Five fret stretch

In music, a five-fret stretch refers to a guitar chord formation such that the highest fingered fret minus the lowest fingered fret is 5. This necessarily excludes open strings.

Five-fret stretches are common in rock, blues, and in classical music, and are most common on guitar, but they are theoretically possible on other stringed instruments.

Common Formations Involving Five-Fret Stretch In Standard Tuning

A pattern often used in rock and roll music is:
e|-------|
B|-------|
G|-------|
D|5-7-8-7|
A|3-3-3-3|
E|-------|


This shows the pattern in C. It is simply three intervals (perfect fifth, major sixth, and minor seventh) one after another. When improvising over the top of a pattern like this, the soloist would often use the mixolydian or Dorian mode, because both of these scales have the intervals of a major 6th and a minor 7th within them.