See the chords of a song in three steps
- Import the recordingAdd the exact version you want to learn, live or studio, from your phone or computer.
- Let Woodshed analyse itWhile it splits the stems it also finds the beats, the key, the sections and the chords.
- Play along with the gridOpen the chord grid and follow the highlighted bar. Tap any bar to jump to it, and loop a section to learn it.
Start with the key
Almost every song stays in one key for most of its length, and a key gives you a short list of chords that are likely to appear. In C major those are C, Dm, Em, F, G and Am, with G7 and the odd borrowed chord on top. Knowing that list turns guessing from dozens of options into six.
To find the key by ear, hum the note that sounds like home at the end of the chorus. Then find that note on your instrument. Whether the song feels bright or sad tells you if that home note is a major or a minor key. Woodshed shows the detected key on every song, so you can check your ear.
Follow the bass
The bass player usually plays the root of each chord on the first beat of the bar. That makes the bass line the best map to the harmony, and it is exactly the part that is hardest to hear in a full mix.
Split the song and solo the bass stem. Slow it down if you need to, and write down the note on beat one of each bar. That is the first draft of your chord chart. Then decide major or minor for each one by playing both against the record and keeping the one that does not clash.
Check the shapes against the other stems
Once the roots are down, solo the guitar or piano stem to hear the full shape. This is where you catch the details chord sheets leave out:
- Sevenths and added notes, like Cmaj7 instead of C, which change the whole colour.
- Slash chords, where the bass plays a different note from the chord, such as G/B.
- Suspended chords that resolve, like Dsus4 to D at the end of a phrase.
- Passing chords that last half a bar and are easy to miss at full speed.
How automatic chord detection works
Chord recognition models listen to short windows of audio, estimate how much energy there is at each of the twelve notes, and match that pattern against the chords they learned from thousands of annotated songs. A beat tracker then lines the result up with the bars so you get a readable grid rather than a stream of guesses.
Running detection on separated stems instead of the full mix helps, because drums and vocals no longer smear the harmony. Woodshed detects a wide vocabulary of chords including sevenths and suspensions, then lays them out bar by bar with the lyrics underneath when you have Pro.
Treat detected chords as a strong first draft. They are right far more often than a random chord sheet, but your ear makes the final call, especially on dense jazz voicings or heavily distorted guitars.
Make the chart yours
Once you know the chords, learn the song in sections. Woodshed marks the intro, verse, chorus and bridge, so you can loop the chorus until the changes are automatic, then move on. Change the key if the original does not suit your voice, and the chord grid moves with it.
