C · Electric guitar

A room full of friends, somebody borrows a electric guitar, and the first sound out is almost always a chord like this. C major is half the world's starting point. Press play down there.

Listen first

What you just heard

Now listen to the arpeggio, one note at a time. There are only three: C, E and G. Keep your ear on the middle one. That's the major third, and it's what gives this chord its wide-open-day face — remember the name, 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. One tip from someone who's watched a lot of people get stuck: 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.

Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · see it in Chord & Fret

Above, the same C, higher up the neck. No rush — but the day a song wants this chord brighter and tighter, you'll already have the address.

Every shape of C 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. Made by musicians, no ads.

What is C?

C: C Major. The notes are C, E, G (fixed-do: Do, Mi, Sol) — the degrees 1–3–5.

Where this chord lives

So where does this chord show up in real life? Almost always as VII in D minor, VI in E minor, III in A 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 · try it in Chord & Fret

Real songs pass through here: Sertanejo · eixo pop · Sertanejo · clássica caipira · Pop · axis · Pop · axis rotação · Mpb · ii-V-I · Mpb · IV ao iv

Where it tends to go

Treating C as the home chord (I) of its key, it tends to go toward the pre-dominant (Dm / F) or the dominant (G / B°) — and the dominant pulls back home. Typically, not a rule.

When you want to go further

When the solo comes around, C Ionian (C D E F G A B · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); C Lydian (C D E F# G A B · 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.

Scale — The whole scale on the neck — in boxes or three notes per string, with an exercise and a tempo ramp · use it in Chord & Fret

Improvising in context

To improvise over C as home, the C Ionian scale fits entirely — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (G) pulls back, the leading tone B is the note that wants to resolve home.

Swaps that work:

• Am7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
• Em7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function

Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · open in Chord & Fret

One last test: play C and let it ring. Comfortable, right? Exactly. Now come see what happens when we add one note and take that comfort away: C7.

Updated July 9, 2026