Chord & FretG · Guitar
A room full of friends, somebody borrows a guitar, and the first sound out is almost always a chord like this. G major is half the world's starting point. Hit play below.
Listen first
What you just heard
Now listen to the arpeggio, one note at a time. There are only three: G, B and D. Keep your ear on the middle one. 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 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. It's annoying for two days and then never again.
2 more shapes 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 · use it in Chord & Fret
The other positions are the same chord living on different floors of the neck. You don't need them today. But when a song asks for it higher and tighter, you'll know where it lives.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is G?
G: G Major. The notes are G, B, D (fixed-do: Sol, Si, Re) — the degrees 1–3–5.
Where this chord lives
So where does this chord show up in real life? Almost always as III in E minor, VII in A minor, VI 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 · see 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 · Bossa nova · ii-V-I
Where it tends to go
Treating G as the home chord (I) of its key, it usually moves toward the pre-dominant (Am / C) or the dominant (D / F#°) — and the dominant pulls back home. It's a tendency, not a law.
When you want to go further
When it's time to improvise over it, G Ionian (G A B C D E F# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); G Lydian (G A B C# D E F# · 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.
G Ionian
3 more scale positions on the neck
Chord & Fret Pro maps over 35,000 mapped scale shapes — hear and play them all.
The same G 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 · try it in Chord & Fret
Improvising in context
To improvise over G as home, the G Ionian scale covers it whole — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (D) pulls back, the leading tone F# is the note that wants to resolve home.
Swaps that work:
- Em7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
- Bm7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · open in Chord & Fret
One last test: play G and let it ring. Comfortable, right? Exactly. Now come see what happens when we add one note and take that comfort away: G7.
Every shape of G 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.