Three String Guitar Chords

June 5th, 2017
guitar, music
The high three strings of a guitar are G-B-E, which is an interval of a third and then a fourth. The other strings of my guitar are broken right now, so I've been playing around with what chords work on these three strings.

There are three different major chords, each corresponding to a different permutation of 1-3-5:

(I've labeled each finger with its scale degree, which is kind of non-standard but seems useful.)

1-3-5: "barred-A"
|-5-|---|---|
|---|---|-3-|
|---|---|-1-|
5-1-3: "barred-D"
|---|-3-|---|
|---|---|-1-|
|---|-5-|---|
3-5-1: "barred-E"
|---|-1-|---|
|---|-5-|---|
|---|---|-3-|

Each major chord also has a corresponding minor chord:

1-b3-5: "barred-Am"
|-5-|---|---|
|---|b3-|---|
|---|---|-1-|
5-1-b3: "barred-Dm"
|b3-|---|---|
|---|---|-1-|
|---|-5-|---|
b3-5-1: "barred-Em"
|---|-1-|---|
|---|-5-|---|
|---|b3-|---|

I think the music theory name for these would be "inversions", since the root (1) isn't always the lowest note.

(These are fun to play around with on their own, but I also think if I were trying to figure out more trumpet parts they would be pretty helpful for thinking about voicings.)

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Exercises in benchmarking and evals, part 7: DeepSWE, Senior SWE-Bench, napkin math, and winter tires

This is part of a series of exercises on benchmarking, evals, and experimental design (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)1. We're going to look at three questions, which are presented before the answers to give you time to think about the questions before seeing the a…

via Posts on July 23, 2026

Donation recommendations for effective altruists (July 2026)

My recommendation for donors who are American citizens or permanent residents is that they donate directly to high-value political candidates.

via Thing of Things July 22, 2026

Let's Taboo the V-Word

Read this post on Substack.

via Home July 12, 2026

more     (via openring)