B Chords — Dobro

All 62 qualities on the root B, in 10 families, drawn for this chair. A circle will only ever call four or five of them, but the tune that finally gets called will use the sixth, and this is where you look it up.

B is the iii of G, the ii of A, the I of B and the vi of D, which is the useful thing to know before you know the shape: if the caller counts, you already know when your chord arrives.

The dobro chair owns the answering voice. Face-up in open G, a chord here is not a shape to grab but a fret to lay the bar across, or a short slant of it, and the slide into that fret is half the sound — which is why the seat waits for a hole in the vocal rather than filling every bar.