E · Guitar

Remember the first chord you ever learned? Odds are it looked a lot like this one. E major is the sound of "we made it": the song lands on it and your shoulders drop on their own. Tap the player below and notice — nothing missing, nothing extra.

Listen first

What you just heard

Go back to the audio and catch the arpeggio note by note. There are only three: E, G# and B. 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 — 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 guitar, six strings give the chord room to breathe — some positions use them all, others ask you to mute the lowest ones. So start with the first position below — it uses 3 open strings, so the 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. Everyone goes through it; it doesn't last.

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

Above, the same E, 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 E 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 E?

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

Where this chord lives

So where does this chord show up in real life? Almost always as III in C# minor, VII in F# minor, VI in G# 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 · see it in Chord & Fret

Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · open in Chord & Fret

Real songs pass through here: Rock · mixolídio clássico · Rock · blues frame · Reggae · vamp menor · Forró · I-IV-V simples · Blues · twelve-bar · Blues · twelve-bar

Where it tends to go

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

When you want to go further

When the solo comes around, E Ionian (E F# G# A B C# D# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); E Lydian (E F# G# A# B C# D# · 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 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 E as home, the E Ionian scale fits entirely — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (B) pulls back, the leading tone Eb is the note that wants to resolve home.

Swaps that work:

• Dbm7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
• Abm7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function

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

One last test: play E and let it ring. Comfortable, right? Exactly. Now come see what happens when we add one note and take that comfort away: E7.

Updated July 9, 2026