Melody to chords: hum a tune and get chords that fit

An online tool for when the tune already exists and the chords do not. Sing, hum, whistle or play a melody one note at a time, and the tool reads it, finds the key and proposes chords that will sit under it. Every chord can be heard, and the whole chart plays over your own take: the question here is not what a chord is called but whether it fits. From there it is an arrangement — diagrams for guitar, ukulele and piano, capo, transpose, simplify to plain triads, and export to text, ChordPro or MIDI.

How to find chords for your own melody

Hum the tune

Press Record and sing or whistle the melody — 15 to 30 seconds is enough. If you already have a recording, upload the file instead.

Listen to what came back

Tap a chord to hear it, or press play and the chart will sound over your own take.

Shape it to you

Change how often the chords move, add a capo, transpose, simplify. Then copy the chart or export it as MIDI.

Hum a tune and play it back: diagrams, capo, MIDI

Drop a file here

MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, OGG, OPUS ·

Sing, whistle or play the tune as a single line — 15 to 30 seconds is enough. Closer to the microphone and without accompaniment, the melody reads more accurately.

Features

The chords sound, not just print

Tap a chord and it plays. Press play and the whole chart runs over your recording. Whether the harmony fits your tune is audible in a second, and no amount of names and dot grids will tell you.

More often or less, with one switch

One chord per bar, per half bar or per beat. This is not decoration: harmonic rhythm changes the answer itself, so the switch sits directly above the sequence it rebuilds.

Shapes a hand can reach

Positions are generated by searching the fretboard and kept only if one hand can hold them: a span of four frets, a barre with no gaps, no muted string between sounding ones. Tap a diagram for the next position.

Voice, whistle or a single instrument

The melody is read by pitch tracking, not by chord recognition. A hummed tune, a whistle, one hand on a piano or a single string all work — anything that sounds one note at a time.

It marks the bars it is unsure of

A bar the melody barely supports is drawn dashed. Harmonisation has no single right answer, and a chart that flags its own arguable bars is worth more than one printing every guess with equal confidence.

Capo, transpose, simplify

Move the chart to a comfortable key, add a capo, or swap sevenths for plain triads — the diagrams are recomputed into the shapes you actually hold.

What you can do

Hum a tune straight into the browser and get chords for it
Hear each chord on its own and the whole chart over your recording
Change the harmonic rhythm: a chord per beat, per half bar or per bar
See shapes for guitar, ukulele and piano, including alternate tunings and a left-handed view
Add a capo, transpose, and simplify sevenths to triads
Copy the chart or export it as ChordPro or MIDI

How this differs from taking chords off a recording

Chords can only be taken from something that plays them: that kind of tool listens to a recording and names what is already there. A single voice has no chords at all — it states one note at a time — and reading it as harmony produces a run of meaningless sonorities, one per melody note. The job here is the opposite one, and it is composition rather than recognition: from the notes of a melody, a harmony is proposed that will sit under it. That question has more than one right answer, so the tool presents its choice as a proposal, lets you hear it, and lets you rebuild it.

Frequently asked questions

Where do the chords come from if the recording has none?

From the melody, by the rules any harmony textbook gives. A bar takes the chord whose notes match the long and accented notes of that bar: passing notes are short and off the beat, and they are supposed to clash. Moves between bars are not equal — a root falling by a fifth binds two chords more strongly than anything else, and that motion is what turns a list of chords into a progression. And a phrase starts and ends at home. Nothing beyond those three rules is applied, which is why the choice can be explained and argued with.

I hummed one thing and it shows another — why?

Usually the chords are not the problem; the notes it read are. Pitch tracking looks for one fundamental per frame, and three things break it: other sound in the room, a voice too quiet or too breathy, and singing words instead of a steady "la" — consonants tear the pitch apart. Check the range in the header: if it does not look like what you sang, the wrong line was read. Singing closer to the microphone, steadily and without accompaniment fixes most of it.

Is this the one correct answer?

No, and that is the nature of the task. The same melody fits several different harmonies, and choosing between them is taste rather than truth: one note can sit over the tonic, over its relative minor, or over the subdominant. The tool picks the plainest and most common option, marks the bars where the choice is arguable, and lets you rebuild all of it with the rhythm switch, transpose and simplify.

What does the "more often / less often" switch do?

It sets how often a chord is allowed to change: once a beat, once a half bar or once a bar. It is the only control here that changes the answer rather than the view. On a fast tune a chord per beat turns the chart into mush; on a slow one a single chord per bar drains the movement out of it. Rebuilding costs nothing: the melody is already read, only the harmonic rhythm changes.

Can I whistle it, or play it with one hand?

Yes. Any single line is read: a voice with words or on "la", a hum, a whistle, one hand on a piano, one string on a guitar, a flute. The only condition is one note at a time. If accompaniment is playing under the melody, the reading gets worse — the tracker starts jumping between the voices.

How is this different from the chord finder for songs?

«Chord Finder for Songs» takes chords off a finished recording: it listens to a song and names what sounds in it. This one works where there are no chords yet — you hummed a tune and the harmony still has to be invented. If you have a recording of a song and want its real chords, use «Chord Finder for Songs». If you have a tune and need something to play under it, you are in the right place.

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Published 17 Sep 2026 Updated 20 Sep 2026 Author: The Supreme