How do I play the E Minor chord?

E Minor is the most adaptable chord on guitar. Thanks to EADGBE tuning the chord of E minor, and it’s common extensions can be played multiple ways across the fretboard. Four of our six open strings are notes in an E minor chord ; the 6th, 4th, 3rd and 1st strings form a full E minor chord, and this allows for lots of interesting variations on E minor harmonies.

Plain E minor chords : these are the most common open-position forms of Em. The Em2 (often written a ‘sus2’) is an easy embellishment to the common Em rhythm chord.

E Minor extension chords : minor 7th, 9ths and sus2 forms. These are are great variations on the plain minor. They give you a more complex, interesting sound to work within and can be used in place of the standard Em in the keys of Em, G, D, Bm, and in modal keys like A myxolydian and A dorian. Here are just a sample of the many ways of adding 7th and 9th embellishments to E minor.

Finger picking variations of E Minor : these variations are good for fingerstyle playing and all feature the low E bass note. Note the first form is just the four open-strings E G B E ; a perfect E minor chord!

Variations are possible on all the above E minor forms ; experiment with changing one note at a time and you will discover even more chords to work with.

Modern guitar chord styles to the rescue!

Modern Guitar Chord Styles 1 : This is a very helpful book for entry-level players and those who have already learned the common chords but are still having trouble putting full songs together. If this reflects where your playing is up to, just a few weeks of the technique building work in MGCS1 will set you up to be able to make sense of the song charts you were working on but not feeling satisfied with.

Relevant pages in Modern Guitar Chord Styles 1 : for more on E minor and it’s uses go to pages 5 - 7, 10 - 11 & 42