The G Chord

Basic Strum Pattern

The G chord is an incredibly useful chord for all types of music. In this lesson, we are going to be focusing on a particular fingering for this G chord, specific to bluegrass playing.

The G chord is the most technical chord of the ones that you've learned so far and this is because it spans across all six strings and you're using your pinky for it. To make the G chord, place your middle finger on the 3rd fret, 6th string. Then put your middle finger on the 3rd fret, 2nd string. And finally your pinky finger goes on the 3rd fret, 1st string. You can see that we are only using the 3rd fret for this chord, which should make it easy to remember. Push down the frets as hard as you need to to eliminate buzz or dead notes. The bass note you'll start out with for this chord is the 3rd fret, 6th string note.

Play along with this tab a bit to get a feel for the G chord and then move onto the next lesson, where you'll learn how to alternate bass.