How to Play the Open Position Em Chord and CAGED Em Shape
This video lesson covers the open-position Em chord and its CAGED counterpart, the Em-shaped chord.
Let’s explore how this simple chord becomes one of five essential shapes that guide everything we do in minor on the guitar.
We begin with the open-position chord, which is easy to fret and offers several ways to play it depending on the song. Since different tunes may require slightly different fingerings or techniques, you’ll need a variety of songs to truly master it in context.
My beginner course is designed to take you through all of this—strumming, picking, and fingerpicking using real songs—so you can learn how to actually play the Em chord, not just memorise it.
Once you’re confident with the open chord, we turn it into a moveable shape. Above, you’ll find a Chordacus image showing both the open position and the moveable version, starting at fret 12.
When using the Em shape as a chord shape further up the neck, we rarely play all six strings. Instead, we use fractions of the shape—strings 3–6, 2–4, 1–4, or 1–3.
Each of these variations is still a complete Em chord, as long as they contain the three essential intervals: root, minor 3rd, and 5th.
Em chord extensions
Let’s take a look at what possible chords we can extend an Em-shaped chord to.
- Em chord (root, 5th, root, m3rd, 5th, root)
- Emadd9 (root, 5th, 9, m3rd, 5th, root)
- Em7 (root, m3rd, b7, root)
- Em7b5 (root, b7, m3rd, b5)
- Em9 (root, b7, m3rd, 5th, 9)
- Em6 (root, root, m3rd, 6)
You can simply memorize these by understanding how to build them and trying them out by moving the chords around the fretboard.
Maybe you could even try some of the exercises I provide in the SEPR. However, if you want to get to know these chords, you must discover them and associate them with real songs.
You find an open position Emadd9 in Cannonball.
The Em7 chord is available in many songs, for example, the 2nd guitar part for Ain’t No Sunshine. This extension is the same as a Gm shape.
Building scales and arpeggios around the Em chord/shape
Let’s take a look at the possible chords we can build using the Em-shaped chord as our foundation.
- Min7 arpeggio
- Min7b5 arpeggio
- Minor Pentatonic
- Minor Blues scale
- Conspirian
- Dorian
- Aeolian (the natural minor scale)
- Phrygian
You can memorise these shapes by learning how they’re built and moving them around the fretboard. That’s a great start—and you’ll find plenty of exercises for this in the SEPR.
However, to truly understand and internalise these chords, you need to associate them with real songs. That’s where the magic happens.
For example, you’ll find an open-position Emadd9 in Cannonball. The Em7 shape appears frequently—it’s the same as the Gm shape used for the second guitar part in Ain’t No Sunshine by Bill Withers.
Building scales and arpeggios around the Em chord/shape
Let’s build arpeggios and modes using the Em-shaped chord as our framework.
The Em7-shaped arpeggio includes the intervals: root, m3rd, 5th, b7, root, m3rd, 5th, and finally, another b7 on the top string.
Add a 4th to these intervals and you get the minor pentatonic scale.
Keep all those notes, add the 2nd and the b6, and you’ve got Aeolian.
Lower the 2nd to a b2, keep the b6, and you get Phrygian.
Add a natural 2nd and a major 6th to the minor pentatonic and you get Dorian.
As you can see, once you know the Em shape and the intervals surrounding it, you can build any minor chord, arpeggio, or mode.
The key is to combine your understanding of what a chord or scale is—seen as intervals—with how those intervals lay across the Em shape. There are exercises for all of this in the SEPR.
Here’s a diagram that shows you all the intervals needed to construct these arpeggios and scales. The layout is the same for every Em-shaped CAGED position!
The Em Chord | Related Pages
Guitar chords
You can learn how to build all minor and major guitar chords using the so-called CAGED system.
This forms the foundation for extending chords and building arpeggios and modes.
The E chord
Perhaps the easiest chord of all to understand and fret is the huge open-position E chord.
Turn this into a moveable shape and you have the best starting point for grasping major chords on the guitar.
Beginner Acoustic
This collection of beginner acoustic tunes will teach you how to arrange for one acoustic guitar, as well as how to create a supporting part.
Playing songs will help you switch between open-position chords and give you the context needed to understand how music works theoretically.