A Minor Guitar Chord

Do you know how to play an A minor chord (Am) on guitar? A minor chords can be played in several different positions on the fret board, and this video lesson covers both the open Am guitar chord as well as the Am bar chord shapes found further up the guitar neck:

There are three notes in an Am chord: the root note is an A, the perfect 5th is an E, and the minor 3rd is a C. This chord guitar lesson begins with the open A minor chord, which begins with an open A string, with the second frets of the D an G strings fretted (E and A notes, respectively) and the first fret of the B string fretted (a C note), plus an open e string:

Am open chord guitar

Next, we go to the 5th fret of the E string (an A note) to learn an Am bar chord. This involves using your pinky and ring fingers to fret the 7th frets of the A and D strings and barring with your index finger along the 5th frets of the rest of the strings:

A minor barre chord 5th fret

Finally, this Am guitar chord lesson finishes of with an open position octave shape barre chord beginning at the 12th fret location:

A minor bar chord

This can be a tight chord to hold in this position, and if you have big fingers they might get squished, but it does sound nice when you can play it right!

Spanish Guitar Chords

These Spanish guitar chords are easy to learn and sound great as they each contain an open string with a low root note. These chords are also unique because they are played at the 5th fret position which is a lesson common way of voicing them, especially together.

This lesson is shown with a 12-string acoustic guitar, but a regular six string will do just fine. The first chord we play in this progression is a D minor, at the 5th fret position. This chord can be played as an arpeggio (which means to pick the notes individually) or alternatively it can be strummed. Sometimes it can be more interesting to listen to if both methods are employed, one after the other, as shown in this video.

The next chord in this Spanish progression is an A minor guitar chord. It’s played by using the index finger to bar the 5th frets of G B and e, while the ring finger is holding down the 7th fret of the D string. This leaves us with an open A string to play along with this chord, which we can either strum or play as an arpeggio, or both!

The third chord in this progression is a hybrid form of an E7 guitar chord, that sounds very good since all six strings are used to play it in this position, and two of these strings (the E and B string) are played open. Once this is played we go back to the A minor chord, as shown in the video. So have fun with these unusual and exotic Spanish guitar chords, and experiment with both the strumming and the arpeggio variations.