How to Play the Open Position Dm Chord and CAGED Dm Shape
Once you’ve watched the video lesson above about the Dm chord, you’ve seen all CAGED major and minor chords.
There are just two more videos covering the Fm and Bm chords, but you’ll soon realise how these are simply variations of previous shapes.
Now, let’s focus on the final CAGED shape: the Dm shape.
As an open-position chord, the Dm chord looks like this Chordacus.
This is the chord most of us think of when we hear Dm.
The Dm chord is extremely simple to fret, and understanding it is crucial for navigating the fretboard with ease. When we break it down, the intervals we get are:
- Root (D note on string 4)
- 5th (A note on string 3)
- Root again (D note on string 2)
- Minor third (F note on string 1)
Interestingly, we can play just the top three strings and still have a complete chord. In piano terms, this would be considered the 2nd inversion, consisting of the 5th, root, and m3rd.
This provides a different flavour to the traditional Dm but still maintains its full harmonic structure.
Dm chord extensions
The Dm shape is perhaps the easiest to understand when it comes to chord extensions—you only need to visualise intervals on strings one and two.
Here are all the possible Dm-shaped chord extensions:
- Dm chord (root, 5th, root, m3rd)
- Dm7 (root, 5th, b7, m3rd)
- Dm7b5 (root, b5, b7, m3rd)
- Ddim7 (root, b5, bb7, m3rd)
- Dmmaj7 (root, 5th, 7, m3rd)
- Dm6 (root, 5th, 6, m3rd)
- Dm11 (root, 4th, b7, m3rd)
To truly understand these chords, start by fretting each one and moving it around the fretboard. This helps reinforce how they’re built and how the intervals shift with the shape.
The SEPR exercises will guide you through this process in a structured way, helping you connect theory with practical fretboard knowledge.
It’s really as simple as being able to see all the intervals, and knowing which ones you need to build each extension.
Once you’ve done that, the next step is to find them in songs.
Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers uses a Dm7 chord, and Dream A Little Dream by Mama Cass includes a Dm-shaped dim7 chord.
Building scales and arpeggios around the Dm chord/shape
Just like the chord itself, the Dm shape is the easiest to play and memorise thanks to its compact layout.
From this shape, we can build the following:
- Min7 arpeggio
- Min7b5 arpeggio
- Minor Pentatonic
- Minor Blues scale
- Conspirian
- Dorian
- Aeolian (the natural minor scale)
- Phrygian
Below is a diagram showing all the intervals used to construct these arpeggios and scales around the Dm shape. If you can see the intervals, you can play the scales.
As always, theory and diagrams aren’t enough—you need real song examples to understand how to use these sounds musically.
In my guitar courses, we bridge that gap by playing vocal melodies from the songs we learn, mapping them out in every shape—including this Dm shape. That’s how you truly learn to use scales and arpeggios.
The Dm Chord | Related Pages
Guitar chords
You can learn how to build all minor and major guitar chords using the so-called CAGED system.
By visualising each chord shape across the fretboard, you unlock a way of navigating the entire neck using just five patterns. These five shapes form the foundation for building not only chords, but also arpeggios and modes.
Once you can see where the chord tones are, it becomes easy to add extensions such as 7s and 9s. From here, add a few more notes, and you’re playing full scales.
The D chord
The smallest of all open-position chords, the D chord is straightforward and easy to fret.
Once it becomes a moveable shape, it’s surprisingly awkward—until you start extending it to maj7, dom7, 6, sus2, and beyond. Then it suddenly makes sense.
Beginner Acoustic
This collection of beginner acoustic tunes will teach you how to arrange for one acoustic guitar and create supporting parts.
Learning songs helps you switch between open-position chords and gives you the context needed to understand how music works theoretically.