Chromatic Tuner (Free, Online)

Play a note near your microphone and this free chromatic tuner instantly detects the pitch of any instrument — guitar, bass, ukulele, violin and more. Reference pitch (A=440Hz etc.) is adjustable, and all audio is processed entirely in your browser and never sent to a server.

This tuner analyzes your microphone audio entirely inside your browser in real time. Nothing is ever recorded, saved, or sent to a server.

Tips

  • For the most accurate reading, play in a quiet room and pluck a single string or sing a single sustained note. Playing a chord or multiple notes at once can confuse the fundamental-pitch detection.
  • The reference pitch defaults to 440Hz, but orchestras and wind bands sometimes tune to around 442Hz — adjust it to match the ensemble you're playing with.
  • The closer the needle sits to the center and the cents reading to 0, the more accurate the pitch. Anything within ±5 cents shows as "In Tune".
  • If detection feels unstable due to microphone sensitivity or background noise, try moving the instrument closer to the microphone or finding a quieter spot.
  • Guitars and ukuleles can be fine-tuned not just on open strings but also while fretting a note, which is useful for checking intonation up the neck.

Frequently Asked Questions

A chromatic tuner recognizes every note of the chromatic (12-note) scale rather than being locked to a fixed set of strings or a specific tuning. It automatically identifies the pitch of whatever sound the microphone picks up, so — unlike a guitar-only tuner — it works for wind instruments, string instruments, and vocal practice alike.

A cent is one hundredth of a semitone (the distance between adjacent keys on a piano). A reading of 0 cents means the pitch matches theoretical tuning exactly; positive values mean it's slightly sharp (too high), negative values mean it's slightly flat (too low). Most people start to notice a pitch difference at around ±5 to 10 cents.

No. This tuner uses the browser's Web Audio API to analyze microphone audio entirely inside your browser in real time. No recording is ever saved, and nothing is ever uploaded to a server.

The most common causes are a note that's too quiet, loud background noise, or playing multiple notes (a chord) at once. Play a single string or note in a quiet environment and hold the instrument closer to the microphone for better accuracy.

For most popular music and everyday instrument tuning, 440Hz is the standard. However, some orchestras and wind bands tune to roughly 441–443Hz, so adjust the reference pitch to match the ensemble you're rehearsing or performing with.
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Side Note — How A=440Hz Became the Standard

The now-ubiquitous "A=440Hz" reference pitch was proposed at an international conference in London in 1939 and formally adopted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO 16 in 1955. Before that, the reference pitch varied widely between orchestras and regions, so it wasn't unusual for the same piece to sound at a noticeably different pitch depending on where it was performed.

The pitch-detection technique behind this tool is a classic signal-processing algorithm called autocorrelation. It shifts a waveform against a copy of itself by small time increments and measures how closely they match at each shift; the shift with the strongest match reveals the period of the fundamental frequency — the pitch we perceive. Because instrument tones are rich in overtones, naive frequency analysis often mistakes an overtone for the fundamental, and autocorrelation is well known for being more robust against that error.

Many people feel uneasy about tools that use a microphone, but this tuner never stores a recording and never sends audio to an external server. Every bit of analysis happens locally inside your browser, and the captured audio is discarded the instant you close the page.

A metronome is the natural companion for keeping steady time, while a note-to-frequency reference table is handy when you want to look up the exact frequency of a specific note before you start tuning. Combining pitch, rhythm, and frequency knowledge makes day-to-day instrument practice noticeably more efficient.

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