Liam
Music Theorist & Chord Tools Developer | Founder, Chord-Calculator.com
My name is Liam. I built Chord-Calculator.com because music theory is simultaneously one of the most useful and one of the most poorly taught subjects in music education — and the gap between knowing that a chord exists and understanding why it sounds the way it does is where most musicians get stuck.
A C major chord is not just three notes. It is a specific arrangement of intervals — a major third stacked on a minor third — that produces a particular quality of sound because of how those intervals interact acoustically. A Cmaj7 is the same foundation with a major seventh added, which gives it a floating, sophisticated quality because the major seventh sits only a semitone below the octave. A C7 replaces that major seventh with a minor seventh, creating the dominant tension that makes the chord want to resolve to F major. None of this is arbitrary. All of it follows directly from interval mathematics and the overtone series.
Chord-Calculator.com was built to make those connections visible — to give musicians at every level a set of tools and explanations that turn chord names into understood structures rather than memorised shapes.
What I Research and Write About
My work on Chord-Calculator.com covers four areas:
Chord construction and interval mathematics. Every chord is built from a specific pattern of intervals — the distance between notes measured in semitones and expressed as interval names (major third, minor third, perfect fifth, major seventh, and so on). I research how these interval patterns define chord quality, how the same interval stack sounds different in different inversions, how extended chords (7ths, 9ths, 11ths, 13ths) add colour and complexity, and how altered chords modify the standard patterns to create tension, colour, and harmonic movement. The tools on this site are built around these patterns — the chord calculator and chord finder are implementations of interval mathematics applied systematically across all twelve chromatic roots.
Harmonic function and chord progressions. Individual chords make sense only in relationship to each other and to the key they inhabit. Tonic chords establish rest and resolution. Dominant chords create tension that wants to resolve. Subdominant chords create motion away from the tonic. The ii–V–I progression in jazz, the I–IV–V–I in blues and rock, the i–VI–III–VII in pop — all of these work because of predictable harmonic function, not because they have been arbitrarily declared to sound good. I research these functional relationships, the voice leading principles that connect chords smoothly, and how understanding harmonic function transforms chord knowledge from a lookup exercise into a compositional tool.
Scale theory and chord-scale relationships. Chords and scales are not separate subjects — they are different ways of describing the same harmonic content. A C major chord uses the first, third, and fifth degrees of the C major scale. A Cmaj7 adds the seventh. The Dorian mode works over a minor chord because the mode contains the intervals that define that chord quality. I research how scales generate chords, how modal harmony works, how the pentatonic and blues scales relate to the chord changes underneath them, and how composers and improvisers use scale-chord relationships to create coherent harmonic language.
Music theory pedagogy and accessibility. Music theory has a reputation for being difficult, dry, and disconnected from practical music-making. That reputation is partly earned — theory has often been taught as a set of rules to memorise rather than a set of patterns to understand. I research how music theory concepts can be explained clearly starting from first principles, without assuming prior knowledge, and without sacrificing accuracy for the sake of simplicity. Every educational article on this site is written with both the beginner who wants to understand their first chord and the experienced player who wants to deepen their harmonic knowledge in mind.
Why I Built These Tools
Most chord reference tools online work as lookups: you enter a chord name and receive a list of notes. That is useful — but it leaves out the question that matters most for musical understanding: why are those the notes?
Chord-Calculator.com is built around the answer to that question. The chord calculator shows not just which notes belong to a chord but which intervals define it. The interval calculator shows the distance between any two notes and names the relationship. The chord finder identifies what chord a given set of notes forms — working backwards from notes to name through the same interval logic that builds chords forward from a root.
Every tool is designed to make the underlying music theory visible, not to hide it behind a result.
Accuracy Standards
Every page on this site meets the following standards:
- Chord formulas are expressed as interval patterns verified against established music theory references
- Interval names follow standard academic music theory terminology (major third, perfect fifth, diminished seventh, etc.)
- Scale and mode descriptions are accurate to the standard theoretical definitions
- Where music theory has multiple valid interpretations or naming conventions — as in the case of enharmonic equivalents or chord symbol ambiguity — the content explains the alternatives rather than arbitrarily choosing one
If you find an error on this site — a chord formula that does not verify, an interval name that is incorrect, a theoretical claim that does not hold up — please report it via the Contact page. All corrections are reviewed personally and applied promptly.
Tools and Content on This Site
- Chord Calculator — enter a root note and chord quality and receive the complete note list, interval structure, and inversions
- Chord Finder — enter a set of notes and identify the chord name and quality
- Interval Calculator — calculate the interval between any two notes
- How It Works — technical explanation of chord construction methodology
- Chord Calculator FAQ — common questions about chords, intervals, and music theory
- Educational articles on chord construction, harmonic function, scale theory, and music theory fundamentals
More tools will be added as the site grows.
Get in Touch
Contact: chord-calculator.com/contact
How the tools work: chord-calculator.com/how-it-works
Editorial standards: chord-calculator.com/editorial-guidelines
Liam is the founder and sole author of Chord-Calculator.com. All tool pages, educational content, and supporting pages on this site are written and maintained by Liam. Last updated: June 2026.