Minor Chords in the CAGED Shapes
The same five shapes, the third down a fret — Am, Em and Dm up the neck.
The five CAGED shapes are the open major chords — C, A, G, E and D — barred and moved up the neck. Lower the third in each and you have the minor set, and three of them are chords you already play open: Am, Em and Dm. Barred, those three cover every minor chord on the guitar between them; the other two survive as partial shapes and belong on the map rather than under your fingers.
Above are the five shapes of A minor, each in its own colour — the open Am at the nut, then the G, E, D and C forms up the neck, the letters in CAGED order from wherever the first one lands. Tap a letter to mark one, pick it from the menu to see it alone, change the root or the chord in the capsule, step ‹ › up the neck, or tap any note to see which shape holds it. The figure follows the text from here on.
Major to minor: move the third
Here are the five shapes of A major. Every one of them has the third in it — the note that makes the chord major — at least once. Find them before you read on: they are the notes a fret above where the minor chart will put them.
Drop each third one fret and the chart is A minor. In the A shape the third is on the B string — the note that comes down a fret when open A becomes open Am. In the E shape it is on the G string — the finger that comes off open E for open Em. In the D shape it is the high E string, D to Dm. Three shapes, one note each, and the chord you get is the open minor chord of that letter: you didn't learn three new shapes, you moved one note in each.
The three you play
Am, Em and Dm are the three that stay whole, and they are the minor barre chords everyone uses. The E shape at the fifth fret is A minor with the root on the low E string — the same grip as an E-shape major barre with the G-string note let down onto the barre. The A shape is A minor at the nut here, and barred anywhere else it is the fifth-string minor barre chord. The D shape, at the seventh fret in A minor, is the small one for the top strings.
Each of them is at the nut in its own key: open Em is the E shape at fret 0, open Dm the D shape at fret 0, open Am the A shape at fret 0. That is the whole trick of CAGED, minor or major — the open chord is the shape, and the shape works anywhere.
The two nobody barres
The C form and the G form are where the minor set thins out, and it is worth seeing why. Look back at the major chart: the C shape and the G shape are the two that double the third — the C shape on the D string and the high E, the G shape on the A string and the B. Lowering every one of those and keeping the chord barred asks for a hand the guitar doesn't have, so what is left of each is a four-string partial: the C form keeps its middle four strings, the G form its lowest four, which is how the figure draws them.
Learn them as places on the neck, not as grips. They are worth knowing because the map is worth knowing — the C form tells you there is an A minor around the tenth fret, and the pentatonic box that goes with it is real even though the chord is not — but nobody plays them, and the chord explorers on this site do not offer them either.
Up the neck
A shape is a picture, and moving it up the neck changes only the key. The E shape at the eighth fret is C minor; the whole chart slides with it, the letters keeping their order. Change the root in the figure and watch the five move together — that is five places to play any minor chord, found with no more than the one note you moved.
The order never changes, only where it starts. In A minor the open A form comes first and the sequence runs A, G, E, D, C up the neck; in C minor it starts with the C form and runs C, A, G, E, D. It is the same wheel of letters, turned to the key.
The scale around a minor shape
Every shape sits inside a box of the minor pentatonic: here is the E shape of A minor with its pentatonic. That box is box 1 — the boxes are numbered from the minor pentatonic, starting with the root on the low E string under the first finger, which is the E form, and the five boxes then follow the CAGED letters E, D, C, A, G up the neck. Minor shapes and minor boxes line up letter for letter, which is the reason most players meet this set first.
Add the two notes the pentatonic leaves out and you have the minor scale around the same shape. A minor triad lives in three of the major modes, and the overlay menu offers all three: the minor scale, dorian with its raised sixth, and phrygian with its flat second. The chord is three of the position's notes; which scale you lay around it is what the chord is doing in the music, not what the shape is.
Adding the seventh
One more note and the minor shapes become minor sevenths: Am7, Em7 and Dm7, the same three grips with a ♭7 where a doubled note was, and the C and G forms as partials again. Where that note sits in each shape, and what happens to the major shapes when you do the same to them, is Seventh chords in the CAGED shapes.
What the letters stop telling you
The minor set is the first place the CAGED system runs thin, and it is a useful place to notice it. Five letters gave you three chords; the fourth and fifth are diagrams of something you cannot play. Go one step further — inversions, a minor chord with its third or its fifth in the bass — and the letters say nothing at all, because an inversion is not a shape with a name, it is the same three notes in another order.
What survives every one of those steps is the degrees. A minor chord is 1, ♭3 and 5 wherever you put it, on any string set and on any instrument; major to minor is the ♭3, a seventh is one more degree, an inversion is the same degrees rearranged. Learn the five shapes for the map — they are the best thing anyone ever fitted onto a page — and then learn to build a minor chord from its degrees, which is what the app's Build Shapes game trains: a chord sounds, its root shows, and you find the rest.
Questions
- Does the CAGED system work for minor chords?
- Partly. Lowering the third of each of the five shapes gives a minor set, but only the Am, Em and Dm forms are playable barred — and between them those three reach every minor chord on the neck. The C and G forms survive as four-string partials: useful as landmarks on the map, not as chords anyone plays.
- How do you turn a CAGED shape into a minor chord?
- Move its third down one fret. In the A shape the third is on the B string, in the E shape on the G string, in the D shape on the high E — the three notes you already lift when open A, E and D become Am, Em and Dm. The C and G shapes double their third, and lowering both at once is what makes those two forms unplayable whole.
- What are the minor barre chord shapes?
- Two carry almost everything: the E shape, with the root on the low E string (A minor at the fifth fret), and the A shape, with the root on the A string (D minor at the fifth fret). The D shape is the third, a four-string grip on the top strings for the higher register.
- Which scale goes with a minor CAGED shape?
- The minor pentatonic box around it first — the box numbering starts from the minor, so the E form is box 1. Filled in, the position is the minor scale; a minor triad also sits in dorian and phrygian, and which of the three you play over it depends on the music, not on the shape.