1 Overview

The smartChord Song Analyzer is a world first. It automatically identifies the chords, the key, and the most frequent chord progressions of any song — whether it comes from your own songbook, the internet, or your clipboard. Use it to understand how your favorite tracks are built, to draw inspiration for your own compositions, or to create focused practice exercises.

For a complete overview of all features, see the Song Analyzer Overview.

The Song Analyzer in action — chords, key, and chord progressions for "Tim Kamrad – I Believe"

2 Loading a Song

The Song Analyzer gives you three ways to feed it a song — choose whichever is handy for your current workflow.

2.1 Three Ways to Start

• From your Songbook — Tap the Folder button and pick any song you already have
• Internet song search — Let smartChord search the biggest online chord and lyrics catalogs for you
• Clipboard — Copy a song from any other app or browser and paste it straight into the analyzer

Open a song from the Songbook or start an internet search

Pick a song directly from your songbook

3 Internet Song Search

The integrated Internet song search uses a search engine to find your favorite songs in the greatest online chord and lyrics catalogs — in just three steps.

3.1 How It Works

1. Enter the artist name and the song title, then tap Search. You’ll get results from the search engine right inside the app.
2. Use the in-app browser to navigate to the song page you want.
3. Once a page with lyrics and chords is recognized, the Song Analyzer automatically extracts the song text and passes it to the analysis.

Type artist and title, then tap Search

Pick any result from the biggest catalogs

Confirm the extracted song text with the checkmark

4 Understanding the Analysis

As soon as a song is loaded, the Song Analyzer produces two summaries — one for the whole song, one for every chord progression it finds inside.

4.1 Song Summary

• Chords — Every chord used in the song (may contain more chords than any single progression)
• Key — The detected musical key of the song

4.2 Chord Progression Summary

Below the song summary, the analyzer lists every recognized progression, sorted by the number of occurrences. For each progression you get:

• Roman-numeral degrees — e.g. iv – III – i – VII
• Chords — The concrete chords of this progression
• Key — The key this progression resolves to
• Repetitions — How often the progression appears in the song

Song summary on top, chord progressions below — sorted by repetitions

5 Digging Deeper into Chords and Keys

Every chord and every key in the analysis is interactive. A single tap opens the rest of the smartChord toolbox so you can investigate, hear, and practice what you just discovered.

5.1 Tap a Chord

• Opens a chord diagram dialog with the fingering on the fretboard
• Press play to hear the chord
• Tap the magnifier to open the full chord detail screen with every fingering, inversion, and voicing

5.2 Tap a Key

• Opens the Scales tool preset to the key of the song or progression
• See notation, scale degrees, TAB, and the fretboard in one place
• Explore matching scales for soloing and songwriting

Tap a chord to see the diagram and play the sound

Tap the key to jump into the Scales tool

6 Part of the smartChord Toolbox

The Song Analyzer is one tool in a huge toolbox where all the tools are tightly integrated. Analyze a song here, then switch to the Songbook, the ultimate chord library, the circle of fifths, or the Scales tool — everything works together seamlessly across 40+ instruments and every possible tuning.

For a step-by-step walk-through, see Song Analyzer – How to use.