Chord library · minor chord
G Minor Chord: Notes, Guitar, Ukulele and Piano
G minor chord (G minor, Gm) = G B♭ D. 4 guitar and 4 ukulele fingerings checked note by note, plus piano keys, staff and the keys that contain it.
Short answer
The G minor chord (Gm) has three notes: G, B♭ and D. Above the root G it has a minor third and a perfect fifth. This page shows 4 guitar fingerings, 4 ukulele fingerings and the keyboard and the staff. It also covers the 7 keys that contain the chord and what the OpenScore Lieder say about it.
- Groot
- B♭3rd
- D5th
- 3notes: G · B♭ · D
- 4guitar fingerings (1 open-position)
- 4ukulele fingerings
- 7of the 24 keys contain this chord
Fingerings: chords-db (MIT licence), checked note by note. Song statistics: OpenScore Lieder, mostly 19th-century art songs, analysed by software; they describe that repertoire, not music in general.
On this page: notes and staff · guitar · ukulele · piano · keys · real songs · look-alikes · questions
The G minor chord: notes, intervals and inversions
A minor triad is built from root + minor third + perfect fifth: a stack of a minor third (3 semitones) with a major third (4) on top. On G that gives G, B♭ and D. Each chord tone gets its own letter name (root G, third B, fifth D), so the spelling is fixed by the rule, not by taste. Spelling rule: the third is written with the letter B (two letters above G) and the fifth with the letter D (four letters above G), which is why the chord contains B♭ and not A♯.
Pitch-class numbers (C = 0): 7, 10, 2. The same three pitch classes sound in every octave and in every inversion.
| Chord tone | Note | Interval above the root | Semitones | On the keyboard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Root | G | unison | 0 | white key |
| Third | B♭ | minor third | 3 | black key |
| Fifth | D | perfect fifth | 7 | white key |
G minor on the staff: root position and both inversions
Treble clef. The notes are the same three each time; only the lowest one changes. Drawn in your browser (VexFlow); the notes are also written out under each staff.
G – B♭ – D
B♭ – D – G
D – G – B♭
An inversion puts another chord tone in the bass. The chord symbol with a slash names the bass note; figured bass writes the interval above the bass.
| Position | Notes, bottom to top | Bass note | Chord symbol | Figured bass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Root position | G – B♭ – D | G | Gm | 5/3 (usually not written) |
| First inversion | B♭ – D – G | B♭ | Gm/B♭ | 6 |
| Second inversion | D – G – B♭ | D | Gm/D | 6/4 |
Gm on guitar: 4 fingerings
The database lists 4 fingerings for Gm on the guitar: 2 barre shapes, 1 open-position shape and 1 closed shape. Strings are drawn left to right in the order E A D G B E (standard tuning, lowest string first). A number inside a dot is the finger (1 = index, 4 = little finger); × marks a string you do not play, ○ an open string, and a bar across the strings is a barre (one finger pressing several strings at the same fret). The letters under each diagram are the note each string sounds, spelled as in the chord (G, B♭, D).
3 of the 4 shapes have the root in the bass; the other has the third or the fifth in the bass (a slash chord such as Gm/D).
- Frets 3 1 0 0 3 3
- Fingers 2 1 – – 3 4
- Notes G B♭ D G D G
- Bass G — root position
- Frets 3 5 5 3 3 3
- Fingers 1 3 4 1 1 1
- Barre across 6 strings at fret 3
- Notes G D G B♭ D G
- Bass G — root position
- Frets × × 5 7 8 6
- Fingers – – 1 3 4 2
- Notes G D G B♭
- Bass G — root position
- Frets 10 10 12 12 11 10
- Fingers 1 1 3 4 2 1
- Barre across 6 strings at fret 10
- Notes D G D G B♭ D
- Bass D — second inversion, written Gm/D
Counted from the shapes above.
| Shape | Frets (low string first) | Strings sounding | Bass note | Reads as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 1 0 0 3 3 | 6 | G | Gm |
| 2 | 3 5 5 3 3 3 | 6 | G | Gm |
| 3 | × × 5 7 8 6 | 4 | G | Gm |
| 4 | 10 10 12 12 11 10 | 6 | D | Gm/D |
Gm on ukulele: 4 fingerings
The database lists 4 fingerings for Gm on the ukulele: 3 closed shapes and 1 open-position shape. Strings are drawn left to right in the order G C E A (standard tuning; the G string is tuned high, so the strings do not run from low to high). A number inside a dot is the finger (1 = index, 4 = little finger); × marks a string you do not play, ○ an open string, and a bar across the strings is a barre (one finger pressing several strings at the same fret). The letters under each diagram are the note each string sounds, spelled as in the chord (G, B♭, D).
1 of the 4 shapes has the root in the bass; the other 3 have the third or the fifth in the bass (a slash chord such as Gm/D).
- Frets 0 2 3 1
- Fingers – 2 3 1
- Notes G D G B♭
- Bass D — second inversion, written Gm/D
- Frets 3 2 3 1
- Fingers 3 2 4 1
- Notes B♭ D G B♭
- Bass D — second inversion, written Gm/D
- Frets 3 2 3 5
- Fingers 2 1 3 4
- Notes B♭ D G D
- Bass D — second inversion, written Gm/D
- Frets 7 7 6 5
- Fingers 3 4 2 1
- Notes D G B♭ D
- Bass G — root position
Gm on the piano keyboard
Press the three keys G, B♭, D together. The pictures show the same chord in root position and both inversions, using the voicings of the staves above; the brass keys are the chord tones and the darker one is the root. The keyboards are computed from the spelled notes above, not copied from a database.
G – B♭ – D
B♭ – D – G
D – G – B♭
Key numbers count the 88 keys of a full piano from the lowest A (key 1); middle C is key 40.
| Chord tone | Note | Key colour | Key number (1–88) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Root | G | white | 35 |
| Third | B♭ | black | 38 |
| Fifth | D | white | 42 |
Which keys contain the G minor chord?
The script builds this chord type on every degree of the 24 keys of this site (the scales on the key pages) and keeps the chords whose three pitch classes equal Gm. Result: 6 of the 24 keys contain it among their own chords, and 1 more borrows it from the parallel minor key. Its home is G minor, where it is the tonic chord.
The two song columns are the number of OpenScore Lieder songs (of 1,462) and of Mutopia scores whose home key is the key in that row, taken from the key pages. They show how much music is written in the key where the chord lives, not how often the chord itself sounds; that is the next section. In the Lieder the major or minor mode is an estimate, the key signature is exact.
Gm in real music: what the OpenScore Lieder show
These numbers come from the OpenScore Lieder corpus: 1,156 art songs with an automatic Roman-numeral chord analysis made by the AugmentedNet software (v1.9.1) and not checked by a person. They are mostly 19th-century songs for voice and piano and say nothing about pop, rock or jazz.
Because the labels are Roman numerals, the statistics are about roles, and Gm plays 6 of them in the 24 keys. The role it plays most often in this data is i, in G minor: chords with that role make up 24.4% of all chord segments in minor-key passages (in a passage in G minor that chord is G minor).
The analysis labels chords by role (Roman numeral), not by name. For each role Gm plays in the 24 keys, the share of all chord segments in major (or minor) passages that carry that role, in any key. Inversions and sevenths are folded into the plain chord, so I includes I6 and I7.
| Role | Where Gm has this role | Passages | Share of chord segments | Chord segments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | G minor, written Gm | minor-key passages | 24.4% | 7,142 |
| ii | F major, written Gm | major-key passages | 6.8% | 4,206 |
| iv | D minor, written Gm | minor-key passages | 6.1% | 1,782 |
| vi | B♭ major, written Gm | major-key passages | 4.5% | 2,810 |
| iii | E♭ major, written Gm | major-key passages | 2.0% | 1,266 |
Not among the 30 most frequent chord labels, so no share is given: v in C minor.
Share of the cases in which the next different chord is the one shown, for each role the chord plays; names are the chords of that key. Only roles with a published transition table (the 10 most used chords per mode) appear.
| Role | Key | Times the role occurs (any key) | Most common next | 2nd | 3rd | 4th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gm as i | G minor | 5,784 | D (V) 34.0% | Cm (iv) 10.7% | E♭ (VI) 7.1% | iiø 6.5% |
| Gm as ii | F major | 3,955 | C (V) 44.8% | F (I) 21.6% | Cad64 3.8% | Dm (vi) 3.4% |
| Gm as iv | D minor | 1,578 | Dm (i) 33.8% | A (V) 24.1% | V/III 4.8% | iiø 4.6% |
| Gm as vi | B♭ major | 2,547 | F (V) 21.3% | B♭ (I) 20.4% | Cm (ii) 16.5% | E♭ (IV) 8.1% |
| Gm as iii | E♭ major | 1,110 | B♭ (V) 27.9% | E♭ (I) 19.8% | Cm (vi) 13.4% | Fm (ii) 9.9% |
How the songs in G minor end: of the 48 songs with a readable ending, 41 (85%) close on the tonic chord, Gm, the chord this page is about. The rest end on V (4) or in some other way (3). Classified from the last two different chords of the automatic analysis; see How songs end.
More about the data: Chord progressions in real songs covers the progressions of all 1,156 analysed songs, and Most common keys in music shows which keys the open music collections use most. Everything here counts chord labels written by software in 19th-century art songs; it is not a ranking of chords in popular music.
Chords easily confused with Gm
Found by comparing the pitch classes of all 168 chords in this library. Sharing two notes is why such chords can stand in for each other in a progression; a chord changes mood or function through the one note that differs.
| Chord | Its notes | Shared with Gm | The one note that differs | Root relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| G major | G – B – D | G and D | B♭ here, B there | same root (parallel chord) |
| G suspended 2nd | G – A – D | G and D | B♭ here, A there | same root (parallel chord) |
| G suspended 4th | G – C – D | G and D | B♭ here, C there | same root (parallel chord) |
| B♭ major | B♭ – D – F | B♭ and D | G here, F there | root a minor third above |
| C suspended 2nd | C – D – G | D and G | B♭ here, C there | root a perfect fourth above |
| D suspended 4th | D – G – A | D and G | B♭ here, A there | root a perfect fifth above |
| E♭ major | E♭ – G – B♭ | G and B♭ | D here, E♭ there | root a major third below |
Enharmonic name. G minor has no enharmonic spelling that needs only single sharps or flats.
Background from Wikipedia: minor chords, chords and inversion
Minor chord
Overview
A minor chord is a triad with a minor third and a perfect fifth above the root. The minor triad built on C is spelled C–E♭–G.
Structure
The primary intervals in a minor chord are the minor third above the root, and the perfect fifth above the root. There is a major third between the third and fifth. It is a tertian chord because it is built in thirds.A minor triad is represented by the integer notation {0,3,7}.
On lead sheets, a minor chord is sometimes indicated by the letter of its root followed by the abbreviation "MI" in small caps font. Other variations include the abbreviations (in normal font) "min", "mi", "m", or the minus sign character "-". For example, D min, D mi, D m, or D -.
The minor chord timbre is sometimes described as darker than its major counterpart.
Source: Wikipedia, “Minor chord” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-07-02.
Chord
A chord is the simultaneous sound of two or more musical notes. The most common chord has three notes and is known as a triad. Added tone chords, extended chords, and tone clusters can have more than three notes and are common in contemporary classical music and jazz.
An arpeggio is a chord where notes are sounded separately. A series of chords is sometimes called a chord progression. There are several ways to notate chords including figured bass, Roman numerals, the Nashville Number System, and alphabetical chord notation.
Source: Wikipedia, “Chord (music)” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-04-05.
Inversion: root position and inverted chords
Root position and inverted chords
A chord is in root position if its root is the lowest note. This is sometimes known as the parent chord of its inversions. For example, the root of a C-major triad is C, so a C-major triad will be in root position if C is the lowest note and its third and fifth (E and G, respectively) are above it – or, on occasion, do not sound at all.
In an inverted chord, the root is not the lowest note. The inversions are numbered in the order their lowest notes appear in a close root-position chord (from bottom to top).
- In the first inversion, the lowest note is E – the third of the triad – with the fifth and the root stacked above it (the root now shifted an octave higher), forming the intervals of a minor third and a minor sixth above the inverted bass of E, respectively.
- In the second inversion, the lowest note is G – the fifth of the triad – with the root and the third above it (both again shifted an octave higher), forming a fourth and a sixth above the (inverted) bass of G, respectively.
Source: Wikipedia, “Inversion (music)” — CC BY-SA 4.0 — text excerpted; see the article for the full text and authors. Revision of 2026-07-03.
Practise the G minor chord
Pages on this site that go with this chord. The worksheet counts are read from the worksheet pages themselves.
Charts and practice
- Guitar chord chart (printable) the common open and barre chords of all 12 keys on one sheet you can print
- Ukulele chord chart (printable) the same for GCEA ukulele
- Piano chord chart (printable) chords and inversions on the keyboard, all 12 keys
- Interval chart see the minor third and the perfect fifth that make Gm
- Treble clef note names find G, B♭ and D on the staff
- Staff paper write Gm and its inversions by hand
- Minor scales chart the scale that goes with this chord, with every note spelled
- Key signatures chart see which keys carry the sharps or flats in Gm
- Circle of fifths the keys that contain Gm sit within a step or two of G minor
- Chord identification practice name chords from the notes
- Interval identification practice train the ear and eye for thirds and fifths
Worksheets
- Chord building worksheets (root position, easy) printable worksheet sets
- Triad writing worksheets (root position, easy) printable worksheet sets
- Chord inversion identification (first inversion, easy) printable worksheet sets
G minor: questions people ask
What notes are in the G minor chord?
The G minor chord (Gm) has three notes: G, B♭, D. They are the root G, a minor third (B♭) and a perfect fifth (D). In root position the notes are stacked as a minor third (3 semitones) with a major third (4) on top.
How do you play Gm on guitar?
The chords-db database lists 4 guitar fingerings for Gm that passed the checks. The first one (open-position chord) uses frets 3 1 0 0 3 3 from the lowest string, fingers 2 1 – – 3 4; it sounds G B♭ D G D G with G in the bass. All of them are on this page as diagrams, with finger numbers and the note under every string.
How do you play Gm on ukulele or piano?
On a standard GCEA ukulele the first listed fingering is frets 0 2 3 1 (strings G, C, E, A), sounding G D G B♭; 4 fingerings are shown in all. On piano press G, B♭ and D together; the inversions are Gm/B♭ and Gm/D.
Does the G minor chord have another name?
Not in practice: its enharmonic spelling would need double sharps or flats, so it is always written G minor.
Which keys contain the G minor chord?
It is one of the chords of 7 of the 24 keys: D major (iv), E♭ major (iii), B♭ major (vi), F major (ii), C minor (v), G minor (i) and 1 more. In G minor it is the tonic chord.
How common is Gm in real music?
The data here is the OpenScore Lieder, 19th-century art songs analysed by software (not checked by a person), so it is not a count for pop music. 63 of the 1,462 Lieder have G minor as their home key. In the chord analysis the role i (Gm in G minor) is 24.4% of all chord segments in minor-key passages.
How this page was made
- Note names. Computed from the root and the interval pattern with the rule “one letter name per chord tone” (the same code that spells the scales on the key pages), then checked: letters, semitone pattern, no double accidentals.
- Fingerings. Every position comes from chords-db; the script recomputes the sounding pitch of each string in standard tuning and stops the build unless all of them are notes of this chord.
- Roles in keys. The chord type is built on every degree of the 24 key scales used on the key pages; a chord counts when its pitch classes equal this chord's.
- Statistics. Shares and transitions are read from the corpus files built from the OpenScore Lieder automatic analyses (AugmentedNet); counts of home keys come from the key pages.
- Independent check. A separate test (tests/chordlib/verify-tonal.test.mjs) re-derives the notes of every page with the tonal library and compares notes, staff voicings, keyboard voicings and every fingering.
Data used
- chords-db — guitar and ukulele fingerings, piano note lists (version 0.6.0) MIT
- OpenScore Lieder, automatic harmonic analyses — chord-use shares, chord-to-chord transitions and per-key progression counts CC0 1.0
- Wikipedia — excerpts from Minor chord, Chord (music) and Inversion (music), snapshot 2026-07-01 CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Mutopia Project — number of scores in each key per-piece licences; counts only
What this page cannot tell you
- The fingerings are one community-maintained database's choices; many other fingerings exist, and a good player will voice the chord to suit the music.
- Chord labels in the Lieder are software output that nobody has checked, for 19th-century art songs. Percentages show the repertoire, not pop or jazz.
- Sevenths and inversions are folded into the plain chord in the Lieder statistics, so they cannot tell a root-position triad from a first inversion.
- Roles in keys are counted for the 24 keys on this site and for major, natural and harmonic minor only; other scales (melodic minor, modes) are not searched, and only the third, fourth, sixth and seventh degrees of the parallel minor are borrowed.
Checks run each time this page is rebuilt
- spelling: one letter name per chord tone (G–B–D), semitone pattern 3+4
- staff and keyboard: 3 voicings, every note is a chord tone, the lowest note of voicing n is chord tone n
- drawings read back from the finished SVG: every dot, open ring, cross, barre and note letter equals the data; the keyboards highlight exactly the chord tones
- guitar: 4 shapes, ukulele: 4 shapes, 38 sounding strings in total, every one a chord tone; computed midi = database midi; barres playable
chords-db licence (MIT) — fingering data used on this page
The guitar and ukulele fingerings come from chords-db (version 0.6.0). Its licence text, which must travel with the data, is:
MIT License Copyright (c) 2016 David Rubert Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Data: chords-db (David Rubert) (MIT); OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0 1.0); Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Guitar and ukulele fingerings: chords-db, Copyright (c) 2016 David Rubert, MIT licence (full text above). Wikipedia excerpts are under CC BY-SA 4.0 with the article named at each excerpt. Computed for this site on 2026-10-08. Licences and credits for everything used on this site are on the credits page.