Canon In D Acoustic Guitar Chords

Pachelbel’s Canon in D major is a very recognizable theme that is often played at weddings and graduations, usually on violins, violas and cellos. Canon on acoustic guitar sounds very good when the chords are played as arpeggios (one note at a time). This should be an easy acoustic guitar lesson if you can already play some guitar chords:

Canon in D follows a repeating eight chord progression: D major, A major, B minor, F# minor, G major, D major, G major, A major. Most of these chords are played with open strings (open chords) and even if you have trouble with the bar chords (Bm and F#m), you can use a finger roll technique as shown in the video to make them much easier to play.

As was previously mentioned, all of these guitar chords are played as arpeggios, instead of strumming all the notes at the same time. This means we are playing each note of each chord individually, one at a time. The sound of each note is still allowed to ring out once played, however. This pattern should be fairly easy to play using either a pick or your fingers. Below you will find the TAB for Canon in D, arranged for acoustic guitar.

Pachelbel’s Canon Guitar TAB:

Canon acoustic TAB
Canon acoustic TAB

G Guitar Chord

The G major guitar chord is one of the most lush and full sounding chords you can play on your guitar due to the fact that there are up to three open strings ringing out when you play it at the open position. G major chords are made up from the notes G (root note), B (major 3rd) and D (perfect 5th). Watch this video for how to play a G major chord:

As you will see in this video, there are several options for holding a G major guitar chord:

G major chord

Using the pinky instead of the ring finger on high e string:

G chord variation

Including the third fret of B (a D note) instead of open B:

G guitar chord

Try all of these variations to see which ones feel the best to hold for you and to discover what chord sounds the best to you. After this we move on to a G major barre chord, beginning at the third fret of the E string just like the open chord version.

G major barre chord diagram:

G guitar chord

Now after you learn this barre chord we take a look at the other one, which begins at the 10th fret of the A string. This lesson then shows you a “D-shaped” G major chord that is played on the G B and e strings only. This lesson finishes with showing you how to play the intro melody to this guitar chord lesson.

The melody simply plays the notes of a G major (Ionian) scale against a repeating open G string. The notes in the scale are G A B C D E F#, but we are starting at a G note and going backwards when playing this little melody.

G major intro melody guitar TAB:

G melody guitar TAB
This melody sounds great, especially when it ends with a full open G major chord. Take it slow at first until you have the picking clean, and make sure to let that open G string ring out nice and clear the whole time as it adds a nice contrast to the G major scale notes!