Chord & FretG7 · Ukulele
Breathe in right now. Hold it. ...Feel your body asking for the second half? G7 is a song breathing like that — first half only. Press play down there.
Listen first
What you just heard
Why does it sound unfinished? Inside G7, two notes are arguing: B and F. Go back to the audio and catch the arpeggio note by note and catch the second and the last note — the distance between them is the tritone, the tensest interval tonal music knows. G and D keep the house standing while those two argue inside it. And an argument, you know, demands a resolution.
Now it's your hands' turn
On the ukulele, the high reentrant G makes every shape light — and with four strings, every note is exposed. So grab the first position below — 1 open string to help you; the position marked with ⭐ is the easiest to play. Now the experiment that explains this chord better than any explanation: play G7, count to three, then play C. Felt the door close? Do it again. That relief is the reason this chord exists.
2 more shapes of this chord on the neck
Chord & Fret Pro maps 218,399 voicings and inversions — hear and play them all.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · open in Chord & Fret
Save the positions below for when the blues calls: over there, this chord is the house language.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is G7?
G7: G Major with Seventh. The notes are G, B, D, F (fixed-do: Sol, Si, Re, Fa) — the degrees 1–3–5–b7.
Where this chord lives
Its job is fixed: G7 is a dominant, and dominants live as VII7 in A minor, V7 in C major. Plainly: where it enters, the song is about to leave the room. A chart full of 7th chords is a song that won't sit still.
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
Where it tends to go
Treating G7 as the home chord (I) of its key, it tends to go toward the pre-dominant (Am / C) or the dominant (D / F#°) — and the dominant pulls back home. Typically, not a rule.
When you want to go further
For soloing, G Mixolydian (G A B C D E F · 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7: the major scale with a lowered seventh — the blues accent); G Lydian dominant (G A B C# D E F · 1 2 3 #4 5 6 b7: a mixolydian with a raised fourth: the dominant in formalwear) cover the whole chord. And look at the first swap on the list below: that's the famous tritone substitution, a second dominant hiding three whole steps away, the one arrangers reach for when they want to arrive at the same place by a prettier road.
G Mixolydian
4 more scale positions on the neck
That's 35,178 mapped scale shapes in Chord & Fret Pro, ready to play.
The same G Mixolydian 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 three notes per string, with an exercise and a tempo ramp · open in Chord & Fret
Improvising in context
To improvise over G7 as home, the G Mixolydian scale fits entirely — 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:
- Db7Db7Db7Db7 — Tritone substitution (shared 3rd–7th tritone)
- Dm7Dm7Dm7Dm7 — Forms a II–V: precede with this ii
- Abdim7 — Passing diminished (ascending)
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · try it in Chord & Fret
You already know how this sentence ends. The period after G7 is called C — go there and close it with your own fingers.
Every shape of G7 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. Made by musicians, no ads.