Chord & FretF# · Guitar
A room full of friends, somebody borrows a guitar, and the first sound out is almost always a chord like this. F# 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: F#, A# and C#. 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 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 — 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.
2 more shapes of this chord on the neck
Part of over 200,000 voicings and inversions in Chord & Fret Pro — see and play every one.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · see it in Chord & Fret
Above, the same F#, 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 F#?
F#: F# Major. The notes are F#, A#, C# (fixed-do: Fa#, La#, Do#) — the degrees 1–3–5.
Where this chord lives
So where does this chord show up in real life? Almost always as III in D# minor, VII in G# minor, VI 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 · open in Chord & Fret
Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · use it in Chord & Fret
Real songs pass through here: Gospel · subida do IV
Where it tends to go
Treating F# as the home chord (I) of its key, it usually moves toward the pre-dominant (G#m / B) or the dominant (C# / E#°) — and the dominant pulls back home. Typically, not a rule.
When you want to go further
When it's time to improvise over it, F# Ionian (F# G# A# B C# D# E# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); F# Lydian (F# G# A# B# C# D# E# · 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.
F# Ionian
3 more scale positions on the neck
That's over 35,000 mapped scale shapes in Chord & Fret Pro, ready to play.
The same F# 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 F# as home, the F# Ionian scale fits entirely — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (C#) pulls back, the leading tone F is the note that wants to resolve home.
Swaps that work:
- Ebm7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
- Bbm7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · try it in Chord & Fret
One last test: play F# and let it ring. Comfortable, right? Exactly. Now come see what happens when we add one note and take that comfort away: F#7.
Every shape of F# 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.