B minor, and being honest about the ones that don't always cooperate
Last time we worked the A-shape barre and got you switching between A-shape and E-shape without your hand falling apart in the process. Heck yes if that's starting to feel less like wrestling and more like playing.
Today we're doing B minor, and I want to be straight with you before we even start: this is the chord I still fight sometimes. Some mornings my B minor rings clean on the first try, every string, no buzz. Other mornings I get to string three and it just refuses. I don't fully know why. Dry weather, cold hands, how much coffee I've had, I honestly couldn't tell you. I've stopped pretending I have a tidy explanation for it, and I want you to hear that now so that when it happens to you, you don't think it means you're doing something wrong. It might just mean you're playing guitar.
Where B minor comes from
B minor is an A-shape chord, same family as what we built last lesson, but it's a minor shape instead of major, and it sits up at the second fret. Here's the shape:
- Index finger barres across all six strings at the 2nd fret
- Ring, middle, and pinky fingers stack together on the 4th fret, on the A, D, and G strings
That stack of three fingers close together is what makes this one mean. On a full A-shape major you spread those fingers out more. On the minor, three of them bunch up right next to each other on the same fret, and that bunching is exactly where things go wrong for most people. Fingers crowd each other, one of them leans on a string it shouldn't touch, and a string goes dead or buzzes.
Building it slowly
Same approach as always in this module. We don't grab the whole shape and hope.
- Set your index finger barre at the 2nd fret first. Just the barre. Strum it, check that all six strings ring. If they don't, stop and fix the barre before you add anything else. I feel like this is the step people skip because they're in a hurry to get to the "real" chord, and it costs them every time.
- Once the barre rings clean by itself, add your ring finger at the 4th fret on the D string.
- Add your middle finger at the 4th fret on the G string, right next to the ring finger.
- Add your pinky at the 4th fret on the B string.
Play each string one at a time after you've built the full shape. Not a strum, a slow one-string-at-a-time check. Any string that's muted or buzzing, that's information. It's usually one of two things: either your barre finger is resting on a string it needs to stay off, or your three stacked fingers are leaning into each other and one of them is touching a string it shouldn't.
The opinion I'll stand behind here
Ten clean minutes on this shape, built slow the way I just described, beats an hour of grinding through full strums hoping it comes together. I've said this before in this module and I'll say it again because B minor is where it matters most. If you just start strumming full chords over and over hoping your hand figures it out, you'll build a shape that's close but not quite right, and that shape will follow you around for years. I've watched it happen. Slow it down instead.
A small aside about where you practice this
When Heather and I moved into Downtown Apartments, I had to rethink some things about how I play, because the walls are thin and I am, at the end of the day, a county clerk and not a rock star making noise for the neighborhood. I moved my amp into the closet entirely. These days I play acoustic in the front room with the window cracked, and honestly it's been fine. Nobody's complained yet. I keep waiting for a knock on the door.
I bring this up because B minor is a chord you will want to grind on, out loud, repeatedly, while you get it sitting right. That's normal and that's fine, but if you're in an apartment or a shared space, know that going in. It's not a quiet chord to practice badly. Find the time of day where a little repetitive strumming isn't going to bother anybody, and give yourself permission to sit there for ten minutes just building the shape, string by string, without worrying that you're driving someone up the wall.
When it still won't ring
If you've built it slow, checked each string, adjusted your barre and your finger stack, and one string is still dead more often than not — check your thumb. Same principle we've talked about before. If your thumb is creeping up over the top of the neck, it changes the angle of your whole hand and throws off pressure everywhere, including on fingers that seem unrelated to the problem. Bring the thumb back down, centered behind the neck, and try again.
And if it's still stubborn some days and fine other days, welcome to the club. That's just how this one goes for a lot of us.
Before next time: spend your practice time this week on the barre-first, add-fingers-second build for B minor, and don't worry yet about strumming it in a song. Just get it ringing clean, even if it takes you the whole week to get there most of the time.