Hey, how you doing?
Justin here back with you for a look at the A minor chord.
There's a few interesting things going on here with this chord.
Let's start off by looking at an A major chord.
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And then we've got to change it to an A minor chord.
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Look, all of the fingers have got to change.
So slightly different from the E major to E minor,
where you just lift a finger off.
So here, we've got everything off. 2nd finger can kind of stay down.
3rd finger moves over, and 1st finger goes down,
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to get to our minor chord.
Now, A major to A minor is a fairly rare kind of a chord change.
Happens occasionally, but it's not a super common one.
One that's more common is A minor to E, or A minor to E minor.
Now, hopefully you kind of recognize A minor if I'm playing it,
and go, "Hang on, I've seen that one before,
but it looks slightly different."
You would be very right.
It looks the same as E major, but on the wrong strings.
So there's A minor,
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We move all of the fingers down one string,
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we get E major.
Not E minor. Okay? Now this is one of the things
that beginners sometimes get a bit confused about.
They see this chord shape and they think, "Oh that's an E, an E major."
So, that one, that has to be some sort of major as well. It's not.
This one is A minor.
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Now the reason for this is to do with the tuning of the instrument.
I don't wanna go into too much detail about it here,
but if you've learned tuning using what they call the '5th fret technique',
when you tune the B string, you go back a fret.
So you go 5th fret, 5th fret, 5th fret, 4th fret and then 5th fret again.
The distance between the 3rd string and 2nd string,
is ever so slightly smaller.
The interval between the pitches is ever so slightly smaller.
Now because of that, when we move things down,
any sort of guitar shape down on the guitar,
it doesn't maintain the same quality.
So major chords, if we've got a major shape like this,
and we move it down, it becomes a minor chord.
If we've got a minor chord like this and we move it down,
that becomes really, really weird.
So it's not--you can't just move shapes willy-nilly on the guitar unfortunately.
So, understanding that and knowing that, you wanna know that the A minor chord,
even though it looks like an E major chord,
you wanna remember that your 1st finger is on the 2nd string for an A minor chord.
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That's the key thing. Remembering your 2nd finger is there.
Also remember that it's the same 3 strings with fingers on,
as it was for the A major chord. There's A major chord again.
There's A minor chord. A major...A minor.
A nice way you can see it really clearly is if you use your little finger.
If you go from A minor and add your little finger down
on the 2nd string in the 2nd fret,
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it's actually another way of playing an A major chord.
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It's not one that I recommend because the 2nd finger,
look, if I do that, all those 3 fingers together,
you can see how far away 2nd finger is from the 2nd fret.
It's like way far away.
And being so far away, if we want that note to come out really clearly,
we have to press really hard with the 2nd finger.
Like really hard to make that chord work.
Also, when you press really hard,
it sometimes makes the strings go out of tune a bit.
So, it's all sorts of dangers. I definitely recommend
this as being generally a much better way of playing an A major chord.
However, just so you can see easily the difference between major and minor,
you could play A minor like that and add little finger down.
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There's your A major, and then you can see, again, that change,
that simple one note change to go from major to minor.
This is the most common fingering for A minor, just using fingers 1, 2 and 3.
You might see people occasionally use fingers 2, 3 and 4,
but that's pretty rare. It's much more common 1, 2 and 3.
The common problems with the A minor,
are pretty much the same ones we'd have with E.
We don't wanna be playing the thickest string with an A minor chord,
but if you do play it by accident, it's not gonna be too bad.
We want the open string, the open 5th string.
If that one's muted, it's almost certainly the fault of 2nd finger
being up a little bit too high and muting it,
so just bring that 2nd finger down,
make sure you're using the tip of the finger.
When we're getting that note right,
because 3rd finger's going right next to the fret,
2nd finger's gonna have to be kind of in the middle of the 4th string.
Halfway between 1st fret and 2nd fret.
You wanna get it as close as you can to 2nd fret,
but because of the placement of the 3rd finger,
you won't get it right up there.
Okay? So you might have to press slightly harder
than you would, had it be right next to the fret.
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The note with the 3rd finger on the 3rd string.
Probably not too many of you are gonna have problems with that note.
That's not a common one to have a funny note with.
The note with the 1st finger though,
again 3rd finger, it's very easy for 3rd finger to lay down
and mute the 2nd string, so make sure the 3rd finger is right up on the tip there.
The 1st finger, again, if you're not hearing that note,
it is the 3rd finger's fault.
The thinner string, if that's not ringing out,
it's almost certainly the underneath of the 1st finger,
and that's a really common problem.
It's one that, when I'm playing left-handed,
I still have problems getting that note. Half the time it sounds like this.
The thinner string is muted.
You really wanna work on
just trying to get the 1st finger right up on the tip there,
and trying to keep the fingers nice and round.
That's the kind of tips for getting your A minor sounding really nice.
As usual, you wanna go for your Chord Perfect Practice.
You're gonna go for your strum,
pick out the notes one at a time,
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and strum again.
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Okay? Again, quite likely this would be a common first attempt.
Or even that.
Then you go through, figure out what's going on.
Literally, just going through picking out the notes one at a time,
until you get it right,
and that final important strum at the end where you're going,
telling your fingers that's where you want them to go for the future.