A B-minor is an important chord both for guitar in general and for beginners specifically as it’s one of the chords that belongs to 3 families of chords (G-major, D-major and A-major) that are taught early to beginner guitar players. The standard shape of the Bm chord contains a so-called barre which makes it a rather tough chord to play and oftentimes it upsets and discourages people from playing songs that use it. In this tutorial you will learn how to play 3 variations of this chord that don't actually require any barre at all so that you could use them as alternatives to play songs that rely on it already today. Once you get comfortable with them, switching to a full barre Bm will be a matter of repositioning just 1 finger! All chords have beginner-friendly charts with finger numbers. Additionally, you will find a few charts on how to think of chords in terms of movable shapes to amplify visual associations with what you already know. I’ve also added some exercises to practice chord changes from and to the Bm-chord.
Chords in this tutorial
Bm (no barre)
This is a true no‑barre and proper Bm‑chord. While fretting it is easy, it comes with a challenge of muting the other 3 strings. By utilizing only the thinnest 3 strings it's not as full-sounding as it could be, and still it's a fully legit Bm‑chord that may be just what you need.Bm (inversion)
This is a better sounding version of the Bm chord without a barre. Its technical name is Bm/F# (so-called inversion) but for our purposes you don't need to worry or think about it. Use it wherever you see written Bm. Notice that fingers used to play it differ from the other similar-shaped variation.Bm (substitute)
This variation is not a true Bm chord, but it's close enough to be used in place of the actual Bm chord. Its real name is Bm7. It sounds very similar and is arguably easier to play than the other 2 versions. If you're having difficulties with the other 2 variations try using this one—it should fit wherever a regular Bm is expected.A way to think about the B-minor chord
- 1. Let's take a regular A‑minor (Am) chord that you might already know. Think in terms of "I know this shape!". The nut here acts as the barre—it "bars" all 6 strings
- 2. Shift Am chord by 2 frets, add barre (mentally) and you get a full Bm-barre chord. Can you see that it's the same "shape" from step #1? Our 1st finger acts as a barre. The key insight here is that it's a movable shape
- 3. Now remove the imaginary barre and fret just one thinnest string with finger #1. You now officially have a no-barre Bm‑chord!
- 4. The final step allows us to simplify our chord even further by omitting the note on the 4th string. And no, we don't omit it because we can, but because we have the same note on the 1st string :)
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