Chord & FretA · Electric guitar
Some chords decorate a song; some chords hold it up. A major is the holding kind: foundation, not ornament. Give the audio below a listen and feel the floor.
Listen first
What you just heard
Go back to the audio and catch the arpeggio note by note. There are only three: A, C# and E. The middle one is the one that matters. That's the major third, and it's what gives this chord its wide-open-day face — file that name away, because in a minute we'll move exactly that note and you'll hear the weather change.
Now it's your hands' turn
On the electric guitar a chord needs only a few clear notes — the amp sustains them and fills the space, so you mute the strings you are not playing and let the tone carry the rest. So start with the first position below — it uses 2 open strings, so the electric guitar does half the work for you — the position marked with ⭐ is the easiest to play. Before you get discouraged for nothing: play the notes one by one before strumming. If one sounds muffled, a finger is touching the next string. Adjust, try again. It bugs you for a week and then it's automatic.
1 more shape of this chord on the neck
Chord & Fret Pro maps over 200,000 voicings and inversions — hear and play them all.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · open in Chord & Fret
Above, the same A, higher up the neck. No rush — but the day a song wants this chord brighter and tighter, you'll already have the address.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is A?
A: A Major. The notes are A, C#, E (fixed-do: La, Do#, Mi) — the degrees 1–3–5.
Where this chord lives
So where does this chord show up in real life? Almost always as VI in C# minor, III in F# minor, VII in B minor. Don't memorize that — just notice that the same shape plays different roles in different songs, the way a word changes meaning with the sentence.
Transpose & Capo — Need it in another key? Move the whole chart and find the easiest capo · use it in Chord & Fret
Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · see it in Chord & Fret
Real songs pass through here: Rock · mixolídio clássico · Rock · blues frame · Reggae · vamp maior · Forró · vamp nordestino · Forró · I-IV-V simples · Blues · twelve-bar
Where it tends to go
Treating A as the home chord (I) of its key, it tends to go toward the pre-dominant (Bm / D) or the dominant (E / G#°) — and the dominant pulls back home. It's a tendency, not a law.
Every shape of A lives in Chord & Fret Pro — 4 instruments, 16 tunings, 41 chord types and 57 scales, in every key. Start free. Unlock everything with Pro. 100% offline. Free to start, no card needed.
When you want to go further
When it's time to improvise over it, A Ionian (A B C# D E F# G# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); A Lydian (A B C# D# E F# G# · 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7: the major scale with a raised fourth — one extra step of daydream) fit entirely. The swaps below are for when your ear gets bored of the obvious.
A Ionian
3 more scale positions on the neck
Part of over 35,000 mapped scale shapes in Chord & Fret Pro — see and play every one.
The same A Ionian in its main shapes along the neck — pick whichever position sits under your hand. The rings mark the guide notes (the 3rd and 7th) that carry this chord's color.
Scale — The whole scale on the neck — in boxes or 3 notes per string; on the major modes, on guitar in standard tuning, with the CAGED forms named · open in Chord & Fret
Improvising in context
To improvise over A as home, the A Ionian scale covers it whole — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (E) pulls back, the leading tone Ab is the note that wants to resolve home.
Swaps that work:
- Gbm7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
- Dbm7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · try it in Chord & Fret
A is home. And home makes more sense once you step outside for a minute: A7 is the door — go see what's out there.