Category: Minor Guitar Chords

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!

Em Guitar Chord

Learn how to play an E minor guitar chord in this video lesson. There are three different notes in an Em guitar chord, these are E – root note, B – perfect 5th, and G – minor 3rd. This guitar lesson shows you both open position and bar shapes for E minor chords:

The open position E minor guitar chord contains four strings that are played open (E, G, B, e), which means you are only fretting two strings to hold down this chord, which should be pretty easy. Here is the chord diagram for this:

E minor guitar chord
After you master this, it’s time to try an Em bar chord shape, starting at the seventh fret of the A string (an E note). Here is the guitar chord diagram:

Em bar chord

Finally, we examine an octave E minor guitar chord played at the twelfth fret position on your guitar:

Em bar chord

This is essentially a full barre shape for an Em guitar chord, using your index finger to hold down the strings on the 12th fret. You can get a free printable guitar chords book right here!