Easy B Minor Guitar Chord Tutorial

The purpose of the following post is to teach you how to play an easy version of the more difficult B Minor Chord.  The more popular version of this chord is usually a barre chord played on the 2nd fret. As a  beginner , I know that as a beginner, you cringe at the thought of having to play B  or barre chords.  Since many cool songs call for this particular chord, it can be extremely frustrating.  The good news is there are a couple of ways to play this chord that aren’t difficult at all.  We can cheat… No barre chords here.

Lets dive into a little theory about this chord first.  You are welcome to jump down to the diagrams below, but this won’t take up too much of your time and you may learn something new.

The B Minor Guitar Chord  is found by locating the 1, b3 and 5 steps of the  B Major Scale: B, C#, D#, E, F#, G#, A#, or the notes B, D and F#.  The “b3” symbol translates to “Flattened 3rd” , which means we simply lower the 3rd step of the B Major Scale (D#) a 1/2 step to a “D”.

So the notes again are: B D F#.

I will demonstrate how to finger this chord with the charts  below.  Now the alternative voicings of this chord listed in the diagrams below will work just fine for any songs that call for this chord, they just won’t have that big full sound that the Barre chords do.  So these are fine for now, but make sure you practice the more difficult versions of the Bm as well.

Here is a key that will help you read the charts:

Technically speaking , the chord shapes above and below are chord inversions. This means that instead of the “B” note being the bass or lowest note of the chord, another note is.  In the shape above, the bass note is a “D” and in the chord shape below, the bass note is an F#.  These chords still sound fine.  We are just switching the notes around a bit.

B Minor Guitar Chord Video

The video below will further demonstrate how to play the B Minor Chord.  The teacher in the video below demonstrates a different way to play the chord by adding another f# to the chord. Both variations are acceptable.  One just has a fuller sound to it.

Chord Playing Tip: Be sure that you are pressing down on the string hard enough. You should play each string one at a time to make sure you have a nice clean sound. If any of the strings buzz or sound muted, then something is not right.