E minor chord
Four open strings and two fingers. About as easy as a chord gets.
- How it sounds
- Ringing and a little melancholy. The low E, G, B and high E are all open, and few minor chords in standard tuning ring like it. Less sad than Am, sadder than G.
- Where it lives
- The iii of C major and the vi of G. It’s G’s relative minor, which is why so many songs in G pass through it. Rock, folk, and a lot of metal, where the open low E is the heaviest note standard tuning has.
Voicings across the neck
E, G and B are shown in three places on the neck. The first is the open Em, all six strings with four of them open. The Dm form moved up to the 2nd fret uses only the top four strings, and the Am form at the 7th is a barre across five, with the root on the A string. Play the Em shape again as a barre at the 12th fret and you get the open chord an octave up.
- High E string: E at fret 0
- B string: B at fret 0
- G string: G at fret 0
- D string: E at fret 2
- A string: B at fret 2
- Low E string: E at fret 0
- High E string: G at fret 3
- B string: E at fret 5
- G string: B at fret 4
- D string: E at fret 2
- A string: not played
- Low E string: not played
- High E string: B at fret 7
- B string: G at fret 8
- G string: E at fret 9
- D string: B at fret 9
- A string: E at fret 7
- Low E string: not played
Formula
| Intervals | Notes | Semitones |
|---|---|---|
| R · m3 · P5: what each interval does in a chord | E · G · B | 3 + 4 |
E minor is a root, a minor third and a perfect fifth: E, G and B, the third, fifth and seventh notes of C major. Three frets from E to G, then four from G to B: three then four is what makes a chord minor. Swap the gaps and G moves up to G♯, which gives E major.
In these keys and scales
E minor turns up in twelve scales on the site. It’s home in E minor, E harmonic minor and E melodic minor. In G major it’s the vi, the relative minor, in C major the iii and in D major the ii, and on the minor side it’s the iv of B minor and the v of A minor. It also sits inside two pentatonics, G major and E minor, which get no numeral because they’re five-note scales. The numeral beside each scale names the job, and the name opens that scale’s page.
| Family | Scales |
|---|---|
| Major | |
| Natural minor | |
| Harmonic minor | |
| Melodic minor | |
| Pentatonic |
Progressions
The first two are the same four chords, Em, C, G and D, heard two ways. Start the loop on Em in G major and it’s vi–IV–I–V. Hear E minor as home and the same chords turn into i–VI–III–VII. In iii–vi–ii–V it sets off on the long way round to C, each chord a fifth above the one after it.