Augmented Chords Guitar

About Augmented Chords on Guitar

The augmented chord — written with "aug" or a plus sign after the root letter, as in Caug or C+ — is a three-note chord built from the root, the major 3rd and the augmented 5th (formula 1 – 3 – ♯5). Start from a major chord and raise the 5th by a single fret and you have it. That one semitone removes the only perfect interval in the chord, and what is left is two major 3rds stacked, dividing the octave into three equal steps. The symmetry has a consequence worth knowing before you learn the shapes: there are only four different augmented chords in all twelve keys. C, E and G♯ spell Caug, Eaug and G♯aug alike — which name applies depends entirely on what the music around it is treating as the root. The same symmetry means every shape on these pages repeats four frets up and four frets down. The augmented triad does not occur in the major scale. It appears on the third degree of the harmonic minor scale, and most guitarists meet it as a passing chord: play C, then Caug, then F or Am, and the G climbs a semitone to G♯ and then to A while the rest of the chord holds still. It is also a stock altered dominant — an augmented chord built on the 5th degree pulls back to the tonic harder than a plain major does, which is why doo-wop, 60s pop and jazz all reach for it. The Beatles open "Oh! Darling" on an E augmented chord. Each root here gets three voicings: the A-string root form, the D-string root form, and an easy top-three-string triad that never leaves the first four frets.