What is Air Chord? Play chords with your hands and a webcam
Until now, accompanying yourself on a song left you two options: learn to play an instrument, or press play on a backing track. Air Chord opens up a third path. You hold your hand up to your webcam, the sign you make turns into a chord, and you sing over it. No setup, no app to download — it all runs in your browser.
How does it work?
Air Chord uses a hand-tracking model that follows the 21 joints of your hand in real time. Your camera feed never leaves your device; everything is processed inside the browser. The system gives each of your hands a distinct job.
Left hand: the chord itself
The sign you make with your left hand selects the degree of the current scale:
- ☝️ index finger = 1st degree (Am in A minor)
- ✌️ two fingers = 2nd degree (B°)
- Three fingers, four fingers and an open palm = 3rd, 4th and 5th degrees
- 🤘 = 6th degree · 🤟 = 7th degree
The sound sustains for as long as you hold the sign in the air — like a synth pad. Tilt your hand inward and the chord turns major; tilt it outward and it turns minor. Hold it upright and you get the scale's own chord. ✊ Make a fist and the sound stops.
Right hand: effects
Your right hand never touches the chord itself; it only shapes the character of the sound. Tilt it left to add distortion, turn it right to brighten the waveform, or hold it upright for a clean tone. So your left hand controls "what is played" and your right hand controls "how it sounds".
Choosing a key, scale or maqam
The bottom panel lets you pick any key and scale you like: major, minor and maqam scales are all supported. When the scale changes, the hand signs stay exactly the same — only what each degree maps to changes. So the accompaniment you learned in A minor moves to E minor with a single click.
Rhythm, arpeggios and pads in your own voice
- Metronome + arpeggiator: Pick a BPM and let your chords walk in eighth notes (4/4 and 6/8).
- Step sequencer: Click the boxes to write your own kick–snare–hihat pattern.
- Sampler pads: Record your own voice or upload a file, then play it back as a pad.
- Vocal harmonizer: As you sing, the recording gets 3rd/5th backing harmonies that follow the scale.
Record your video
Air Chord records vertical video (9:16) for Reels and horizontal (16:9) for YouTube. The frame includes the hand skeleton overlay, the chord you're playing, the drum pattern and the ChordPlai watermark — so what you record is ready to share as is.
Who is it for?
Anyone who loves to sing but doesn't play an instrument. Music teachers also use it to demonstrate the idea of scale degrees in class, and creators use it to make performance videos that actually stop the scroll.