MusicReasonChords and Harmony
What does this chord symbol actually mean?
Type a chord symbol like "Cmaj7" or "Bb7#11". This tool unpacks its root, quality, extensions, alterations, and bass note under a published grammar, and marks anything it cannot confidently parse rather than reinterpreting it.
Answer
Your entered symbol stays in your browser and is never logged, stored, or sent anywhere.
Want to learn more? Chord Naming, Enharmonic Spelling, and Ambiguity
Understand
Chord notation is not fully standardized across sources: the same quality is sometimes written several defensible ways. This tool supports one published grammar rather than every historical variant, and it never silently reinterprets an unsupported token as something close to it: "Cfoo" is rejected rather than guessed at as some plausible chord.
Worked example
"C7#9" and its relatives aside, a clean example: Bb7#11 parses as root B-flat, dominant 7th quality, with a sharp 11 alteration, producing tones B-flat, D, F, A-flat, and E natural. C/E parses as root C major with an explicit E bass, which is a slash bass rather than a first-inversion label unless E is also a chord member (it is here, since E is C major's third).
Method and limitations
The parser tokenizes a leading root letter and accidental, then reads the remaining text as a quality suffix against a fixed vocabulary of supported chord qualities, and finally an optional slash bass. It never infers a chord's function or key context: this is a notation-unpacking tool, not a harmonic analyzer. A recognized root with an unrecognized suffix is reported as a parse gap on the suffix specifically, not a silent fallback to a plain triad.
What counts as a supported symbol
A supported symbol starts with a single letter A through G, an optional sharp or flat (or the rarer double-sharp/double-flat), and then a quality suffix drawn from a fixed vocabulary: a blank suffix for a plain major triad, "m" for minor, "dim" and "aug" for the two symmetric triads, "sus2" and "sus4" for the suspended triads, and a small set of seventh-chord suffixes including "maj7," "7," "m7," "m7b5," and "dim7," plus one worked altered-extension suffix, "7#11." An optional slash and a second note letter at the end names an explicit bass. Anything else in the suffix position, including a genuinely valid but not-yet-supported extension, is reported as unrecognized rather than approximated.