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Why The Guitar is a MINOR Instrument

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I’ve often said that guitar is a minor instrument; however the other day someone called me on that and asked me to explain it. Playing guitar is harder than playing video games with ELO BOOST services, specially the ELO Boosting from P4rgaming. .

You see, that’s why the minor guitar scales sound best (in my humble opinion) on the guitar.

Not that other scales don’t sound good, but the minor ones sound great, and they have the added benefit of just lining up great, fingering-wise.

Have you ever noticed how the minor pentatonic or diatonic scale pattern has that row where all the notes on the one fret are used?

That’s not by accident folks!

So, WHY is the guitar minor?

Well, look at the notes of the standard E tuning: E-A-D-G-B-E

What chord do those notes form? (Didn’t think that was a chord? Gotcha.)

Well, the E, G and B form an E minor chord. The second E is a repeat, so we don’t worry about that. The D is a 7 in relation to the E, which means that so far we have an Em7 chord.

That just leaves us with that pesky A…

Well, A is a perfect fourth of E, and as such it can still work in the chord. The only weird part is that given its low octave, it muddies the sound a bit. (Try an Em7 with a higher A over top, and it will sound great).

So that leaves us with an Em7+4

Hence why the guitar is a minor instrument.

To learn more about the number system that governs all this stuff on the guitar, checkout my Unlocking I IV V course – that’s the kind of stuff you can have a handle on in no time flat.

You can find it here.

G Chord Notes: What 3 Notes Make a G Major Chord?

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What Notes Are in a G Chord?

The G major chord contains three notes: G, B, and D. These are the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes from the G major scale, which is the formula for building any major chord.

When you play a standard G chord on guitar, you’re actually playing these three notes multiple times across different strings:

  • 6th string (3rd fret): G
  • 5th string (2nd fret): B
  • 4th string (open): D
  • 3rd string (open): G
  • 2nd string (open): B
  • 1st string (3rd fret): G

Notice how G appears three times, B appears twice, and D appears once? That’s perfectly fine! Octaves and repeated notes don’t change the chord – as long as you have G, B, and D somewhere in there, it’s a G major chord.

Watch the Full Explanation

In this video, I’ll show you exactly how to find these notes on the fretboard and explain the 1-3-5 pattern in more detail:

Why These Three Notes?

All major chords follow the same pattern: the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes from the major scale. In the key of G, that means:

  • G (the 1st note, or “root”)
  • A (the 2nd) – not used in the chord
  • B (the 3rd)
  • C (the 4th) – not used in the chord
  • D (the 5th)

This 1-3-5 formula works for any major chord. For example, a C major chord uses C (1st), E (3rd), and G (5th) from the C major scale.

Different Ways to Play G Major

You can also add a D note on the 5th string (5th fret) for a fuller sound. This gives you two D notes in the chord instead of two B notes, creating a slightly different voicing while still maintaining the G-B-D combination.

Understanding how chords are built from scales helps you see patterns across the fretboard and gives you more freedom to voice chords in different ways.

Click here for the Unlocking I IV V Course

The Difference Between Major and Minor Chords

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Have you ever wondered what makes a minor chord different from a major chord? The difference boils down to a single note, which is the 3rd. The other two notes we put in every chord – EVERY chord – are the root note and the fifth. Those two notes are the same regardless of whether we’re talking about a major chord or a minor chord.

There are two types of thirds, major thirds and minor thirds. So, if you’ve got a minor third in between the root note and the fifth, you end up with a minor chord.

Major and minor thirds are the color notes, and they make great harmonies. Learning to use those thirds can really help your guitar playing, and that’s part of what this lesson is about.

If you’re not familiar with the scale degrees, and how they can be used like numbers, you might want to checkout my lesson on Unlocking I IV V, as it explains that in detail.

How To Create Your Own Guitar Chords

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In this video, you’ll learn how to create your own guitar chords, simply using open chords you already know, and a basic scale. The example is in the key of G, so our open chords are G, C, D and Em, Am and Bm. The relative minor scale is E minor, so we’ll use the E minor diatonic scale.

There’s nothing super complicated about this technique; basically we’re just adding notes from the scale to the chords to create new sounds that we don’t have in the basic chord forms. This technique can produce some cool ideas for song writing, jamming, or improvising.

To learn more about how chords are created, I recommend checking out my Unlocking I IV V course.

Tips For Changing Keys In A Song

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Have you ever wondered how to go about changing keys in a song? Possibly in the last verse, or in a bridge, or something like that?

If you’ve ever tried changing keys in a song before, it’s possible you’ve run into the question of which chords to use while doing that.

The trick that I teach in today’s guitar lesson is quite simple, but requires a little bit of knowledge of guitar music theory. The basic idea is that you use the V chord of the key that you’re starting in as the “push” chord for going to the next key. Then you can change to the I chord from the next key, and you’ll notice that the old V chord has now become the new IV chord! It is because this chord is shared between the two keys that you can use it for changing keys in a song, and it will always sound great.

In my Unlocking I IV V course I dig into this concept a lot more, and if you’ve gone through that course before you’ll know what I’m talking about. This is just one example of how numbers can actually be very useful in transposing music, because the example I gave above doesn’t require any note names, and yet it is applicable to every single key. To make this more specific, we can give names to those chords….

In the key of G, your I IV V chords are G C and D. The key you would shift up to from G is A, and the I IV V chords there are A D and E. Immediately you can see that the only shared chord is the D… So if you use the D chord just before shifting to the A, your ear isn’t going to complain.

Try changing keys in a song by using one of the other chords and you’re likely to draw some very strange looks from your audience!

Click Here For The Unlocking I IV V Course