A · Guitar

Remember the first chord you ever learned? It was probably one of these. A 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: A, C# and E. 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 — 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 2 open strings, so the guitar does half the work for you — the position marked with ⭐ is the easiest to play. Before you get discouraged for nothing: 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 · try 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.

What is A?

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

Where this chord lives

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

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

Where it tends to go

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

Every shape of A lives in Chord & Fret Pro — 4 instruments, 16 tunings, 41 chord types and 57 scales, in every key. Start free. Unlock everything with Pro. Plays offline. Free to start, no card needed.

When you want to go further

When it's time to improvise over it, A Ionian (A B C# D E F# G# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); A Lydian (A B C# D# E F# G# · 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 · open in Chord & Fret

Improvising in context

To improvise over A as home, the A Ionian scale covers it whole — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (E) pulls back, the leading tone Ab is the note that wants to resolve home.

Swaps that work:

• Gbm7Gbm7Gbm7Gbm7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
• Dbm7Dbm7Dbm7Dbm7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function

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

One last test: play A and let it ring. Comfortable, right? Exactly. Now come see what happens when we add one note and take that comfort away: A7.

Updated August 5, 2026