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The most realistic virtual guitar online
Guitoro is the most realistic virtual guitar you can play online: a free online guitar and guitar simulator that runs in your web browser. Choose a steel-string acoustic, a classic guitar, an electric guitar or a four-string bass, pick a chord and strum the strings with your mouse, your finger or your computer keyboard.
Every note comes from recordings of real instruments, and the neck shows the fingering of each chord while it rings. That makes Guitoro a quick way to hear what a chord or a strumming pattern should sound like, see how it's played, and practice it at your own tempo. There's nothing to download and no account to create. It runs on a laptop, a tablet or a phone.
If you played the Google guitar doodle, Guitoro takes the idea further: six real strings, 15 chords in every key, and songs to play along with.
Realism
Most online guitars play a synthesized tone when you click a chord. Guitoro is built the other way round, from real instruments and real playing.
Every note is a recording of a real instrument: a steel-string acoustic, a classic guitar with nylon strings, a solid-body electric on its bridge pickup, and a four-string bass.
Each string sounds as your finger or mouse crosses it. Swipe down or up, fast or slow, and you hear the difference, down to a slow roll across the strings.
Chords use the shapes guitarists play, with open strings, barres and muted strings, so a G sounds like a G on a guitar, not on a keyboard.
Chucks, palm mutes, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends and vibrato, while the strings vibrate on screen as they ring.
Use cases
See where each finger goes on the neck, hear how the chord should sound, then copy the shape on a real guitar.
Listen to a pattern at a slow tempo, then strum it yourself over a drum beat until it feels steady.
Songs like Wonderwall, Hallelujah and I'm Yours come set up with the right key, capo, tempo and strum. Practice mode slows them down while you play along on your own guitar.
Type a chord progression under My songs, loop it with drums and bass, and record the idea before it's gone.
On a train, at the office or on holiday. A phone and a pair of headphones are enough.
See how guitar chords are voiced and how a progression lies on the fretboard, without learning to hold a guitar first.
Show a class a chord shape or a strum on a big screen, at any tempo, with every string visible.
Paste the chords of a song from a chord site and hear how it goes before you sit down to practice it.
Features
Steel-string acoustic, classic guitar, electric and four-string bass, each built from recorded samples. Sound presets range from Campfire and Concert Hall to Crunch, Classic Rock, Metal and Ambient.
Pick any of the 24 major and minor keys and the chord pads fill with the chords that fit it: the main triads, sevenths, sus and add9 chords. Edit puts any chord you type, like F#m7 or Dsus2, on a key.
While a chord rings, the neck shows finger numbers, barres, muted strings and the capo, so you can copy the shape exactly. Easy shapes skip the barre chords, Rich ones add notes.
Swipe across the strings to strum. A fast swipe plays louder, a slow drag plays the notes one by one, and a tap plucks a single string.
14 everyday strums, from Steady downs and the pop staple D DU U DU to shuffle and 6/8, reggae, funk and country styles, 35 strums from famous songs, and 12 picking patterns like Travis and classical p-i-m-a. Auto strum plays them for you.
Play single notes and melodies on the neck, with hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends and vibrato from the keyboard.
Overdrive, distortion and fuzz on the electric, plus bass, mid and treble, room or hall reverb, and delay on every instrument.
10 tunings, from Standard, Drop D and half step down to DADGAD and Open G, D and E, a capo up to fret 10, a left-handed guitar, and dark or light screens.
12 drum styles, including rock, funk, reggae, bossa nova and cajon, and 25 bass lines that follow your chords. Tempo goes from 10 to 220 BPM, with a metronome and a count-in.
Record takes of up to 10 minutes with the band, replay them and save them as WAV or a small compressed file. Takes stay in your browser.
Famous songs come set up to play along, and Practice slows them to anywhere from 20% to full speed. Paste your own from a chord site or a ChordPro file, pick a pattern, and Guitoro plays it. Lyrics are left out.
Play with the letters on your computer keyboard, with a mouse, or with up to five fingers at once on a touch screen.
Getting started
Seven steps from silence to a recorded take. The first two take a few seconds.
Pick Acoustic, Classic, Electric or Bass at the top of the page. You can switch at any time.
The key menu sits above the chord pads. The default is G major, which gives you G, C, D, Em and Am on the middle row.
Tap a chord pad, or press its letter on the keyboard. The middle row, A S D F G, holds the main chords of the key. Auto strum starts on, so the chord strums itself.
Turn Auto off, then swipe down across the strings for a downstroke and up for an upstroke. On a keyboard, H strums down, J strums up and Space moves to the next chord.
Open the Strum menu and pick a strum or picking pattern, from Steady downs to the strums of famous songs. With Auto and Loop on, it keeps playing while you hold a chord key.
Open Backing band from the menu, choose drums and a bass line, and press Play. Change chords and the bass follows.
Open Songs & recordings, choose Recordings, and press Record. Play, then use Stop next to the recording timer. Your takes stay in Recordings.
Keyboard
Your left hand holds the chords and your right hand strums, just like on a guitar. Keys follow their physical position on a US QWERTY keyboard, and the Keyboard guide in the menu shows the full map for each instrument.
| Chords | Three rows of five: A to G for the main chords, Q to T for sevenths, Z to B for extra colors like sus4 and add9 |
|---|---|
| Strum | H down, J up, K down when pressed and up when released, N hard down, M slow down |
| Pick | Y arpeggio, U bass note, I O P the top three strings |
| Feel | L chuck, ; palm mute, Shift hard strum, Alt slow strum |
| Next chord | Space. In Practice mode it plays and pauses the song |
| Solo mode | Each row is a string and each column a fret. Left and Right arrows move up and down the neck, Up bends, Down adds vibrato |
Learn chords
In the key of G these four chords sit on the middle row of pads, and together they play hundreds of pop and folk songs. Press each one and watch the neck: the numbers are your fingers, from 1 for the index to 4 for the little finger. An X marks a string you don't play, and a bar across the strings is a barre.
Play C, then Am. The chord name above the guitar tells you which is major and which is minor, and your ear learns the bright and the sad sound. Do the same with the sevenths on the top row.
Put your fingers where the dots are, strum, and compare your sound with Guitoro's. A buzzing or dead string usually means a finger is too far from the fret or touching the next string.
Open Songs & recordings, pick a song or paste a song's chords under My songs, choose Practice, and start around 60 BPM. Change chords on the beat with Space, then raise the tempo a few beats per minute at a time.
Switch the key to hear the same chords higher or lower, or in a minor key. Put a capo on in Guitar settings and the same shapes sound higher, which is how guitarists play in keys like A or B with easy open chords. Drop D and Open G show how a tuning changes the whole sound.
Low E string on the left. Numbers are fingers, O is an open string, X is a string you don't play.
Learn strumming
Strum patterns are written with D for a downstroke and U for an upstroke, and x for a muted chuck. The trick is to keep your hand moving down on every number and up on every "and", even when it misses the strings.
Counted "1, 2 and, and, 4 and": the down on beat 3 is left out, but the hand still moves.
With Auto on, choose a pattern from the Strum menu and hold a chord key. The menu shows each pattern as a grid of downs and ups.
Set the tempo to 60 or 70 BPM. Every pattern is easier to feel at half speed.
Turn Auto off, start the drums from Backing band or the metronome next to Play, and strum along with H and J or by swiping the strings.
Record a take and listen for uneven strokes. When it sounds steady, speed up.
Steady downs, then Down-up eighths, then the pop staple, then 6/8 ballad and Shuffle. After that, try the strums taken from songs like Wonderwall, Hallelujah and Knockin' on Heaven's Door.
Songs
Each song page has its chords with diagrams and its strum or picking pattern written out, and sets the guitar up for you: key, capo, tempo and chords. The easy guitar songs page groups them by how many chords they have.
Playing a real guitar along? The free online guitar tuner listens through your microphone, with pages for drop D, half step down and open tunings. There is a free ukulele tuner too.
Every major, minor and seventh chord in all 12 keys, with finger charts and an easier version where there is one: the guitar chord chart. Each chord page opens the guitar with that chord ready to play.
FAQ
Yes. It runs in your browser with no download and no sign-up.
Yes. Tap a chord pad and swipe the strings. In portrait, the enlarged neck sits below the strings with four frets per page. In landscape, the neck and strings sit side by side. Tap the frets to play notes directly in chord mode.
Yes. The left side of the keyboard holds 15 chords and the right side strums, picks and mutes. See the table above or open the Keyboard guide in the app.
It shows you what to play and how it should sound: chord shapes, strum patterns and songs at any tempo. It can't build finger strength or check your hand, so use it next to a real guitar, not instead of one.
Yes. Pick a song and choose Practice. The on-screen keyboard steps aside, a speed slider slows the song to as little as 20%, and Space starts and stops it. Tune up first with the online tuner.
Browsers only start sound after you touch the page, so tap a chord pad or a string first. Then check the device volume and the tab's sound. Bluetooth headphones can add a delay, and wired headphones or speakers fix it.
In this browser, on this device. Export the takes you want to keep as WAV or a compressed audio file before you clear browser data or switch devices.