Strum or pluck
Swipe or drag across the strings to strum them in the order you cross them. A quicker strum sounds louder. Tap one string to pluck it alone.
With a mouse, after your first click, moving across the strings strums them too.
Four guitar sounds, free in your browser
Virtual Guitar
Swipe or drag across the strings to strum, or tap one string to pluck it. Each strum plays the next chord of a real song from the Library. Sound starts with your first press.
Mode
SongFree play
Maple Leaf Rag by Scott JoplinChords simplified for guitar
- Strum nowG♯
- NextAdim7
- NextD♯7
- NextG♯
Sound
Acoustic GuitarNylon GuitarElectric GuitarElectric Bass
View
2D3D
How to play
Three things to know
One chord per strum
In Song mode, each strum plays the next chord of the song's opening, then waits for you. Free play gives you its four most-used chords as pads.
Chords are simplified for guitar, so a C major seventh plays as C.
Computer keyboard
J strums from the top string down and K from the bottom string up. In Free play, 1 to 4 choose the pads.
Typing in a field, or holding Ctrl, Alt or Meta, plays nothing.
The four sounds
Four guitars
How each instrument makes its sound, with sources.
Acoustic
Steel strings over a hollow body
A plucked string's vibration passes through the bridge into the guitar's top, then into its sides, back and the air inside the body, and leaves through the sound hole. The name usually means the steel-string guitar.
Nylon
Nylon strings at lower tension
The classical guitar has six strings of nylon, the lower three wound with metal. Nylon strings have much lower tension than steel ones, and the soundboard and hollow body make each plucked string louder.
Electric
Pickups and an amplifier
An electric guitar's pickups turn the vibration of its strings into an electrical signal, which an amplifier and loudspeaker turn back into sound.
Bass
Four strings, an octave down
The bass guitar most often has four strings, tuned like a double bass: one octave below a guitar's four lowest strings. Its pickups and amplifier work like an electric guitar's.
All four sounds here are sampled and share the same six strings. With Electric Bass, each strum plays one note, the chord's root. Strum the same chord on each to compare them.
Before you play
Questions, answered
About playing here, and what the full app adds.
No. The virtual guitar runs in your browser, with nothing to install and no account.
Sound starts with your first press. While the sound loads, the guitar says so and strums stay silent, so the song waits for you. If it can't load, a Try again button appears.
Its composition is in the public domain, and its chords come from the same song in the Zen Library. So the song you strum here is the song the full app opens.
Not every chord uses all six strings. Strings a chord leaves out look muted and stay silent, as on a real guitar.
Free play gives you the four chords the song uses most. This page plays the song's own chords rather than a full chord chart.
A bass usually plays one note at a time. With Electric Bass, each strum plays the chord's root, and a pressed string plays its own note.
Yes. Swipe across the strings with one or more fingers. The rest of the page scrolls as usual.
It opens Maple Leaf Rag on the sound you picked here: Play on a computer with a mouse or trackpad, or the touch piano on a touch device without one. You keep playing the song on piano keys. Play also has 16 instruments and four ways to learn a song: Magic Play, Demo, Play Along and Practice.
Credits
- PlatenAuthor winchLicense MIT LicenseChanges The 3D desk scene, adapted from this typewriter app for the guitarSource GitHub