Open Chords: Minor

If you’ve been reading the series on guitar chords so far, you should be getting to grips with the open major chords from last week. However, you’ve probably also noticed that there were no minor chords, and the chords that were there were only C, A, G, E, and D major- so there’s two letters missing (F and B)!

Well, the system of chords that I use is called “CAGED”, which basically involves learning the C, A, G, E, and D shapes (which spells “CAGED”) and then moving those shapes to create other chords (moving E up to F etc). I will go into more detail about this system in the next article.

For now, here are the most common minor chords in open position. Again, the root notes are marked in red, and the other notes in black. If you compare these minor chords to their major counterparts, you’ll notice that there is only one note different in each shape (so A minor is only A major with the note on the B string moved down one fret). This note is the “third” and it’s what tells the chord to sound either major or minor (there’ll either be a “major third” as in the previous examples or a “minor third” as in the chords below.

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Rob.

November 16, 2010 at 11:00 pm | Guitar Chords, Guitar Technique and Exercises | 1 comment

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