Have you ever heard a song or filmscore and you just wonder what chord that is?
 
I don't have that level of pitch recognition or relative pitch recognition.  Eventually, I hope for it to develop, but at this rate, I'll be 250 years old by then.  So I have been wondering...
 
Is there an app for that?
 
We have entire song recognition apps, we have graphic spectralizers, and we have pitch tuners that run on Droid or iPhone and use the phone's own microphone for input.  I would love to have an app that can make an educated guess as to what chord is being heard by the microphone!
 
Every few months I go look for such a thing in the Droid marketplace, but don't see anything close.  Lots of guitar or keyboard chord "playing" apps, but nothing that will listen to a sound source.  A Droid app would be best for me but even if it were a PC-only application, I could get by and really improve my musicianship.
 
Thanks in advance!

Hi there Positively Charged it is not as difficult as one may think. Once you can determine what the key is that the particular chord appears in then you will know what all the scale chords are. The bass is the key as well. The bass note will often be playing the root note or tonic of the chord and that puts you a long way ahead.

The polyphonic version of Melodyne is probably one app that could help you in this area. It will let you look at multiple pitches at once and you should be able to identify them.

Many chords are also simply extensions or have added colours. eg A Dominant chord can have the b9 or #9 added or #5 or #11 as well. The root and the 5th are the framework, the 3rd and the 7th give the chord colour and the other notes are aded colour or extensions.

Greetings Jeff, and thank you for your thoughts.
 
I shall check out Melodyne.
 
As for the "figuring it out", I know what you're saying, that it's not that hard.  Except when it is, of course! 
 
As a further explanation of my personal difficulty, here's an example, and the impetus for my thread today:  About an hour ago I heard a fantastic song on somebody's website.  It's a dance song.  The site and the song are long gone now.  I could tell that the predominant "color" was minor.  That was all I could come up with.
 
I cannot tell if it was C minor, G minor, A minor, or ANYTHING ELSE-minor.  I also could not tell if it had any diminishments, dominants, susses, fifths, sevenths, ninths, or thirteenths.  This is really getting me down just writing this.
 
I've got a handle on major and minor and that's the limit of my current skill level.  I am in my 40's, have been listening to music all my life and playing it for a good portion of that, so this frustrates me.  We were not taught "recognition skills" in school band, after-school guitar lessons, or before-school jazz band practice. 
 
We were only taught to read and play, read and play, like little robots.  I played a single-note instrument for much of my youth, so "comprehensive chord recognition" didn't even happen by accident because I wasn't exposed to if often enough (i.e., see chord on page, hear it as I play or as band plays).  For that, I feel that my music education was not complete or comprehensive.
 
I am not tone-deaf by any means.  I can match pitches.  Play a C in my range and I can sing it.  I can find it on a keyboard, guitar, or horn.  But play a Bb and ask me what it is without letting me hunt-and-peck, and I'll have no damned idea.  Play a C-major chord, and I can tell you it's a major chord.  Play a G-minor.  I could tell you it's a minor, but no way could I tell you it was G-minor with the D on the bottom...
 
Anyway, that's the background on this.  And I think it's the sole reason for the migrane headache I now have. 
 
But thank you for trying to help; I'll check out Melodyne.

Perfect pitch...

I don't have it, but knew a lady who did. She was a singer, I gave her a bass as a gift, and taught her a few things on it. She comes to me a few months later to "complain" that she could not get it to tune up, something wrong with either the "A" or "D" strings. I had the extra money and knew a guy who did bridge and neck adjustments, gave it to him....$40 later he tells me the bridge adjustment for the "A" string was off...Impressive lady

For myself, back in high school, many years ago, our music theory teacher did us a great favor. Our class was directly after lunch break, we would be outside in the chorus room alcove smoking some good stuff while we could see him in the band room alcove a few yards away smoking some good stuff, (This was many years ago) then inside for class.  We would face the back of the piano, he would play two notes, and challenge us to name the interval. One of the most beneficial excersizes I have ever had, I can still name the intervals (important for chord identification) and also identify the root notes or key of most songs within the first few notes without an instrument in hand.

Moral of the story? Practice. Study. Challenge yourself. Smoke good stuff.

Later
Albert

I'm a non-smoker.  Of any/all things.  Made a promise to myself long long ago, and I always keep my promises to myself!   

However, on occasion I will savor a good beer or a glass of wine. 

I shall try the practice and study thing.  In 100% of cases, it eventually works.  But only if done frequently enough and long enough before end-of-life.

Suggestions for effective practice would be helpful.  Because none of us really knows how much little time we have left.  And I have already wasted four+ decades...

Thanks! 

ditto to Albert's post.....

I was in music theory class in high school. There were only 4 kids in the class. including me. So we had a very close group with the teacher. She was a good teacher having been in the music teaching end of things for decades....

She would very often have us do the listening and identifying exercises Albert spoke of. Then to kick it up a notch, she would have us sing the notes in a forth, or a sixth..... giving us the root on the piano.

All that stuff has to be practiced to be maintained and perfected by us mere mortals.

I'm not very good at this stuff either... but I play a lot of improvisational jazz- horn-inspired melodies on my guitar.

When I need to figure out a song's key I just grab a guitar and start playing... within a few seconds I have the song key figured out... then I put on my thinking cap and figure out the chords real slowly.

Maybe that approach can help you?

best regards,
mike

I majored in staying out of the army in college. One of the majors I had during that effort was in music (since I received a full-ride scholarship). In second year music theory the instructor would come in each morning, play a single note on the piano and tell us what the note was. Then he would proceed to play a chord progression which we had to write down by listening. By the middle of the year, the cue note he gave had nothing to do with the key he was in, and he began to add numerous inversions and extensions, often putting a 9 in the root, etc. I got so I could get most of it right, but it was pretty much all by relative pitch and recognizing the flavor or various chord types. It comes from divorcing yourself from calling notes and chords by name and thinking of them by the number of their scale tone for whatever key they're in. You eventually can see the structure of the chord progression from the intervals between them. I had a friend that had put little pieces of masking tape on his VW's speedometer that correlated the transmission whine in third gear with various notes. He used it to learn the chord progressions of songs he heard on the radio by varying his speed while driving. It worked pretty well, but you didn't want to be driving behind him while he was figuring out a song.

+1 Mike,

At church or gigs I listen to the instrument or vox.  I ear in the magic triad key (tonic (with root-note of course)) ... and narrow it down to 6-8 (of the 12 major keys) ... else sequentially (trial and error) ... if I'm having a bad day.

Seriously, the longest that should take me is 10-60 seconds ... no matter how pitch deaf I am that day.  If I can do it, anyone can!  So if someone sings a 'steady solo', you/I should be able to find his/her key that way also.

Of course it's trickier with the Minor keys and complex chord progressions (of hip hop and 'certain' film scores) ... then I'd rely on the machines at my level.

I found an ear training application a few years back.  IIRC, it was more about what type of chord it was - minor, major, 7th, maj 7th, maj 9, 11th etc.  It was a shareware program. 

In reality, the more you work out what a chord type is, the more you start recognizing them quicker.  After that, hearing what inversion it is starts to develop.  Try chart out chords just by ear without a reference instrument.  Don't worry about whether you get the exact chord right at first.  Consider recognizing the chord type as a battle victory and let winning the war come in time.