set it in From key. Then move it: drag Move by for semitones, pick the target in To key, or tap an instrument preset. Transpose and play plays every chord as a plain triad over a low root, one after the other, so you hear where the song now sits before you sing it.

The new chords are spelled the way the new key writes them: in D you get F♯ and C♯, in F you get B♭, never A♯. Sevenths, added notes and slash basses keep their place, so G7/B up two is A7/C♯; the sound plays them as plain triads. Copy gives plain # and b, which paste into any chord sheet. One catch: a lone capital A, or a line that starts with "Am I", looks like a chord and moves with the rest, so check those lines. Twelve semitones is the same chord an octave away, which is why the slider stops at eleven.

How to transpose chords by hand

Write out the twelve notes: C, C♯/D♭, D, D♯/E♭, E, F, F♯/G♭, G, G♯/A♭, A, A♯/B♭, B, and C again. Count the steps from the old key to the new one (each step is a semitone, two make a whole step) and move the root of every chord, and its slash bass, by that many steps. Everything after the letter stays: m, 7, maj7, sus4 and dim don't change. C Am F G up two becomes D Bm G A. From A minor to D minor is five up (or seven down), so Am Dm E7 becomes Dm Gm A7. Teachers and sheet music give the distance as an interval: minor second 1, major second (a whole step) 2, minor third 3, major third 4, perfect fourth 5, tritone 6, perfect fifth 7, minor sixth 8, major sixth 9, minor seventh 10, major seventh 11, octave 12. F to G is +2, up a fourth is +5, and up a fourth lands in the same key as down a fifth. The two traps: E to F and B to C are one step apart, with no sharp in between, and the new chords take the sharps or the flats of the new key (below).

How to transpose guitar chords with a capo

A capo raises every string by one semitone per fret, so the shapes you know sound higher: G shapes with a capo on fret 2 sound in A. To move a song up one to seven semitones, put the capo on that fret and keep your shapes; the tool says so. A capo can't take a song down. One way down is to tune down: every string a semitone lower (E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭ B♭ E♭, called E♭ or half-step-down tuning) and your shapes sound one semitone lower; a whole step down (D G C F A D) makes it two. Past two semitones, normal strings go slack. The other way: transpose down and play other shapes higher up the neck: C G Am F two semitones down is B♭ F Gm E♭, four barre chords, and with a capo on fret 3 the shapes G D Em C sound exactly that. The tool finds that fret by itself: the one where the most chords fall on the open shapes C, D, E, G, A, Am, Dm and Em.

Music transposition chart: the seven chords of every key

Every key has seven chords, one on each step of its scale, numbered I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi and vii° (capitals major, small letters minor, ° diminished). Read across, the roots of a row are the key's scale. Most pop and folk songs live on the first six. To use it as a transpose chords chart, find your song's chords in the row of its key, note the columns, and read the same columns in the row of the new key. C G Am F in C is I V vi IV; in E it is E B C♯m A, in A♭ it is A♭ E♭ Fm D♭.

The vii° chord is rare in songs. A chord from outside the seven (B♭ or E in a song in C): count its root on the twelve-note row above, or let the transposer move it. To keep the chart on paper or as a PDF, use the browser's Print and choose Save as PDF: the charts on this page print as tables.

A minor key uses the row of its relative major: A minor shares C major's chords with Am as home, and many songs swap Em for E or E7 as the chord that leads back. Every key has its own page with its chords and scale, among them A minor, E minor, C major and G major.

Capo chart: what each shape sounds like

Read the row of the shape you play and the column of the fret: that is the chord people hear. A chord sheet that says "Capo 2: G C D" sounds in A, as A D E.

So what key are you in with a capo on 2? It depends on the shapes: G shapes give A, C shapes D, D shapes E, E shapes F♯, A shapes B, Em shapes F♯m. To play along with a guitarist who uses a capo, without one, move the shapes up by the fret number: that is the transposer set to +2 for capo 2.

A guitar tab has fret numbers, not chord names, and this tool doesn't read it. Add the number of semitones to every fret number. Going down, a note that would fall below 0 moves to the next lower string, five frets higher (four frets higher when it moves from the B string to the G string).

Sharps or flats in the new key

A key signature uses sharps or flats, never both. Sharps: G, D, A, E, B and F♯ major, E, B, F♯, C♯, G♯ and D♯ minor. Flats: F, B♭, E♭, A♭, D♭ and G♭ major, D, G, C, F, B♭ and E♭ minor. C major and A minor use neither. A chord from outside the key is named by its step in the key: in D the chord a whole step below is C, not B♯; in E the chord on the third step is G♯m, not A♭m. A wrong name sounds the same and reads badly: an A♯ in a song in F makes everyone in the band look twice. F♯ and G♭ major are the same keys on the instrument; the tool writes F♯ major, D♭ major, C♯ minor and E♭ minor, the spellings most charts use.

Transpose piano chords and ukulele chords

On piano the chord names move exactly as on guitar, but the hand shape changes with the key: a major triad is the root, four semitones up and three more (C E G, D F♯ A), a minor triad three and then four (A C E, B D F♯). Many keyboards and digital pianos have a transpose button that shifts the sound instead: you keep playing in C and it comes out in D.

A ukulele plays the same chord names as a guitar. A song in G is in G on both, each with its own fingerings, so for most charts there is nothing to transpose. Two cases do need transposing. A guitar chart with a capo: turn the capo shapes into the chords that sound (Capo 2: G C D is A D E, so move by +2 here) and play those. And a guitar shape fingered on a standard G C E A ukulele sounds five semitones higher, a G shape gives C, because the ukulele is tuned like the top four strings of a guitar with a capo on fret 5. A baritone ukulele (D G B E) matches the guitar's top four strings, shapes and names alike.

Trumpet, clarinet, sax and horn: concert pitch to your part

A transposing instrument reads one note and sounds another. To make your part from a concert chart, move the chords up by the gap in the last column; to get back to concert pitch, move them down by the same amount.

Chord names carry no octave, so the tenor sax gets the same chords as the trumpet. That gives "How do I transpose B flat to F?" two answers. From the key of B♭ to the key of F is seven semitones up or five down: B♭ E♭ F becomes F B♭ C. From a B♭ trumpet part to an F horn part is five semitones up: concert C is the trumpet's D and the horn's G. The presets cover B♭, E♭ and F in both directions; for the A clarinet set Move by to +3.

Which key to move a song to

For a singer, compare the highest note of the chorus with your highest comfortable note (the vocal range test finds it) and move the song down by the difference, one more semitone if the top still feels tight. Two or three semitones often do it. For guitar, the keys with open chords are G, C, D, A and E, with Am, Em and Dm; a capo reaches the rest.

Transpose or change the pitch?

Transposing moves every note and chord by the same interval: the key changes, the song keeps its shape. Pitch is how high one note sounds. A pitch shifter transposes a recording by changing its audio, which is what you need to sing along with a track a few semitones lower. To play the song yourself in the new key, you need the chords, and those are what this page moves.

Is there a free app to transpose chords?

This page is one, without the app: it runs in the browser on a phone or a laptop, with no install, no account and no ads, and the chords are worked out on the device. It moves chord names only. For sheet music with the melody, the free MuseScore Studio transposes a whole score (Tools → Transpose, as of 2026). For a recording, a pitch shifter such as the free Audacity (Effect → Pitch and Tempo → Change Pitch) moves the audio.

Is there a forbidden key?

No. The phrase means one of two things. The tritone, six semitones, called diabolus in musica, the devil in music: Andreas Werckmeister cites the phrase in 1702 (Harmonologia musica) as the old authors' name for it; moving a song by six semitones is allowed and works like any other move. Or keys like G♯ major, which would need eight sharps, one of them a double sharp, so everyone writes A♭ major instead. The tool does the same.

Then make something of it

"Hear the roots in a track" sends the root of each chord into Brumm as a melody, inside a club track with a beat and a bass. No account, no upload: the notes travel inside the link itself. Hum a line over it there, and it becomes an instrument.

Nothing you type leaves your phone: the tool works in the browser and keeps nothing. How the site counts visits.